Wasted Years

Forty-Eight

Resnick woke at two to the sound of breathing: lay there for second after second, aware of the heart pumping against his ribs, that the fevered breathing that had woken him had been his own. He was layered with sweat. The fear was not his own.

a tideswell like moving bone

Like Monk fingering “These Foolish Things”

from broken glass

He got up and didn’t switch on the light. The cat, knowing it was too early, recircled itself at the foot of the bed and closed its eyes. Because the fear was not for himself, it was no less real. He stood beneath the shower and the sound that he heard was water dragging back across the shore. He knew that Ruth had no phone: knew that he could phone the pub and rouse the landlord, call the constabulary in the nearest town. Knew, without knowing why, without questioning, that whatever had happened, that part of it, was through.

Deliberately, he dressed, made coffee, buttered toast, broke cheese. Some of the coffee he drank, the remainder he poured into a flask. If he drove fast he would beat daybreak. His headlights cut channels across brick and stone. The only fear now was what he would find.

Ruth had stayed in the kitchen with the dog, cradling it, until, at last, its eyes rolled open and, moments later, it shuffled unsteadily to its feet. Now the animal lay curled on the battered settee in the living room and Ruth sat, trying to read, with her umpteenth cup of tea.

It snagged at the back of her mind, like a hangnail, that she should slip on her shoes and find her purse, walk the few yards towards the sea shore and dial the number Resnick had left her. She was loath to admit to herself that part of the reason she didn’t do this was she was afraid to take that first step outside the house.

Yet why?

If it were Rains that she feared most he had proved to her how easy it was for him to magic himself inside her house. If he had wanted to do her physical harm he could; if he wanted to harm her in the future he could again. She had no doubt of this.

But maybe Rains was not the one she really feared.

She would call Resnick and say what? This friend of yours was here threatening me. What did he do? He tore one of my old shirts. Ruth smiled. Resnick and Rains, had they been friends? It seemed unlikely. She thought that to Rains, admitting to a friend would have been a sign of weakness, strictly to be discouraged. Friendship meant give and take and life, for Rains, was all in the taking.

She was back in the kitchen, refilling the kettle, when she heard the car approaching.

“Do you always act on your hunches?” Ruth asked. They had walked up away from the beach, on to a green knoll that never seemed to reach its peak. Off to the west woods became fields and fields became lost in hazy mist. Squinting along the shoreline into the early light they could see the silhouettes of castles, bulked against the sky.

“Not always,” Resnick said. “Usually.”

“Doesn’t it ever get you into trouble?”

“Doesn’t everything?”

They walked on until the land seemed suddenly about to fall before them, tumbling sharply down to a narrow cleft, a stream of gray-green water that wound snakelike towards the sea.

Ruth patted her pockets, found and lit a cigarette, smoke from it quickly lost in the air. “So what did you expect?” she asked. “To find me dead?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“But that was one of the possibilities?”

“I suppose so.”

She almost smiled. “You weren’t disappointed.”

Resnick shook his head.

“But Rains,” Ruth said, “you didn’t think it would be Rains?”

“No. I mean, I didn’t know. But, no, I don’t think so.”

“He’s out then?” Ruth said, moments later. They both knew she meant Prior.

“Yes.”

“And you’re watching him?”

“No.”

“Expect me to believe that?”

Resnick shook his head. “We haven’t the reason, haven’t the resources. He’ll be expected to report to his probation officer once a week.”

Ruth snorted.

“D’you want to start walking back?” Resnick said.

“All right,” Ruth said, but neither of them moved.

“What you have to understand,” Ruth said several moments later, “no one had looked at me like that in so long I swear I’d forgotten what it meant. No one had touched me, wanted to touch me. It was as if, early, stupidly bloody early, that part of my life had just stopped.

“And then there was that bastard, hands all over me, like he couldn’t get enough.” She finished her cigarette, nipped the end between finger and thumb and opened the last of the paper, scattering shards of tobacco towards the ground. “I knew he was using me, though, of course, he denied it. Knew and I never cared. I thought, Prior’s going down for a long time and what that means to me he doesn’t care, he doesn’t give a shit. I’m just this thing that he’s lived with and used to cook and clean and wipe between his legs. I felt that low.” She looked at Resnick and made a gesture with her hand as if she were holding something minute. “And what Rains did, he stopped me feeling like that. Oh, Christ alone knows, not for long. But when he did …”

Ruth began to walk and Resnick moved into step beside her. All the while she had been talking he’d shut out the constant roll of the sea and now that she was quiet it came back the more strongly, accompanying them home.

“You haven’t got any coffee,” Resnick called from the kitchen. The past five minutes he’d been through every drawer, every cupboard.

“That’s right.”

He made more tea.

“What I’ve got,” Ruth said, wandering in followed by a still dazed-looking dog, “is a stomach lining I’m going to leave to medical science. They’ll use Xrays of it in years to come, illustrating the dangers of tannin.”

For all the jokes, she still looked lined and drawn, still jumped at the first strange sound.

They sat at the table, the dog beneath it, asleep again, snoring faintly.

“Rains,” Resnick said, “he didn’t give any indication of where he was staying, anything like that?”

Ruth shook her head. “You’d go and talk to him? I mean, officially?”

“I daresay.”

“What for? What could you prove?” She drank some tea. “What did he do, aside, I suppose, from breaking in?”

Resnick leaned towards her. “There’s more.”

“With Rains?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of more?”

“We’re not sure, but … one or two things, we think he might be involved.”

“What kind of things?”

Resnick leaned back. “When you were seeing him, did he ever talk about Frank Churchill?”

“Only questions. The usual things. Meetings, places, and times. All the usual things.”

“He didn’t give the impression they might be close?”

“Rains and Churchill!” Ruth gave a derisory laugh. “Fine bloody couple they’d make! Only person Frank Churchill’s ever been close to’s his mother. Rains’d never got that sort of close to anything unless it was a mirror. Anyhow, why d’you want to know?”

Resnick’s turn to shake his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

“No? That’s what Rains’d say. Every time. We’d be lying there, you know, after making love, I’d be waiting and sure enough they’d come, the questions, on and on and if either I wouldn’t answer or ask him why he wanted to know, that’s what he’d say-doesn’t matter. Ten, fifteen minutes later, he’d be asking the same thing. One thing I’ve never done, knowingly, give that bastard anything that’d push my husband deeper into the shit. Never. And if that’s what Rains was saying, to you lot or anyone else, he was lying. He was covering up.” She released his arm and the marks of her fingers were left, pale, on Resnick’s skin. “Maybe what you were suggesting was right, maybe he did have something going with Churchill, more than was thought. As far as jobs was concerned, I shouldn’t think there was anything I knew as Frank Churchill didn’t. Less.” She got up and carried the two mugs, hers and Resnick’s, to the sink.

“I ought to be going,” Resnick said, looking at his watch.

“Thanks,” Ruth said.

“What for?”

“Being bothered. Coming.”

“Just one thing,” Resnick said.

“What’s that?”

“Why did you stop singing?”

“Fuck right off,” Ruth said, grinning.