Brixton Beach Read online

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ he says and goes into his room, closing the door softly.

  He is suddenly exhausted. I’m not used to this sort of thing, he thinks. He badly wants to speak to Alice. The scene with Tessa has disturbed him more than he realises. He sits uncertain for a moment and then he tries to ring her mobile, but it is switched off. She told him she would be leaving very early as she didn’t want to be late. Most probably she’s in the tube. Closing his eyes, he tries to rid himself of his tension and think only of her. Then he takes out the memories of all the nights he has spent with her so far. Piece by piece, he examines them, arranging them in a line before him. They are the beginning of a collection. A bare arm, a small dark breast with an even darker areola. A fragrant coil of hair faintly stroked with grey. Dark trusting eyes. Just now, in the ward, he talked to an Asian patient, a woman about Alice’s age. He asked her where she came from, and even though it was nowhere near Alice’s home, even though the woman was nothing like Alice, he had been interested. It had been all he could do not to mention Alice. In the end he had told the woman that he knew someone from Sri Lanka. Would he be a better doctor from now on?

  ‘Oh, Sri Lanka!’ the woman had said. ‘They fight a lot there.’

  Don’t you know, he had wanted to say, how it is there? But he had a whole ward waiting and he doubted his ability to recount the things Alice had told him. We need to talk, so much more, he thought, happiness bubbling up. So that one day, many years from now, I will at last be able to understand more fully what it has been like for her. Glancing at his watch, Simon sees it is nearly eight o’ clock.

  The man with the rucksack has had his meeting.

  ‘Your family will be proud of you,’ they told him, praising him for his courage.

  At this the man had hesitated for a fraction of a second. He did not want to think of his family.

  ‘We need to take control, you understand? Before they control us!’

  The man gives a nod as he gathers up his rucksack. Now he is on his way at last, heading for the tube station to catch the Northern Line.

  At Oxford Circus Alice changes from the Victoria Line on to the Bakerloo. It’s almost ten to eight and the journey has taken her longer than she has expected. With a bit of luck she will get there on time, although the underground is still beset by delays. She had hoped to talk to Simon before she goes to the gallery, but now there won’t be time. She debates whether to take a taxi once she gets to Edgware Road but decides it would be quicker to walk.

  At Baker Street they stop. This train terminates here, the public address informs them, ignoring their collective cries of annoyance. Everyone piles out, grumbling. She is going to be late, after all. Unless another train comes along immediately. She wishes she hadn’t dawdled earlier on.

  ‘One’s just coming now,’ she is told when she questions the guard.

  From Baker Street it’s only two stops. Once she’s out she’ll ring the gallery. Then, to her infinite relief, with a muffled roar and a warm sooty breeze, the next train appears at the tip of the tunnel. She won’t be able to call Simon now, he will be on his rounds.

  There is a hold-up at Waterloo and the man with the rucksack finds he has to wait five long minutes. When the train finally arrives he can barely squeeze into it and stands squashed against the door. People pushing against his rucksack make him angry. Seeing they are all older than him, all well-dressed office workers, he pushes them back savagely. Rage rises in him once again, almost making him pass out. This country, he thinks, is full of fucking idiots, ruining everything.

  At Baker Street, Alice runs along the platform as the train pulls in, looking for a carriage with standing room. A security warning of extra vigilance is being played over the public address. No one has time to listen. Alice resists looking at her watch. She should have remembered there were always delays on the Bakerloo Line. This is the most important appointment of her career to date. Madness lurks on the platform as the train pulls up and the doors open.

  ‘Mind the gap,’ intones the electronic voice.

  The crowd surges forward. Alice stands watching. There is still a bit of room in the carriage, but before she can squeeze herself into it the doors begin to shut. The board says there will be another train along in a minute. She has no choice but to hang on and wait, hoping one more minute won’t make too much of a difference. Too impatient to sit down, she paces the platform. It’s just a quarter to eight. She’s cutting it fine, but she will do it. Just.

