My Side of the Diamond Page 6

  MARI SCOTT

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rex called me last night. He said he’d chatted to you and found it helpful. Not a great one with words, is our Rex. But he said I was next on your list.

  As we agreed, Mr Jones, I’m only going to talk about Phoebe and Skye, nothing else.

  Anyway, why are you so interested in them? It always makes me laugh how the experts seem to know more about Lazarus and Skye than the people who actually knew them.

  You must have got on well with Rex, Mr Jones – neither of you are very forthcoming.

  I was at Ipswich shopping centre the other day, when this young woman came up to me and said she was doing a piece of art for the Civic Centre. It involved taking my picture and asking me what I’d wish for.

  To begin with I said I wasn’t interested but she was very persistent and suddenly I felt myself on the brink of tears.

  I said, ‘I wish I’d never picked up those stones.’

  She said, ‘That’s original.’

  I said, ‘It’s a bloody tragedy.’

  She didn’t take my picture. No doubt she thought I was a nutter. She found a chap with a Zimmer frame and asked him the same question – he said he wished his dog hadn’t died.

  Rex and I grew up in the same village. He was always an awkward boy. I suppose I really got to know him when we went to the same comprehensive school in Ipswich. We were joint top of our class in art and discovered we both had the same dream of going to art school in London. But I knew early on that he would be a better artist than me.

  Why? It was because of a book he’d found, it was on the work of Rothko. I preferred Modigliani. Rex said when he looked at Rothko’s last paintings they spoke of the thickening of blood. He didn’t know anything about Rothko’s life or death, not then. Rothko had committed suicide in 1970 and was found in a pool of his own blood – as rich and dark as his paintings. But you’re not here to ask about Rex – you want to know about Skye and Lazarus.

  Are you sitting comfortably, Mr Jones? Then I’ll begin.

  I met Phoebe Berry, Skye’s mother, when I was fifteen. I’d never met a proper artist until then. She had gone to the same dump of a school that Rex and me attended. She was a bit of a legend in the art department – the girl done good. Her work had been shown in a gallery in Bond Street, and she taught at the Royal College of Art. Phoebe came to our school to give a lecture and have a look at all our work. She was very interested in Rex’s and mine and told us we had talent. Neither of us had ever been told we were anything special. She invited us to visit her at her studio in Shingle Street. Do you know it? It’s a row of little cottages on a pebble beach.

  We cycled there. It was a hot day, I remember. Rex went all quiet when he saw Phoebe’s studio. It was built in a secret garden, back from the house and the beach – you wouldn’t know it was there unless you’d been told. I thought to myself, this is the life I want. Rex was so overawed, he didn’t say anything. I managed to talk my way into a summer job. Rex was livid with me.

  I pointed out as we cycled home that he already had a summer job in a second-hand bookshop and, anyway, I was going to be nothing more than a glorified dogsbody. He forgave me in the end.

  What I never told him was that it was the best summer I’d ever had. Phoebe was living with a marine engineer called Frank. To me, back then, it all seemed so alternative, so romantic, living on the edge, refusing to conform. My main job was to help with the cooking – the house was always full of people. Frank’s brother seemed to be living there most of the time too. There was a long table in the front garden overlooking the shingle beach, and every evening all the seats round it would be taken by friends who were passing through, staying the night or had just turned up with a bottle of wine.

  It was a time that now seems bathed in the light of dreams, when everything was possible, golden, before the dark.

  I went back to school wishing I didn’t have to. Then Phoebe phoned to tell me she was pregnant – she and Frank were over the moon. They’d been trying for a long time.

  Once autumn term started, there was no time to cycle over to Shingle Street. In November Phoebe had a miscarriage. I didn’t know whether or not I should go and see her. I couldn’t think what to say to someone who had lost a baby. But all of that was overshadowed by Luke’s death. I think that was the worst thing that had ever happened in our lives up to that point. He was such a lovely lad, full of laughter. His death was impossible to comprehend. If I’d no words to say to Phoebe, I definitely had no idea what to say to Rex. I saw him a couple of days after Christmas. We were in his garden when … oh, Rex told you. Then you know about the stones. Yes, I gave one to him, I kept one and, not knowing what to say to Phoebe, I gave the third stone to her.

