“‘Come to Adventures Unlimited for a Shag,’” Kerra said. “Yes. I’ve got the point well enough.”
“That’s the implication, naturally,” Alan said. “Sex sells. You know that.”
“It all gets reduced to sex in the end, doesn’t it?” Kerra said bitterly.
He gazed at the pictures again. He was either evaluating them or avoiding her. He said, “Well, yes. I suppose it does. That’s how life is.”
She left him without replying. She said abruptly that she was going to the Watchman if anyone wanted her, daring him to make his point again about the futility of placing an advertisement in that paper, and she set out on her bicycle.
This time, however, she had no intention of riding until the sweat of her efforts bled the anxiety from her muscles. She also had no intention of going to the Watchman to place an advertisement for randy males willing to instruct equally randy females during daylight hours and fulfill their sexual fantasies at night. That was all they needed at Adventures Unlimited: an excess of testosterone oozing down the corridors.
Kerra pedaled off the promontory in the direction of Toes on the Nose, where she was forced to follow the one-way system through town. She climbed to the crest of the hill, where St. Mevan Down rolled inland from the sea, and made her way to Queen Street with its clutter of cars. Ultimately she coursed downward towards the Casvelyn Canal, where just beyond the wharf that edged it a bridge arched to a Y in the road. Go left and you ultimately headed to Widemouth Bay. Go right and you found yourself out on the Breakwater.
This formed the southwest side of the canal, just as the wharf served as its northeastern edge. Cottages lined it, sitting some fifteen feet above the tarmac, and at their far end was the largest of them, one that only a blind man could miss seeing. It was trimmed in fuchsia and painted the pink of flamingos. Unimaginatively, it was called Pink Cottage, and its owner was a maiden lady long referred to by townspeople as Busy Lizzie and only in part as a reference to the flowers she planted in her front garden in enormous banks with riotous abandon every late spring.
Kerra was known to Busy Lizzie as a regular visitor, so when she knocked on the door, the woman admitted her without question, saying, “Why, isn’t this the nicest surprise, Kerra! Alan’s not here at the moment, but I expect you know that. Come in, my dear.”
She was not even five feet tall, and she’d long reminded Kerra of a chess piece. Specifically, she looked very much like a pawn. She wore her white hair in an impressively constructed Edwardian pouf and she favoured high-necked ivory blouses and bell-shaped flannel skirts of navy or grey that fell to the floor. She always looked like someone on the verge of being discovered for a part in a Henry James novel brought to film, but as far as Kerra had ever been able to learn-which admittedly wasn’t very far-Busy Lizzie had no inclination for either screen or stage.
She let one of the bedrooms in her house, the rest being filled with her vast collection of Carlton Ware from the 1930s. She was liberal in her thinking, and, preferring young men to young women as her lodgers-“Somehow one always feels safer with a man in the house” was her way of putting it-she recognised that her lodgers had appetites whose fulfillment she oughtn’t deny. So each successive lodger had kitchen privileges, and if a sleepover occurred in which a young lady might put in an appearance at the breakfast table, Busy Lizzie did not complain. Indeed, she provided either tea or coffee and she asked, “Sleep well, dear?” quite as if the young lady belonged there.
While his house in Lansdown Road was undergoing work, Alan had his temporary lodging here in Pink Cottage. He could have moved in with his parents-it would have saved him money-but he’d explained to Kerra that, while he loved his mum and dad devotedly, he liked to have a degree of freedom that his parents’ blind adoration of him sometimes precluded. Besides, he’d delicately said to her, they had a certain image of him that he didn’t want to mess about with.
Kerra read this as he intended. She said, “God, they can’t think you’re a virgin, Alan.” And when he didn’t answer, “Do they, Alan?”
“No, no. Of course not. Of course they don’t. What a ridiculous…They know I’m normal. But they’re older people, aren’t they, and it’s a sign of respect to them that I don’t take a woman to bed while I’m unmarried and under their roof. They’d feel very…well, odd about it.”
Kerra understood, at least at first. But in the end, the whole question of Alan having this lodging separate from his parents began to have a different resonance.
So she had to know. She had to be certain. She said to Busy Lizzie, “I’ve left a rather personal item in Alan’s room, Miss Carey”-for such was her name-“and I wonder if I might dash in and have a look for it? Alan’s forgotten to give me his key, but if you’d like to phone him at work…?”
“Oh my dear, no need of that. The room’s unlocked anyway, as this is bed-linen day. You know the way. I was just watching my telly. Would you like a cup of tea? Do you need my help?”
Kerra demurred: both the offer of tea and the offer of help. She shouldn’t be long, she said. She’d let herself out when she had what she’d come for.
“And are you riding about in the rain, my dear? On your bicycle? Why, you’ll catch your death, Kerra. Are you sure you wouldn’t care for a nice cup of PG Tips?”
No, no. She was fine, Kerra assured Miss Carey. She was right as rain. They both chuckled at her lame remark, and they parted at the far end of the sitting room. Busy Lizzie went back to her telly as Kerra ducked into the corridor that led along to the far end of the house. There, Alan’s room overlooked the southwest section of St. Mevan Beach. From the window, Kerra could see that the tide was in. The waves were breaking from three-foot swells, and at least a dozen surfers bobbed in the distance.
Kerra turned from the sight of them. The thought came to her of her father last night, and of what it meant that part of his life was hidden from her. But she dismissed this consideration because now was not the time and, anyway, she had to work quickly.
She was looking for signs without actually knowing what the signs would be. She needed to understand why the Alan Cheston of the last few days was not the Alan Cheston she had known and involved herself with. She reckoned she knew the explanation, but still she wanted hard evidence, although what she would do with it when she had it was something she hadn’t yet considered.
She’d also never done a search before. The whole enterprise made her feel unclean, but there was no alternative other than hurling accusations at him, and going that route was something she couldn’t afford to do.
She girded herself mentally and began to look about. It was, she saw, all so vintage Alan, with every item in its place. His djembe drum stood in its stand in the corner of the room, in front of a stool upon which Alan sat when he played it during his daily meditation. A tambourine-something of a joke gift that Kerra had given him before she’d understood how significant the drum actually was to Alan’s spiritual regimen-leaned nearby, against a bookcase where he kept his yoga books. On top of this bookcase were his photos: Alan, wearing the cap and gown of the university graduate, flanked by his beaming parents; Alan and Kerra on a holiday in Portsmouth, his arm round her shoulders on the deck of the Victory; Kerra by herself, perched on the flat stone top of Lanyon Quoit; a younger Alan with his childhood dog, a mixed-breed terrier with a coat the colour of rusty bedsprings.