growl in his voice. She thought him so bloody cold. 'Write it in your own hand on the back of the letter.'
She did what she was told. He took the paper from his notebook back and tore it into small pieces. He threw the pieces into the air and they flaked away below them, carried on the wind gusts, down towards the big birds as they settled for the night.
Away beyond Bolt Head, off Start Point, she saw the first flash of the lighthouse, the raking beam.
'Is it necessary to be like that, so careful?'
'Yes.'
'That's what I have to learn?'
'It's best that you learn, fast, to be careful.'
She shivered, the cold caught her. His windcheater had none of the quilted thickness of hers, but the cold did not catch him and he did not shiver. She felt dominated and small. Said with acid deliberateness. 'Yes, Mr Moen. Right, Mr Moen. Three bloody bags full, Mr Moen. I'll send the fax in the morning.'
'Tell me about yourself.'
'Excuse me, shouldn't you be doing the talking. Who, what, you are. Where I'm going.
Why.'
He shook his head. 'Who, what, I am doesn't concern you.'
She snorted in fake derision. 'Brilliant.'
'It's about being careful.'
She felt the cold, the wind on her back, night wind hacking at the strength of her anorak. 'Where I'm going and why.'
'In good time. About yourself.'
She took a big breath. He watched her and his face was shadowed, but she did not think that if a flashlight had been shone on his features, or the full beam of the lighthouse on Start Point, she would have seen any damned encouragement. As if she was being manipulated, as if she was one of the marionettes that were stored in the cupboard behind her desk in 2B's classroom…
She blurted, 'I'm Charlotte Eunice Parsons, everyone calls me 'Charley'. I'm pretty ordinary-'
'Don't talk yourself short, and don't look for compliments.'
'Fat chance. I'm an only child. My parents are David and Flora Parsons. Dad was an engineering manager at the naval dockyard at Plymouth, it was his whole life – well, and me – until two years ago, when he was made redundant, the 'peace dividend'. We lived then in Yelverton, which is up on the edge of the moor, north of Plymouth. He didn't think he could afford to stay there, so they upped and moved. He packed in the bowls club and the tennis club, cinemas and shops, he's paranoid about being hard-up, broke. He bought the bungalow, he took his place in a gossipy and inquisitive little society, mean-minded. God knows why, my mother went along with it. Where they are now, they're boring and sad and empty. Do you think I'm being foul?'
'Doesn't matter what I think.'
She gazed out at the sea, at the darkening mass of the water, at the white foam spurts on the rocks, at the distant light rotating from Start Point. She thought she spoke a truth, and that truth was important to Axel Moen.
'I can't afford to live away from home, all I've got went into that silly little bike. If I had a promotion, a better job, when I've more experience, then I could quit and go and live in my own place. Not yet. Their lives are boring, sad, empty, so they're looking for a star, and I fit the role. It's always been like that, but it's worse now. There's days I could scream – don't think I'm proud of being a right hitch – and there's nights I'm ashamed of myself. The trouble with being a star, you learn as a kid how to milk it, you get to play the little madam. Not before, but there are times now that I disgust myself.
They wanted me to be quality at tennis, but I was ordinary and Dad couldn't see that.
They wanted me top of the form atschool, and when I wasn't, it was the teacher's fault, not because I was just another average kid. They wanted me to go to university, and when I didn't get the grades, Dad said the examiners had made a mistake. What saved me, what sort of opened the window to me, was going to Rome and being with Giuseppe and Angela, they were really lovely, they were wonderful. But you want me to spy on them?'
'I want access, yes.'
She peered ahead. He wouldn't have seen it. She gazed down the depth of the rock face to where a crag hung out as a limp finger. A falcon worried with its killing beak at the feathers under its wing. It was personal to her, the peregrine. Sometimes, when she came to this place, she saw it, sometimes she heard the crying call of the female. If it came, she would see it because she could recognize the fast movements of the bird in flight and its rigid profile when it perched on the finger of rock. The bird was her own, nothing to do with him. It flew. She lost the sight of the bird.
'I came back from Rome and went to training college. I suppose I was a spoiled little cow from home and a patronizing little cow from Rome. I didn't seem to find it necessary to make friends. All right, let's have it straight. I thought most of the other students were pretty trivial, and they thought I was pretty stuck-up, you know what that means? I didn't have a boyfriend, not one of the students, but there were a few sweaty sessions with one of the lecturers, one of those who always apologizes and cries afterwards and moans about his wife, but he used to give me good marks. Are you married?'
'No.'
'Ever been married, Mr Moen?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'Just stay with the story, Charley.'
'Please yourself. I've only once ever done anything worthwhile in my life, what I thought was worth doing. You see, when you know how to milk, it's the big temptation to stay on the gravy train – God, that's rotten mixed metaphors. When you can get what you want without trying, you get complacent, you stop trying. Big deal, but I went last summer to Brightlingsea, it's a small dock on the east coast, other side of London.
There was a protest there against the export of calves to Europe. They were shipping the calves across for fattening up and then slaughter. It's the veal trade. It's revolting. I was there for a month, bawling and hollering and trying to stop the lorries. Yes, I thought that was worth while. Are you from a city or from the country?'
'North-west Wisconsin.'
'Is that country?'
'Big country.'
'So you wouldn't care about the animals, you'd say that farmers have to live, people have to eat, animals don't feel fear and pain.'
'It's not important what I think.'
'Christ. What else do you want to know? What colour knickers I wear, when my period is? You're a bloody bundle of fun, Mr Moen.'
'I think I've heard enough.'
She stood. Her hair was jostled on her face. The wind had risen and now that she no longer talked in his ear she had to shout against the roar of waves battering on rocks.
'Could we murder something, like a drink?'
He murmured, 'I don't drink, not alcohol.'
'My bloody luck, a bloody temperance nut. Hey, I'll drink, you watch. And while I drink you can tell me whether what I am going to do is worthwhile – or don't you have an opinion on that?'
Charley strode towards the car park. It was her big exit. She pounded up the path from the bench and the cliff face. She was going fast and ahead of him. Her foot, in the black darkness, tripped on a stone. She was falling… 'Shit.' She was stumbling and trying to hold her balance… 'Bugger.' He caught her, held her up, and she shook his hand off her arm and stormed on.
'Yes, Dr Ruggerio… Of course, Dr Ruggerio, of course I'll tell C harlotte that you rang, I'll tell her exactly what you said… It is difficult, Dr Ruggerio, she has a very good position at the moment, hut… Yes, Dr Ruggerio, we're very gratified to know that you and your wife regard Charlotte so highly… Yes, she's a lovely young woman… We are, as you say, very proud of her… I know she's thinking very hard about your offer.
She's out at the moment, something connected with school work.. . Send a fax or telephone to Palermo, yes,
