The Trawlerman, стр. 65
The woods were thick and old. They smelt of decades of rot. Behind the silhouetted trees, small chinks of pinky blue sky broke into the blackness.
Terry Neill was late. She watched his headlights shining through the trees as they came towards her.
When he was alongside her, he rolled down the window. ‘Why here, of all places?’
‘Private,’ she said. ‘Out of public view. Like you wanted.’
‘Bloody hell.’
She got out, and stepped into fresh mud, loosened by the day of rain.
‘Jesus,’ he said, looking down. He was wearing white trainers. ‘Come on then. Get it over with.’
‘Come and get it then.’ She had the money waiting for him in a Sainsbury’s shopping bag in the boot. He tiptoed towards the car. Before taking out the bag, he lifted a couple of the wrapped bundles and flicked through them. When he’d looked enough, he waddled through the wet soil with them and put them in the back of his own car.
‘When will you do it?’ she asked.
‘Maybe at the weekend.’
‘Sooner,’ she said. ‘He’s about to sell his house. There’s no time to be lost.’
‘And then we never see each other again.’
‘That’s not soon enough.’
‘Nice car, by the way,’ he said as he opened his car door. ‘It’s a classic.’
She washed the mud off at the twenty-four-hour BP station in Ashford, and drove back towards the coast.
When she got home it was dark, and Zoë was sat on the couch on her own watching TV.
‘Where’s the car?’
‘I decided it wasn’t right for us,’ she said. ‘The petrol consumption was too high.’
‘Told you,’ said Zoë.
That night she slept for the first time in what felt like weeks. When she woke, thick-headed, as if she had a hangover, it was to a steady, welcome drizzle, blowing in from the sea in grey waves. ‘Oh Christ,’ she said out loud. ‘What the hell have I done?’ But Zoë was already up and out of the house.
Forty-six
On the following Saturday she and Zoë walked down to Arum Cottage with a pot of coffee, half a dozen eggs, and a loaf of bread that Zoë had made. They walked with a big fishing umbrella covering both of them. Summer had turned into autumn. There was an Under Offer sign outside now. Rain was cascading out of the bird bath onto the stones around him.
‘Did you hear anything from Mr Neill?’ she asked when he let them inside.
‘Guess what? Not a thing,’ said Bill.
‘What are you talking about?’ Zoë dumped the bread onto his kitchen work surface.
Alex put her hand on Zoë’s head and stroked her short hair. ‘Just a man who owes Bill some money,’ she said.
‘That’s so unfair. Is it a lot?’
‘You could say so,’ said Bill.
‘That’s horrible.’
‘He’s a very horrible man. Why don’t you call him, Mum, and tell him to pay it?’
‘Because I know exactly what he’ll say. He’ll say, “What money?” He must think very little of me.’
Bill put his arm around her shoulder. ‘He thinks very little of everyone but himself.’
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ said Zoë, looking from one to the other.
‘That’s good,’ said her mother. ‘It’s much better if you don’t.’
Bill changed the subject onto coal tits. It was September. The migrations were in full swing already. Zoë started arguing about the reasons why the continental variations of the species were turning up in larger numbers, which was, Alex guessed, exactly what Bill had intended. And then Zoë went on to say that Kenny Abel had seen a Eurasian treecreeper up at the wildlife sanctuary. ‘That’s, like, a mega-find,’ she said.
‘A what?’ interrupted Alex. Zoë didn’t bother explaining.
Alex and Bill ate scrambled eggs with mackerel that Curly had brought round. Zoë just nibbled her homemade bread.
‘When are you going to exchange?’ asked Alex eventually.
‘Don’t know. The client wants to do everything in a hurry.’
‘Where will you go?’ asked Zoë.
‘I’ve lived round here almost all my life,’ said Bill. ‘I don’t know, exactly.’
The conversation stopped. Alex pushed bread around her plate to soak up what was left there but no longer felt hungry enough to put it into her mouth. On the way back, clutching the half-eaten loaf, Zoë said, ‘I didn’t want to cry in front of him, so I didn’t.’
When she got back home, she packed herself a lunch from the rest of the loaf and asked Zoë if she could borrow the binoculars she had given her for her seventeenth birthday.
‘Why?’
‘You don’t need them today. You’re going up to London to visit Gran.’
It was true. She was sending her daughter up to London for the day; she would spend the night and come back on the train in the morning. Jill had agreed to give her a ride to the station.
‘And your poncho.’ The camouflage one that Zoë had bought with her own money, which she used to improvise her own hide with.
‘What?’
‘I’m going looking for a Eurasian tree-sneaker. My own mega-find.’
Zoë didn’t even bother to correct her.
At the Dungeness light railway station, Alex bought a return ticket and waited on the platform for the 12.40, which arrived, disgorging only a handful of tourists. The season had ended. Soon it would be quiet again here. Ducking down, she pulled herself into the small wooden compartment and thought about the day she had seen Stella and Tina arrive on the same train.
The little engine eventually tugged them around the big loop, across the stones, back towards the edge of the estate. In twenty minutes she was at New Romney station, next to the edge of the golf course. A family got off with her. She waited until they had disappeared into the station building before setting off in the opposite direction, walking along the narrow railway track.
Away from the road, the land opened out. It took her a little while to find the right spot, a