'I heard,' Charlotte said, though she barely had. Ellen sounded too remote, no doubt because she and the phone were in the open, together with a harsh uneven breath of wind. Her request could easily seem ominous, and Charlotte felt the need to add 'We'll all –'
'That's right. Anyway, time we got on. We'll have plenty of chance to talk later.'
'Go on,' she said, 'good luck,' by which time Hugh had gone, leaving her the impression of calling into a hole. She took a breath that was a kind of suffocation, since she held it while she hurried past a queue of cars and a sampling of three generations of smokers. She expelled it at last and was taking another, which felt parched by the hospital and pinched small by a tinge of disinfectant as well as constricted by the lobby and the visitors who were close to filling it, when the phone twitched in her hand.
She swung around and dodged through the crowd, which couldn't really be arranging itself to block her escape. 'Nowt to be afraid of, love,' a woman told her or a granddaughter.
'Plenty of room,' said a man on two sticks, perhaps to justify not moving aside. Charlotte found a gap not too far from him and ran into the open air, or at least what passed for it beyond the exit. She let out a gasp to make way for a less stale breath and used some of that to say 'Yes, Glen.'
'Hi. It's me sure enough,' he said as if he thought her overly abrupt. 'How's the invalid?'
'They say he's comfortable. It's the kind of thing they say. I suppose he is if the word's even relevant. I don't know and I don't know if he does.'
'I'm sure you're doing –'
'All I can. Don't say it, Glen. It won't make me feel any better, and certainly not him.'
She was as thrown by her outburst as she imagined Glen must be. As she glanced around to see that nobody had eavesdropped he said 'Anyway, you wanted me.'
'We did. Me and Ellen,' Charlotte said and felt bound to add 'And Hugh.'
'You aren't going to tell me he's helping her write as well.'
'He just likes to be involved when he can be,' said Charlotte, wishing she had given herself time to think. 'We're all one family.'
'So there's how many listening?'
'Just me,' Charlotte said and at once felt overheard.
'Gee, what's happened to your family?'
'They –' She couldn't explain to him or invent a story either. 'I'm outside,' she said.
'What brought you out? You weren't waiting for me?'
She feared being trapped into lie after lie, but her answer stayed all too close to the truth. 'I wanted some air.'
'Can't ever get enough of that. So what else did you need?'
Reassurance would have been welcome, but she couldn't ask for that without betraying far too much. 'We wondered if you'd been going to tell us anything else.'
'When I ended up talking to myself, you mean? I thought you'd had enough of me.'
'We'd gone underground,' she said, and hastily 'So what did you say that we didn't hear?'
'Remind me where I'd got to.'
'You were saying –' This brought the tunnel all the more to mind, but she had to go on. 'You'd just told us what he was afraid of.'
'Your cousin's guy. Well, he was.'
Charlotte would have preferred not to have to ask 'He was what?'
'Buried there under some kind of mound.'
She wasn't sure if this or her confusion made her brain feel dark and cramped. 'Where, do you know?'
'Where his house was.'
Presumably almost a hundred years of erosion had flattened the mound. 'Was that all?' Charlotte asked or hoped.
'All I can think of right now, except you could tell her good luck from me.'
He meant with the book, Charlotte had to remember. 'Thanks, Glen,' she said to end the call, which seemed to have been no earthly use. She silenced the mobile and turned to the hospital. The prospect seemed more oppressive than ever, and she could think of at least one reason. While she waited for one of her cousins to call, she would have to think where to tell Annie they'd gone.
THIRTY
'What did she say?'
Ellen kept the question in her eyes as she watched Hugh end the call. Beyond her the steps leading to the beach were unequal slabs of sand edged with stained yellowish strips of wood that put him in mind of exposed bones. 'She says go on,' he said.
'And what do you say, Hugh?'
'I say go as well,' he said and stowed the mobile in his pocket.
'Then let's,' Ellen said as if she wanted to believe they were playing a game, and set about descending to the beach.
She grimaced at her legs more than once, perhaps holding them responsible for the irregular strides she had to take. The spade clanked against the edges of the steps as Hugh followed her. By now the entire late-afternoon sky was as good as black with the possibility of a storm. It appeared to jerk lower, giving way beneath its burden, with every step Hugh took. It had already cleared the beach of any visible human audience to his and Ellen's behaviour. Across the river, which had retreated several hundred yards from the cliff, it was reducing the summits of the skyline of Welsh mountains to shadows of themselves. The only signs of life were dozens of thin-legged birds that scurried along the water's edge to peck at the glistening sand. They were too remote to bother about Ellen or Hugh as he joined her on the beach. When she didn't move or speak but only gazed towards the mountains as if she hoped for a glimpse of the sun, Hugh had to ask 'Anything wrong?'
'Rather than everything, you mean?' Without relinquishing the distant view Ellen said 'Maybe my imagination isn't up to this. I can't get it round what we're going to do.'
'We don't need to imagine, we just have to do it. We've got to go back to where you brought us for a walk, yes?'
'When you all got the exercise I needed.'
Hugh lifted the spade towards the blackened sea beyond the river. 'It's that way then, isn't it?'
'That's right,' Ellen said, looking at last.
'It's right and it's right,' Hugh declared, and then doubt overtook him. If he'd regained at least some of his sense of direction, why had it been restored? He could easily feel that the nightmare was biding its time before overwhelming him with worse. This prompted him to wonder 'What are you feeling like now?'
'No better for being asked.'
However clumsy the question had been, he couldn't improve on it. Leading the way would draw her attention to his improved state, and he loitered until she became impatient with his reluctance. He suspected that she was battling some of her own as she set off along the beach.
As he trudged to keep pace with her, their goal seemed to stir in its sleep, or its surroundings did. A quivering advanced from the horizon through the vast black slab of mud that was the sea. Several small boats at anchor near the river's mouth squashed their reflections flat and then were pushed up by them, a sight that put Hugh in mind of lids being raised from beneath. Clumps of grass began to twitch as if the buried heads of which they were the muddy greenish scalps were about to rise from hiding, a prospect at which the seabirds appeared to take fright, soaring in an elongated flock like a cautionary arrow along the shoreline. The next wind brought swathes of sand whispering along the beach, hissing in the grass and constantly changing their outstretched shapes as if each unstable flattened mass were attempting to form a secret sign before dissipating among the furrows etched by the tide. The mats of shrubs that patched the cliff face rattled like restless skeletons, while the bushes at the edge of the common nodded together, only to straighten up as eagerly as any audience. Hugh tried not to let them make him feel watched and anticipated, and of course the presence he heard stirring in the rusty hulk of an