  She’d invited me for lunch the next day. l hadn’t seen her for a while.

  In her studio she showed me a clay sculpture of a little girl. It took my breath away, it was so perfect, so full of yearning. We went back to the house to eat and I was surprised that Frank wasn’t there. Phoebe said he’d gone to see his mother, and his brother was working. But I had the feeling that things weren’t right. I suppose I was too young to understand what the loss of a child can do to you, how it can make the solid walls of love crumble.

  I gave her the stone. We drank elderflower wine and she told me how much she and Frank had longed to have children and that now she wasn’t able to have any.

  Before I left we went back to her studio in the secret garden. It was nearly dark. We placed mistletoe and the stone in the clay girl’s outstretched hands. I turned to look back as we closed the studio door and I was certain I saw something glimmer behind the glass. I told myself the elderflower wine was not as innocent as I’d thought. As I got on my bike, Phoebe said she wanted to see more of me, but I didn’t hear from her. Some months later I was told that she and Frank had adopted a little girl.

  Rex said he was sure his brother had risen from the dead because of the alien stone. He said he should never have put it in Luke’s coffin. I thought that was a load of gobbledygook until I met Skye.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Phoebe had said she would help Rex and me prepare our portfolios. The trouble was, it was spring and we hadn’t heard from her and it felt awkward to ask. I wanted to call her, but Rex said perhaps we should leave her alone. There was gossip about the little girl Phoebe and Frank had adopted – people said she was a strange one, she wasn’t all there, had something wrong in the head.

  One day I was walking in the woods near Rendlesham Forest. You know, Mr Jones, some of those trees are near as ancient as Britain itself. That was where I came across a girl of about eleven. She was standing in a clearing near a patch of burnt earth. She unnerved me, for there was no mistaking her likeness to the sculpture I had seen in Phoebe’s studio. But I asked what her name was, and if she was all right.

  She pointed up to the sky and said, ‘I have to get home.’

  It took ages – or rather, it seemed to take ages – to convince her that I could take her home.

  She asked how I could do that and I said, ‘By walking.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘When I’m sixteen, I will jump.’

  ‘You can jump now,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to stop you. You don’t have to wait that long.’

  She looked at me as if I was an idiot.

  ‘I thought you understood,’ she said. ‘No one understands.’

  I don’t think she said anything more on the way home. I had younger brothers and sisters and if they’d got lost in the woods they would have been scared out of their socks, weeping and wailing and crying for Mummy. Not this little girl. She seemed much older than her years and, to be honest, not like a child at all. I wondered if Rex was right about the ‘alien stones’ and if in some way the stone was responsible. But I told myself over and over again, like a mantra, that it was impossible.

  When we arrived at Shingle Street, Frank and Phoebe were frantic with worry. Phoebe ran towards Skye, arms outs
tretched. Skye just watched her. She didn’t move, showed no emotion.

  Phoebe was crying as she hugged Skye. Skye put her finger to the tears on Phoebe’s cheek and tasted them. She said that they were salty, salty like the sea. She said, ‘I don’t have tears.’

  Phoebe thanked me and I realised there was a way back to this life that I craved.

  ‘If you need any help, I could babysit for you,’ I said.

  That’s how I came to know Skye. And in return Phoebe helped me and Rex with our portfolios. As soon as Rex saw Skye he asked me if I’d given Phoebe one of the alien stones.

  I said that they were just stones, ordinary stones, they had nothing to do with anything. But I didn’t believe it. Rex didn’t believe it. For both our sakes I stuck to my crumbling belief, too guilty to admit we’d played any part in what had happened. I wanted to get rid of my stone but I was worried that if I touched it, something bad might happen. So I left it where it was, in a metal money box at the bottom of my wardrobe.

