He’d believed this to be the case about her: her essential difference from others of her age. But then he’d found the envelope under her mattress when he’d changed the sheets, and he knew from reading its contents that she was, indeed, very like her contemporaries. Whatever progress he thought he’d made with her was nothing but a sham.
In some situations, that knowledge wouldn’t have bothered him. Nothing was going to happen immediately, so he could redouble his efforts and eventually bend her will to his…and to her parents’ as well. But the problem with that belief was that Tammy’s mum was a woman not known for her patience. She wanted results, and if she didn’t get them, Selevan knew that Tammy’s time in Cornwall would be terminated.
So he’d brought forth the envelope he’d found beneath her mattress and he’d placed it on the dashboard as they drove into town. She’d looked at it. She’d looked at him. And damn the girl, she’d taken the offensive. “You’re going through my personal things when I’m not home,” she’d said, sounding for all the world like a fatally wounded spirit. “That’s what you did to Auntie Nan, didn’t you?”
He wasn’t about to get into a discussion of his daughter and the worthless hooligan to whom she’d been married in alleged bliss for twenty-two years. He said, “Don’t make this about your aunt, girl. Tell me what you’re about with this nonsense.”
“You can’t tolerate anyone who disagrees with you, Grandie, and Dad’s just like you. If something’s not part of your experience, it’s not to be bothered with. Or it’s bad. Or evil, even. Well, this isn’t evil. It’s what I want and if you and Dad and Mum can’t see that it’s the sort of answer the whole bloody world needs just now in order to stop being the whole bloody world…” She’d grabbed up the envelope and shoved it into her rucksack. He thought to snatch it from her and toss it out of the window, but what would have been the point? Where that one came from, another could be got.
Her voice was different when she spoke again. She sounded shaken, the victim of betrayal. “I thought you understood. And, anyway, I didn’t think you were the sort of person who snoops in other people’s belongings.”
That was rather maddening to Selevan. He was the one betrayed by her, wasn’t he? She was hiding correspondence from him, not the other way round. When her mum phoned from Africa and Tammy was the object of discussion, he didn’t hide that from her and they didn’t speak in code. So her umbrage was completely out of order.
“Now you listen to me,” he’d begun.
“I won’t,” she said quietly. “Not till you start listening to me as well.”
That had been that until she’d opened the car door in Casvelyn. She’d made her final statements and trudged to the shop. At another time he would have followed her. No child of his had ever spoken to him in such a way without feeling the strap, the belt, the paddle, or the palm. Problem was, Tammy was not his child. An injured generation stood between them, and both of them knew who’d caused the wounds.
So he’d let her go, and he’d driven back to Sea Dreams with a very heavy heart. He did some cleaning and he cooked himself a second breakfast of beans on toast, hoping that putting something more in his stomach would cure its roiling. He took this to the table and he ate it, but the food didn’t stop him from feeling ill.
A car door slamming outside diverted Selevan from his misery. He glanced out of the window and saw Jago Reeth opening the door of his caravan as Madlyn Angarrack approached him. Jago came down the steps and held out his arms. Madlyn walked into them and Jago patted first her back and then her head. They went inside the caravan together, with Madlyn wiping her eyes on the sleeve of Jago’s flannel shirt.
The sight pierced Selevan. He couldn’t work out how Jago Reeth managed what was so bloody impossible for himself: being a man to whom young people actually wished to talk. Obviously, there was something to the way Jago listened and responded to youngsters that Selevan had failed to learn.
Except it was so easy when they weren’t your relations, wasn’t it? And wasn’t that something that Jago himself had already said?
It didn’t matter. All Selevan knew was that Jago Reeth might possess the key to a grandfather’s having one single reasonable conversation with his own granddaughter. He needed to find out what that key was before Tammy’s mother pulled the plug and sent the girl elsewhere to take the mental cure.
He waited till Madlyn Angarrack had left, exactly forty-three minutes after she’d arrived. Then he crossed over to Jago’s caravan and rapped upon the door. When Jago opened it, Selevan saw that his friend was about to head off somewhere, as he’d put on his jacket, the half-broken specs which he wore only at LiquidEarth, and a headband to keep his long hair away from his face. Selevan was about to offer an apology for the disruption to Jago’s plans, but the other man stopped him and told him to come inside.
“You got something eating at you,” he said. “I c’n see that without you telling me, mate. Just let me…” Jago went to a phone and punched in a few numbers. He reached an answer machine, it seemed, because he said, “Lew, me. Going to be late. Got a bit of ’mergency here at home. Madlyn stopped in, by the way. Bit upset again, but I think she’s sorted. There’s a board needs checking in the hot cupboard, eh?” He rang off, replacing the receiver.
Selevan watched his movements. The Parkinson’s looked bad this morning. Either that, or Jago’s medication hadn’t kicked in. Old age was a bugger, no doubt of that. But old age and disease together were the devil.
As a means of introducing the subject for discussion, he took from his pocket the necklace he’d removed from Tammy on the previous day. He laid it on the table and when Jago joined him at the banquette that served as a seat, he gestured to it.
“Found this on the girl,” Selevan told him. “She was wearing it round her neck. Said the M means Mary. Do you credit that? Came right out and said it, didn’t she, bland as could be, like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
Jago picked the necklace up and examined it. “Scapular,” he said.
“That’s it. That’s what she called it. Scapular. But the M’s for Mary. That’s the concern. The Mary bit.”
Jago nodded, but Selevan could see that a smile was playing round the corners of his mouth. This was a bit of an irritant to Selevan. Easy for Jago to have a bleeding laugh at the situation. Wasn’t his granddaughter wearing M for Mary round her neck. He said, “Something’s happened to the girl somewhere ’long the line. That’s all I can reckon from the mess she is now. I put it down to Africa. Being exposed to all those native women in the raw. Walking round the streets of wherever with their privates hanging out. ’S no wonder to me she’s got herself confused.”
“Mother of Jesus,” Jago said.
“That and then some,” Selevan intoned.
Jago laughed then, and he did so heartily. Selevan reared up. Jago said, “Don’t get yourself twisted, mate. You said yourself it’s M for Mary. On a scapular, that would mean M for Mary for the mother of Jesus. It’s a devotional thing, this is. Catholics wear them. You might see a picture of Jesus on one. A saint on another: St. Whoever of Whatever. It’s a mark of devotion.”
“Damn,” Selevan muttered. “No bloody end to this mess.” Tammy’s mum would have a seizure, no doubt about that. One more reason to pack Tammy up and send her on her way. In Sally Joy’s mind the only thing worse than being a Catholic was being a terrorist. “St. George and the dragon would’ve been better,” Selevan said. That image, at least, could have been seen as patriotic.