  Simon sends a few e-mails. Then, before he goes into his meeting, he tries ringing Brixton Beach. He isn’t surprised that Alice does not answer as he knows she is on her way to meet Antonia.

  Alice steps into the carriage. The notice is correct; the train has only been a minute in coming. The carriage isn’t full, but she doesn’t bother to sit down. Two stops, that’s all, she thinks with relief. No point in sitting down. She stands facing the door and watches the tunnel whizz past. Dark shadows and orange tungsten light, giving tunnel vision. Someone, a youth about the same age as Ravi, dark beautiful hair falling over his eyes, sits with headphones emitting a loud and rhythmic hiss. He is licking his lips nervously. He closes his eyes once or twice, muttering to himself, moving his head, she supposes, in time to the music. Marylebone. Some people get out, others come in. One stop to go. Two Australian girls with long fair hair sit at the furthest end of the carriage opposite a man with a laptop on his knees, a suitcase beside him. Another man, dressed for the city, sits staring into space. The Australians are laughing out loud. Suddenly Alice has a sharp clear picture of Simon’s hands, long and thin and very tender as he held her. She sees herself for a single moment as she will be tonight; naked and in his arms. Young again.

  The train begins to move slowly forward and the pale youth with the headphones moves towards the door. As she watches him idly, waiting for the train to come into Edgware Road station, Alice thinks again of Ravi. Without warning there is a blinding yellow flash. It reminds her of crocuses in spring or the insides of a mango. The colour seems somehow all wrong. The carriage stretches as though made of India rubber, first one way and then another. The yellow flash seems to go on and on for a long time, but there is no sound, only a stench of something sharp and bitter and impossible to understand. She opens her mouth to cry out and the smell fills her lungs, choking her so that she can hardly breathe. Hot liquid pours over her and she sees herself, falling like a star, as though slain by a streak of tropical light, forever leaving an imprint on the world. Her body curves in a graceful, impossible arc. Just like a child’s drawing of a shooting star. And then, she has no idea how much later, she is outside. There is an odd eerie silence. Soft black dust motes fill the rosy sky in a long ellipse of shapes. Dust falling from the air, she thinks in amazement. After the pause there are other noises which she struggles to identify; the screeches and the screams and other, more elusive sounds interweaving with the distant sounds of traffic. Closing her eyes against the cacophony, she wonders who on earth is doing all the screaming?

  ‘Don’t move her, call an ambulance!’

  ‘Clear the path,’ a new voice says loudly. ‘Move, move! And don’t touch her.’

  ‘Oh God, what could have done this?’

  ‘Can you hear me?’ a male voice asks.

  He sounds agitated, and he’s shouting. I’m not deaf, she thinks. Of course I can hear you. I just can’t move.

  ‘The ambulance should be here any minute.’

  ‘Hold on, luv, hold on.’

  ‘We’re just going to cover you up.’

  Like a mistake, she thinks. Or an embarrassment. A coat is draped across her shoulders and her legs. The coat is soft and smells of pipe tobacco. Voices come to her from a long way away. Whose are they? Muffled and secretive, like the sea when she was a child. Bone white and scorching in the piercing tropical light. Lace-edged with foam, and utterly beautiful.

  ‘Hold on, luv,’ the man’s voice repeats. It sounds profoundly shocked. And close
to breaking.

  She has been holding on, for years and years. Holding on like grim death. Pointlessly, mercilessly crushing out her memories, hoping they would finally die down. But always they had seeped cunningly out, hovering like the insects that sat motionless on the broken ceiling fan in her grandfather’s house.

  You have to do your time, darling, her grandfather’s voice comes back to her. And one day I hope you’ll come back.

  The ride in the ambulance is curiously soothing.

  ‘Nearly there,’ says the paramedic comfortingly, quietly checking her pulse.

  He is reeling off a checklist, making it sound like a litany. Heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, temperature…

  ‘Can you hear me, luv?’ the woman with the oxygen mask asks as it comes down on her. ‘What’s your name?’

  She struggles and someone strokes her head again. Hush! Hush!