  I longed for Phoebe to confide in me about Skye, but she never did. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what had happened to the sculpture of the little girl.

  I would describe Skye as no more than an idea of a girl, an idea that was never going to flower. I looked after her all that summer and I refused to accept that a stone could have given life to clay.

  Skye didn’t like to run or swim, she never played, she just sat, watching the sea. She never ate, never slept. If she had been human she would have been dead. Put that in your book, Mr Jones.

  Now, if this was a fairy tale I would tell you that Phoebe and Frank married and lived happily ever after. But this is no fairy tale.

  I went to the Central School of Art to do a foundation course and Rex got a place at the Slade.

  One day – it was May, the following year – Phoebe called to ask if I wouldn’t mind looking after Skye for the night. She and Frank had a flat in Marylebone. I went there about six-thirty. I hadn’t seen Phoebe for some time. She looked anxious. She apologised when I arrived – she didn’t need me to babysit after all; Skye was insisting that she went home with her. I remember thinking that was strange: why wouldn’t Phoebe want to take Skye back to Suffolk with her in the first place? I asked her what was going on.

  Phoebe said it was nothing, that she wanted to take Frank out, a special evening, silly idea anyway. Then she asked if I would help her wrap a painting. It was a portrait of a man, quite beautifully painted in such a way that he seemed to be alive. He had such hypnotic eyes. I asked her who he was.

  She said his name was Icarus.

  I said, ‘Like the man in the Greek myth who flew too close to the sun.’

  Just then Skye came into the room. She said a barefooted man was looking for Icarus.

  ‘I don’t like the barefooted man,’ she added.

  I asked Phoebe what Skye was on about but all she would say was that she’d explain later.

  ‘We have to go,’ said Phoebe. ‘It’s getting late.’

  Skye said, ‘We’re going to Granny’s.’

  I’d helped Phoebe out to the car with her bags and the painting when she said she’d forgotten something and went back into the flat.

  I stood waiting with Skye and suddenly she said, ‘You should say goodbye nicely. You won’t see Phoebe again.’

  I said, ‘Skye, that’s rubbish.’

  ‘The future often is,’ she said.

  I was really irritated with her. Phoebe came rushing out and leapt into the car. I wanted to say something but all that came out was ‘Take care.’

  No one knows quite what happened. It was a terrible shock. Phoebe and Frank were killed in a crash two days later. The car caught fire and the intensity of the heat burnt the tarmac. Skye was the only survivor, untouched by the flames. No one knew how she got out alive. She went to live in Orford with her grandmother, Mrs Berry.

  In the summer holidays I went to see Skye. Mrs Berry was very good with her. They seemed well suited, sitting quietly together in that pretty little cottage. Skye took me outside to show me the garden and I asked how she had survived the crash. She said after they’d locked away the nasty man they were chased by the people, the bad people, who looked after him. Then all went dark and lonely.

  ‘It will be lonely until I can jump,’ she said.

  I tried to ask more questions but it was pointless. She put her fingers to her lips and said all would be well as long as they didn’t turn on the light.

  I gave up after that. I never went to see her again. I missed Phoebe too much.

  Blame the stone, blame Skye, blame me.

  REX MULLER

  Chapter Seventeen

  You’ve spoken to Mari? It’s been terrible for her, the not knowing – it makes you lose your mind. Where was I? That’s right – you have some memory, Mr Jones.

  I was sixteen when I left home. There was a woman called Phoebe Berry – her mother lived in Orford. Phoebe taught painting at the Royal College of Art in London and she helped me get a place at the Slade. She helped Mari too – she went to Central.

  I was so relieved to be living in a bedsit, away from my family. Mari’s flat was quite close but we never met up. I think neither of us wanted to talk about the night we found the stones. I threw myself into my work and tried to forget about Suffolk. I had no desire to rake up the past.

  It was about five years later that I received a note. It simply said, ‘I am a friend of your brother Lazarus.’ And was signed ‘Icarus’. I remember thinking that no one is called Icarus.

