video work, about the sense of possibility she'd brought to his life.
'Possibility how? I don't get it.'
'She's different. It's hard to explain. She just comes at everything with this incredible' he frowned, trying to pin it down 'conviction.'
'She knows who she is.'
'Exactly.'
'And you don't.'
'Is that a question?'
'No, my love, it's one of those folksy little home truths. You won't mind me sharing it with you because it happens to be true. Matter of fact, it's something I've thought ever since we first met. Remember what happened after Vanessa? How hard you found it to cope with this big Yankee dame that stepped into your life? I used to sit and watch you some days, and wonder what you were doing in a job like this. Don't get me wrong, Joe. You were a damn fine cop, still are and I should know because I was married to the other sort but sometimes damn fine isn't enough. You know what I'm talking about?'
'No.'
'You're vulnerable, Joe, and it shows. That's why women like me want to mother you. Is your Eadie like that?'
'No. But that's the point. That's what I love about her. She's got it cracked, Joyce. She knows exactly what she wants to do. She gets angry, not at me, not personally, but at bits of the bigger picture, and instead of sitting around and moaning like we all do she gets out there and does something about it.'
'Megalomaniac, then. No wonder you're a basket case.'
'You don't understand.'
'You're serious? You really think I don't? When I'm sitting here?
Looking at you? Seeing a man I admire in deep, deep shit? I might be a little crazy, Joe, and I guess I might be just a shade megalomaniac myself, but I recognise what I see. You're lost, honey. And this Eadie is a woman who should be coping with that.' She extended a perfect nail, accusatory. 'So where is she tonight? Why isn't she here instead of little me?'
'She's busy.'
'Yeah. And I bet she's always busy. But you know something, Joe?
Busyness is a pile of shit, no matter how many films you make. Why?
Because you'll never change the world. Boy George, your guy Blair, these people are in there for what they can get. Vote them out, you're dealing with another bunch of bastards. Same with drugs, matter of fact. Tumbril's a dandy idea. Spend a couple of trillion pounds, sort out all that paperwork, and maybe we get to put Bazza Mackenzie away.
But you really think that'll make the slightest bit of difference? Out on the street where it really matters? My sweet arse.'
'So what do you do?'
'About the drugs thing?'
'About' Faraday gestured helplessly at the space between them 'everything.'
'How we should be with each other? Men and women? Fathers and sons?
How we can best get through?'
'Yes.'
'Geez, I don't know.' She reached for a bread roll and tore it apart.
'I guess in the end it's personal. I've got a few ideas on the subject, mainly about levelling with folks, being yourself, sparing a little time, taking a risk or two. Your Eadie? Does she read it that way? You tell me.'
'She takes huge risks. That's what she's best at. That's what I'm trying to tell you.'
'And that makes you feel good?'
'Feeling good's irrelevant. She does what she has to do. I admire her for that.'
'Sure. And where are you in all this? You singular? You plural? She doesn't care, Joe. Else you wouldn't be sitting here with me.'
'That's unfair. You've never met her.'
'I don't have to. Looking at you is all I need.' She let the point sink in. Then she beckoned him towards her, the way you might share a secret with a child. 'You're a good man, Joe Faraday. You're honest.
You care. You put yourself on the line. And that's from someone who's got no time for irony.'
Faraday sat back a moment, warmed by her generosity. Then he looked at the faces around him, listened to the swirl of conversation — people getting on with their lives, people coping, people at ease and he felt the tide of panic beginning to rise again.
'That's all fine,' he muttered. 'But it's not enough, is it?'
Chapter eighteen
SATURDAY, 22 MARCH 2003, 05.15
The early-morning train to London was full of Pompey fans. They drifted from carriage to carriage, toting bacon baps and cans of Stella, still sober. From time to time, buried in her copy of the Guardian, Eadie caught the name 'Preston North End'. Couple more points, acccording to a fat boy in a Burberry coat, and it's ours for the fucking taking.
'What's ours for the fucking taking?' Eadie enquired of the elderly woman sitting beside her.
'The football, dear,' the woman whispered. 'Even my Len's getting excited.'
Minutes later, for the second time, Eadie tried to phone Faraday. Last night, a little to her surprise, he hadn't returned to the flat, but on reflection that wasn't so unusual. Saturday mornings, he often left early for a birding expedition and slept at the Bargemaster's House, not wanting to disturb her.
Faraday's mobile still wasn't taking calls. On the off chance, she tried the landline at the Bargemaster's House just in case he'd opted for a lie-in. The last couple of days she'd noticed a tension in him, a tightness that conversation simply seemed to compound. She'd been meaning to ask him about it, to make the kind of time she sensed he needed, but events as ever had ganged up against her.
There was no answer from the Bargemaster's House and Eadie glanced at her watch as the train slowed for Woking station. She'd been right first time. By now, Joe had probably been on the road for hours, with his waxed cotton jacket, packets of dried soup, and Thermos full of hot water. She'd never met anyone so organised, so single-minded, so self-sufficient. Pass on a rumour of something exotic, some bird he hadn't seen for a year or two, and he'd be gone all day. Sorted, she thought, with a tiny stab of relief.
Faraday sat in front of his first-floor study window, his binoculars abandoned, the pad on which he tallied each morning's birds untouched.
Way out on the harbour, high tide, a raft of something grey was floating gently south. They were probably brent geese, he thought, but he couldn't be bothered to check. That ceaseless urge to seek and find, to classify and record, to keep his finger on the pulse of life beyond this window, had left him. His curiosity had gone. Even the ringing of the phone downstairs had failed to rouse him.
He gazed numbly at the view and wondered about going back to bed.
Unable to sleep, he'd been sitting by the window since before dawn.
Last night, against his better judgement, he'd allowed Joyce to invite him in when he'd dropped her off at home. She lived in a featureless modern semi on an estate to the east of Southampton, every trace of her errant husband carefully erased.
She'd slipped a Peggy Lee album into the CD player and then bustled through to the kitchen to brew coffee, leaving Faraday in the tiny box-like lounge-diner surrounded by little colonies of Beanie Babies.
How anyone could live with this shade of fuschia was beyond him and his heart had sunk when she'd thundered up the stairs to the bedroom.
Minutes later, in a turquoise dressing gown, she was back down again, raiding her ex-husband's store of duty-free booze. Cheerfully shameless, she offered him a choice of five liqueurs to go with the coffee and said it