  ‘There, there. Just hang on, hang on, we’re nearly at the hospital.’

  She is reminded of her bunk bed in the cabin. On C Deck. The Fairsea, the boat was called. The inky blue sea, just like the bottle of Quink in her grandfather’s house. It brings tears to her eyes. But the sea had been a different blue when she was on dry land. Her grandfather’s face is suddenly a blur. The ambulance is slowing down and a frenzy of activity begins. Simon, she thinks, feeling the tears begin to fall. I want to go home, I want you to see the Sea House. And she struggles to keep the beach in her sightline. But they are pulling her about, sticking things into her so she opens her mouth to shout at them. Go away, she wants to say. For God’s sake, can’t you see I’ve had enough? The voices drift towards her and recede again. The voices are fast and reassuring, so why is she not reassured? Her legs feel suddenly heavy. Haemorrhage, they keep saying. White light invades her lids.

  Something is put over her. Are they going to bury me alive, she wonders? Simon, she thinks, with sudden urgency. Simon! He is her last chance. She has known this since the first encounter, but never with such force as now. He and Bee, she thinks at last, astonished, they are both part of the same thing.

  ‘I’m coming back,’ she tells them. ‘Tell Ravi.’

  ‘Good girl,’ says a voice and she feels something sharp in her arm. ‘Good girl,’ says the voice again.

  Opening her eyes she feels the sea breeze again, slight and youthful against her face. The voice sounds warm and familiar, falling on her ears like a benediction. It is filled with the memory of cheap tobacco and the noise inside the conch shell they used to keep for a doorstop. It is all she has ever loved.

  ‘Good girl!’

  Startled, she thinks she can smell the green scent of oranges, wet with the rain, and she feels her skin, tired and stretched as though she has been swimming in the sea. It is the very last thing she remembers.

  He hears nothing. The room where the meeting is taking place exists like an inner chamber to a pharaoh’s tomb, without outside light. A fish tank full of small tropical fish swim under the fluorescent bulbs, forever confined to plastic coral fronds. Someone in management had thought it good feng shui. Day or night, it makes no difference to the fish. The meeting continues regardless of the outside world. Simon feels his eyelids grow heavy. Lately all he ever seems to do is go to management policy meetings. They have now been sitting here for over an hour. What a waste of time, he thinks impatiently. He glances at his watch and catches Ralph’s eye. Ralph gives him a considered look. Roughly translated, Simon takes the look to mean ‘Why are you so tired?’ He raises an eyebrow. The door opens and coffee is brought in real jugs with real cups and saucers. There are biscuits.

  ‘Okay, everyone, let’s take a short break before we deal with the last matter on the agenda.’

  The coffee is hot and unusually good. Ralph approaches, cup in hand.

  ‘Management does all right with their refreshments, I see.’

  ‘It’s where the money is.’

  ‘Yes, well…’ Ralph hesitates. ‘So what have you been up to?’ he asks, cocking an eyebrow at Simon.

  ‘Nothing much, a bit tired, that’s all. Why?’

  ‘Rumours are rife! Had Tessa on the phone.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Simon, isn’t it a bit quick? Aren’t you being a little rash?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  All my fault, it seems,’ murmurs Ralph, with self-mockery. ‘Better give up having dinner parties.’

  ‘Thank God you had that one!’

  ‘D’you want my advice…?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Ralph grins and looks at his old friend. He opens his mouth with a rejoinder. But he never makes it. Three bleepers go off and the door opens simultaneously. The staff nurse from A&E comes in.

  ‘There’s been an incident on the underground,’ she tells them. ‘Reports are just coming in. An explosion—deliberate, they think. Nobody knows yet how many injured. We need the standby team, now. A&E to report to casualty, please.’

  The meeting breaks up as everyone reaches for their phones.

  ‘Oh, now what!’ curses Ralph, looking pale. ‘Now what has some God-awful fundamentalist nutter done?’

  But Simon does not hear him. He has turned, as though struck with a sixth sense, towards the nurse.

  ‘Where?’ he asks, not recognising his own voice. ‘Tell me? Which line, where was it?’