  He said that he happened to be in London and would I like to meet up. He knew the pub round the corner from my studio.

  I’ll never forget when I first saw Icarus. He was certainly handsome, but he had something else about him, something I couldn’t put my finger on. An aura, perhaps.

  We sat and had a beer. He said he liked the country better than London. He said he had been delighted to meet Lazarus.

  I asked him why.

  He didn’t answer and I wondered what he was after and why he was there. We started talking, or rather, he talked. I listened and for the first time since Luke died I felt there was someone who was curious about loneliness, what it felt like to lose someone you loved, the emotional cost of irreplaceable love. I didn’t want him to leave. I was fascinated by the way he looked and I asked him if he would sit for me. He wanted to know what that entailed. I said, standing very still, and he said he was good at that. He agreed to come the next day to my studio. Just as he was leaving he asked if I knew Lazarus had a girlfriend, Skye? I think I burst out laughing. I found it almost impossible to imagine Lazarus with a girl.

  My studio then was in a disused factory by King’s Cross, a hard place to get into. You went up some concrete stairs and then you had to know the code for the door. It was a rough area so I padlocked my studio door on the outside when I left it, and bolted it when I was inside. The other artists who had studios there called my place ‘Fort Knox’.

  I was getting set up when Icarus appeared. I just turned around and there he was. Dressed in an eighteenth-century waistcoat and jacket, he looked utterly extraordinary. I asked him how he’d got in. He shrugged and said something about someone letting him in, but I knew that was impossible. The artist in me refused to be daunted by the practical. He was beautifully dressed and stood just as I would have placed him.

  He rang the bell next time he came. In all, I did six sessions with him. He asked me to paint him without his glasses and I took a great deal of care over his eyes. They were hypnotic, as dark as the universe. I never felt I did them justice.

  I went up to Eyke with Icarus to see my brother and meet his girlfriend.

  For the first time Mum and Dad seemed a little more normal. They had invited Skye for tea with her grandmother, Mrs Berry. I hadn’t realised until then that Skye was Phoebe’s adopted daughter. I’d heard, of course, about the car accident that had killed Phoebe and Frank. Mrs Berry seemed much taken with Icarus. As for my brother, it wa
s the only time since his resurrection that I’d seen him being almost human. I had the feeling Mrs Berry understood Skye, unlike my parents, who seemed to have no connection at all with Lazarus.

  It was an awkward weekend but I remember thinking Lazarus and Skye were made for one another, in a way I couldn’t explain. I felt they had grown out of the same stone.

  As I was leaving, Lazarus said, ‘We have to go home.’

  ‘You are home,’ I said.

  He shook his head and said, ‘We must jump. We have to jump.’

  I couldn’t wait to leave. Only as the train left Ipswich for London did I feel calm once more. I had hoped to see Icarus again to show him the painting but I had no address for him, no phone number, no idea who he really was.

  I heard on the news about Lazarus and Skye. I went home as if for a funeral, except there were no coffins, no bodies, no body parts, nothing to bury. I thought my parents would be heartbroken and instead I found they could barely remember who Lazarus was. They seemed happy, free, almost back to their old selves. They had stopped taking the medication. When I tried to talk to Mum about my brother, she looked surprised and said that Luke had died when he was eleven. They never mentioned Lazarus again.

  It was then I knew how much I missed Luke, how much I longed to have him back.

  That’s all I want to say, Mr Jones.

  JAZMIN LITTLE

  Chapter Eighteen

  I think it was the following day that Becky and me went to Mrs Berry’s. Yes, it must’ve been the Thursday because on the Friday the removal lorry was coming. The key was left under a stone. Can’t imagine doing that in London. It was a small cottage and had a lovely feel to it – you know, fireplace, rose and peony wallpaper, pictures of haystacks, that sort of thing. It was as neat as if Mrs Berry had just gone to the shops and would be back in a jiffy. Not as if she’d been bundled off to an old people’s home to rot and be forgotten.