Things change, Selevan thought. That had proved the case in his life, even when it had seemed to him that nothing was ever going to change at all. He’d wanted a career in the Royal Navy to escape what he’d seen as a life of unfaltering drudgery, but the fact of the matter was that the details of that life had altered in minute ways, which led to big ways, which led to life not being drudgery at all if one just paid attention. His kids grew; he and the wife turned older; a bull was brought by to service the cows; calves were born; the sky was bright one day and threatening the next; David moved off to join the army; Nan ran off to marry…One could call it good or bad or one could just call it life. And life continued. A bloke didn’t get what he wanted all the time, and that’s just how it was. One could thrash about and hate that fact or one could cope. He’d seen that daft poster in the library one time and he’d scoffed at it: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Bloody stupid, he’d thought. But not really, he saw now. Not altogether.
He took a deep breath. One could taste the salt air in this spot. More than at Sea Dreams because Sea Dreams was way up on the cliff and here the sea was close, yards away, and it beat against the reefs and wore them down, patiently, drawn by the course of nature and physics or magnetic forces or whatever it was because he didn’t know and it didn’t matter.
He finished his takeaway coffee and crushed the cup in his hand. He carried this back to a bin and paused there to light a fag, which he smoked on the way to Clean Barrel. There, Tammy was working at the till. The cash drawer was open and she was counting up the day’s take, alone in the shop. She hadn’t heard him come in.
He observed her in silence. He saw Dot in her, which was odd, as he’d never seen the similarity before. But there it was, in the way she cocked her head and exposed an ear. And the shape of that ear…that little dip in the earlobe…it was Dot all right and he remembered that because…oh this was the worst of it, but he’d seen that earlobe time and again as he’d mounted her and done his loveless business on her and there couldn’t have been a scrap of pleasure in it for the poor woman, which he regretted now. He hadn’t loved her, but that hadn’t been a fault of hers, had it, although he’d blamed her for not being whatever it was he’d thought she should be in order for him to love her.
He harrumphed because things were dead tight inside him and a good harrumph had always loosened them up a bit. The noise made Tammy raise her head, and when she saw him, she looked a bit wary and who could blame her. They’d been having rather a dicey time of it. She’d not spoken to him other than in polite response to what he said to her since he’d found that letter under her mattress and waved it in her face.
“Shouldn’t be in here alone,” he told her.
“Why not?” She put her hands on either side of the cash drawer, and for a moment Selevan thought she was doing it because she expected him to leap on the funds and shove them down the front of his flannel shirt. But then she pulled it out altogether and carried it to the back room, where extra inventory and cleaning supplies and the like were kept along with an overlarge antique safe. She stowed the cash drawer inside this safe, slammed its door home, and twirled the combination lock. Then she shut the back room door, locked this as well, and put the key in a hidey spot that had been created for it on the underside of the telephone.
Selevan said to her, “Best ring up your guv, girl.” He was aware that his voice was gruff, but it was always gruff when he spoke to her, and he couldn’t make it any different.
She said, “Why?”
“Time to leave here.”
Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes did. The shape of them. Just like her auntie Nan, Selevan thought. Just like the time he’d told Nan that she could sodding shove off if she didn’t like the house rules, one of which was her dad deciding bloody who his daughter would see and when she would see him and believe you me, lass, it’s not going to be that yob with the motorbikes over my dead body. Five of them, mind you. Five bleeding motorbikes and every time he’d roar up on a new one with his fingernails all gone to grease and his knuckles blacked and who the bloody hell would have thought he’d make a go of it and create those…what did they call them? Choppings? Chopped? No, choppers. That was it. Choppers. Just like in America, where everyone was bloody crazy and rich enough to buy just about anything, weren’t they. This is what you want? he’d bellowed at Nan. This? This?
Tammy didn’t argue as Nan might have done. She didn’t storm round the shop and slam things about to make a scene. She said, “All right, then, Grandie,” and she sounded resigned. She added, “But I don’t take it back.”
“What’s that?”