  The nurse looks startled.

  ‘I think it’s the Bakerloo, sir, but we haven’t had confirmation.’

  A dark ugly flare shoots up through the bubbling water of the fish tank. It is the last thing he sees in the room as he makes for the door.

  Grass and trees. The day’s warmth still lingering in the shocked London air. It stunned him that desolation could be so peaceful. The heart of darkness is here in this incinerator of mangled metal and bodies. All that happened in a split-second will last forever. The willows by the river weep as he stands bareheaded and bowed by incomparable grief. A breeze comes up from nowhere; it carries his memories, for that is all they are now. He imagines her as she had been, answering the door to him, only yesterday; when he was young. Terror has come to Britain, he thinks, his mind bludgeoned and weeping. For at the end of this ordinary summer’s day, he sees with finality that terror is all around. Everywhere love is, there is its possibility, and love has made him understand this.

  The garden at Regent’s Park is closing. All over, under a sky pricking softly with the subdued stars of this summer night, there is a drowsy ripeness in the air. In the dying light an overflowing of warmth, thick and heavy and inaccessible, engulfs him. The park-keeper mumbles and nods, his face shocked, shutting away the flowers for the night. Doing what he has always done, but differently, now. The park-keeper is changed forever too. Simon passes a border of red peonies as he leaves. Did she like red peonies? He never asked her.

  Alice! his mind cries. All she had wanted was to be loved. She had wanted someone, one person in this country that had become her home, to acknowledge what she had tried to do. In spite of everything she had been forced to leave behind, she succeeded in transferring her allegiance. Yes, he thinks, she had wanted to be loved for this achievement. And he, Simon Swann, had loved her. But it had only begun, he cries; he has only just begun to love her. Too many years late in finding her, still, find her he did. And in this moment of being locked out of the garden, staring at the peonies through the railings, knowing what this must have meant to her, he is so glad that it has been him and no one else. Even though they have passed like ships in dark waters, and he is left alone; a foreigner in his own land, still he is glad. Oh, but that he might tell her this! Looking up at the sky, at the lights of a passing aeroplane leaving the city, he sees this night, the first without her, will pass, leaving him behind. And seeing this he understands with terrible, sweet certainty the thing that he must do. Turning his back on the garden, leaving the bunches of flowers piling softly against the pavement, the flickering candles, the messages of condolence, he heads towards Lambeth Bri
dge and hurries south. Towards the river, and a remarkable beach, transported by her many years before, moved inch by painful inch, reconstructed. For it is clear that he, Simon Swann, needs this beach; it is clearly and irreversibly part of his internal landscape now. Nothing and no one will erase it. And so he heads towards it, and the small house perched nearby. Where a young man called Ravi, with his mother’s dark, unforgettable eyes, sits in stunned silence. Waiting for him to arrive.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always to my agent Felicity Bryan for her belief in me and for finding me Clare Smith, my wonderful editor at HarperCollins, who continues to allow me the space to develop as a writer.

  Essie Cousins for her tremendous support and encouragement.

  Also at Harper Press, Taressa Brennan for making life so much easier and Anne and Sophie not least of all for their excellent maths.

  Michele Topham and all at the Felicity Bryan Agency.

  Charles, Nicky and Henry Chubb, old friends who gave me a brief insight into the workings of the emergency services.

  Thank you.

  Also by Roma Tearne

  Mosquito

  Bone China

  Copyright

  HarperPress

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  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

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  Visit our authors’ blog: www.fifthestate.co.uk

  Love This Book? www.bookarmy.com

  First published by HarperPress in 2009

  Copyright © Roma Tearne 2009

  Endpapers © Roma Tearne 2009

  Dedication on page 273: an unsourced passage (originally in German) that Wilhelm Hesse pasted in Eva Hesse’s first Tagebuch; EH 1, inside back cover, 1939. Courtesy of the Estate of Eva Hesse Lines from White Flock, 1917, by Ann a Akhmatova on page 374 © Anna Akhmatova