Wasted Years

Forty-Three

He and Elaine had taken holidays here, Northumberland, a succession of rented cottages close to the coast-north from Amble and Alnmouth Bay, through Seahouses and Bamburgh to Berwick-upon-Tweed. The first had been the worst. The flat itself, upper floor of a smallholder’s cottage, had been right enough; where it had fallen down was the panoramic view. An undisturbed vision of caravans at the rear; to the front, cabbage fields as far as the eye could follow. Somewhere beyond those acres of darkening green lay soft dunes and broad beaches, the slow roll of the North Sea.

“Take it on trust,” the owner had said. “Me and the missus have for years. I’n’t we pet?”

Resnick and Elaine had returned to other locations. The sands were largely deserted, stopped breathtakingly by castles, impressive in their decay. They had taken a boat out to the Farne Islands to see the puffins and sea birds; had walked the causeway over to Holy Island and had to run full into the wind on the way back so as not to be trapped by the tide.

They had made love in hired beds, often spurred on by a visit to the local pub, a meal eaten in unspoken anticipation. In part, it was what holidays were for.

It was difficult for Resnick as he turned east off the main road and headed towards the coast, to recall these things with pleasure.

The road narrowed and soon he was facing a T-junction with no sign to suggest which way to turn. Stopping to use the map, nevertheless he made the wrong choice and got lost twice more before he found himself driving down the gentle hill with the sea to his left, into the village where Ruth now lived.

Fishermen’s cottages had been built around a green, making three sides of a square; a low wall dividing land from the beach made the fourth. The buildings were uniform, painted white. He guessed that for the most part now they functioned as holiday accommodation, folk who wanted a week or two away from it all. At the rear end of the square there was a small pub, across from that a shop that seemed to be long closed. There were cars parked outside some of the cottages, but not most. It was far enough into the day for lights to be showing faintly at some of the windows. Smoke trailed upwards from several chimneys. Resnick locked the car and stretched his legs and back: it had been a long enough drive.

For a few moments he stood near the wicker lobster pots stacked high to one end of the sea wall. South, it was just possible to see Dunstanborough Castle outlined against a darkly reddening sky.

Ruth’s cottage was at the northern corner, the first passed entering the village. There were neither lights nor smoke. Resnick began to walk towards it. No answer when he rattled at the letterbox, knocked on the door. He would ask in the pub.

Ruth was sitting in the far corner of the bar, her feet resting on another chair and a book open against the table. There was a glass by her right arm, a half of bitter it looked like, three-quarters down; a cigarette burned on an ashtray to her left. She scarcely looked up as Resnick came in.

The dog, a large pale retriever that lay curled beneath the table, raised its head and kept Resnick in its sights. When he walked towards the table, a glass of Worthington White Shield in his hand, the dog growled.

As soon as Ruth reached down and touched it gently between the ears it stopped.

“Mind if I join you?” Resnick said.

“What happens if I say yes?”

Her face had become leaner still, sucked in at the cheeks; the flesh around the eyes seemed somehow to have peeled back. There was barely a trace of red in her hair now; what there were, here and there, were white hairs startlingly strong and thick.

Resnick pulled round a chair and sat down.

Ruth continued to read. Charles Dickens. Hard Times. “Decided a bit late in life to get myself an education.”

Resnick took a long swallow at his beer and waited till she’d reached the end of her chapter. A torn beer mat marked her place.

“You showing up here like this,” Ruth said. “No accident.”

“He’s getting parole. Matter of days. I didn’t know if you’d heard.”

Ruth took a drag from her cigarette; finished her beer and held the empty glass for a moment in the air. The barman fetched her over a fresh one, took the old one away.

“Not so many customers this time of year,” Ruth said. “Get treated like royalty.” She laughed low in her throat. “Not ours, someone else’s. No,” she said, after taking a drink, “I didn’t know.”

“Does he know where you are?”

Ruth shrugged. “What difference? You found me, didn’t you? And don’t tell me it’s your job. He’s got ways of pressurizing people most of your lot only dream about.”

“You could move on,” Resnick said.

“Run?”

“You came here.”

“That was a fair time back. I like it here. Most people, one week, two, they’re in and out, gone. No one knows who I am, what I was, what I was married to. Those as know bits and pieces, none of their business, they don’t care.”

“He said a lot of nasty things, at the trial.”

“He was always saying nasty things. Doing ’em, too. He can’t scare me. Not any more. And even if he could, I’ve stopped running.” She swung her feet to the floor and the dog shifted position. “He tried anything now,” she said, stroking the animal’s fur, “this one’d let him know what for. Wouldn’t you, darlin’?”

The dog twisted its head to lick her hand.

“He threatened to get even.”

“What for? Ten years? He thinks that was down to me? That was never down to me. You had evidence, witnesses-that sorry bastard Churchill turning grass. Christ, you had him cold with a gun in his bloody hands. What did it need me for?”

Resnick didn’t answer; the truth was, in detail, he didn’t know. How much Rains had wheedled out of the bitter wife, how much from other sources?

“You must take it serious, driving all the way up here.”

Resnick nodded. “I do.”

Ruth laughed again, breaking off midway into a racking cough. “What you going to do,” she said once she’d controlled herself again, “stick around? Be my personal bodyguard?”

“No. Just wanted you to know, that’s all.”

She nodded towards his glass. “Now you’ll want to be getting back. Duty tomorrow, most likely.”

Resnick took a quick drink before pushing the glass aside. “Always sediment at the bottom; no matter how carefully you pour it.”

“Yeh,” Ruth said, “Bit like life, eh?” She laughed. “Christ, hark at me. Not through one Dickens and I’m talking in symbols.”

Resnick got to his feet and once more the dog growled, low in his throat. “One thing,” he said.

“Do I still sing?”

“When did you last see Rains?”

What color she had drained from her face. “Not since he dumped me. Best part of ten years. Best part’s been not seeing his lying face.”

Resnick placed a card with his name and number on the cover of her book. “Any reason. Any time. The station can always raise me.”

Ruth looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Regular Lazarus, eh? Something in the air, all these blokes coming back from the dead.”

By the time Resnick had reached the door, she had her feet up and was back reading. A few more of the windows were showing lights and a wind had got up from the northeast. He turned his collar up as he crossed the green towards his car. He would stop at the first place on the main road and get coffee; traffic should be relatively light and it shouldn’t be too long before he was home. Though to the cats who were waiting to be fed it would seem an age.

The headlights of Resnick’s car raked across the whitewash of the cottages as he swung round, but failed to pick out the figure standing deep in the shadows beside the sea wall, biding his own time.