Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Ed
"What are we looking for?"
Bess pushes open the wrought iron gates of the Port Derrum cemetery.
"The names of any men who were of fighting age during World War Two. We can then check them against the national registrar of soldiers who fought during that war."
"They have a national registrar?" I ask.
"I don't know. I haven't actually looked, but there must be a record somewhere. And if they're buried next to their wife, we could see if her name started with 'B'."
"What if it was a 'B' for a nickname, or a shortened version, like 'Beth' for 'Elizabeth'?"
Bess is quiet for a moment. Her posture sags slightly. "Okay, we disregard the wife's name. Unless it actually starts with a 'B'."
"Okay." The entrance to the cemetery is on a small rise, affording a clear view of all the rows of graves and I survey the linear protrusions of concrete and marble.
It's not a huge cemetery, but it's large enough for this to take a good chunk of the morning.
We should probably divvie up the graves, but I need to talk Bess out of selling her sculpture.
I say, "We should also note down the names of anybody who died in battle," and Bess looks at me with a mixture of such alarm and such sadness that everything inside me stops. My pulse, my breath.
"I mean." My voice is quiet, thin. "It's a possibility." I am such a shit for doing this to her. It was always meant to be for her, but what I am doing is absolutely to her.
Bess gives a single nod, but doesn't say anything.
After half a row of graves and a build up of tension I can no longer suppress, I pierce the bubble with one swift jab. "I don't think you should do the auction, Bess."
She stops mid-stride and turns to face me. "I knew it. You had disapproval written all over your face last night. Why the fuck not? Tell me why I should turn down the opportunity to raise a deposit no bank can refuse, especially when The Odour's significantly upped the asking price."
I take a breath to answer her and she adds, "It's already edging three hundred thousand, Ed."
Three hundred thousand?
"With two weeks still to go. Who knows what the final amount will be, but it will be a lot more than three hundred thousand. Why on earth would you try to deny local artists that?"
"Because you haven't got any permissions, Bess. You're about to make a huge amount of money off somebody else's possessions. What if that person turns up at the auction?"
"Then I'll give them their half of the money and I'm sure they'll be very grateful. They can't possibly have any objections to a public display of the letters. They gave them to me knowing I would make them public. Honestly, Ed. Is that it?" She shakes her head and turns to keep walking.
No. That is most definitely not it.
She pauses at a grave to write something in her notebook and gives me a smile that can only be interpreted as wry. "Thanks for your concern, though. As frustrating as it can be, I really do admire your conscientiousness."
"I don't think you've fully thought through the potential repercussions."
Bess sighs, drops the hand holding the pen and looks up at me. "Tell me all the potential repercussions I should have fully thought through, then."
"Making a sculpture out of the letters and selling it is a whole different ball game than reading them out on social media. Knowing you would make the letters public is not the same as giving you permission to do what you want with them, to make money off them."
"No, but they've had plenty of time to object to the sculpture, seeing I've been posting about it. Clearly whoever they are follow me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have received the second letter."
Shit. This is not going as I planned.
"But you can't be sure of that. What if they haven't seen it?
Following someone doesn't guarantee you see everything they post. You're assuming their act of passing on the letters to you has given you ownership, when their intention could be something very different.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be okay with someone selling the love letters of my grandparents. "
"Well of course I've assumed I have ownership. The first letter was thrown in a bin, Ed. That is not the act of someone who wants to keep something in their possession."
She's absolutely right, but I have no choice except to keep on doggedly with my point of argument.
"Your whole platform is vulnerable because you've created it through social media.
Suppose they are upset about what you've done and mount an opposing campaign against you.
Tides turn on social media very quickly. "
"That is a massive 'if'. Now you're just being stupid." Bess continues down the path, glancing at the next grave.
I fall in step behind her. "I'm not being stupid, Bess. You're selling somebody else's family legacy for a lot of money. They could, reasonably, demand the whole lot."
Bess stops in her tracks, but she doesn't turn around this time. After a couple of seconds, she slaps the notebook against her thigh as if working her way to a decision.
Eventually she says, "It's a good point, but I think saving the community's worth the risk," and carries on walking.
Fuck. I knew this would be a hard task, but I've woefully underestimated her resolve when I should have known better.
"I don't think it is, Bess. All that energy, all that expectation of being able to buy out Pinkerton could be undermined very quickly.
People get funny and pretty stupid about money. "
Bess pauses at a grave and leans in to read it like she isn't concerned about the truth of my words.
When she straightens up, she faces me. "Then we'll have to mitigate that risk.
I'll openly invite the person sending the letters to reveal themselves at the auction with the promise of splitting the profit with them.
It'll actually be a really good publicity stunt.
Everyone will want to know who that person is.
" She walks forward and lays a hand on my upper arm.
"Thanks for bringing it to my attention with your usual tenacity, Ed.
"But I think it will work out. People value the gallery, what it represents, they want it to succeed. Don't you?"
It's the most prolonged touching Bess has ever done.
I should be swooning or hyperventilating, but I'm far too occupied with shouting "FUCK!
" very loudly inside my increasingly panicked skull.
I'm going to have to pull the kill switch.
I absolutely don't want to, but she's given me no choice.
Every molecule in my body is sweating at the terror of it. Of exposing myself.
She gives my arm a pat and walks away.
I make one last, desperate and pathetic attempt at dissuasion. "If you give half the money away, will the remainder be enough?"
She sighs out her frustration at me and carries on peering at tombstones.
"It's a golden opportunity." She stops in front of a grave at the end of the row.
"Another one anywhere near this good won't come along.
I have to take it, Ed." She glances across at me.
"Nothing you can say is going to stop me. "
No, Bess. Actually, something I can say and am about to say will most likely stop you. I take a breath. And release it. I'm not sure I can do this.
I ball my fists and draw every bit of energy I can find under the incapacitating thought of what I'm about to reveal to her. "Bess?"
She answers with, "Come and meet the most despicable person to ever stain Port Derrum's good name," and it completely throws me off.
I don't move. I'm about to be the most despicable person in Port Derrum. I almost say the thought aloud and Bess beckons me over.
"Allow me to introduce you."
The gravestone reads Basil Alexander Everett 1922-2006 and nothing else. No "In loving memory of". No "Beloved son of" or "Beloved husband of".
"This was the man charged with being the headmaster of Port Derrum Primary School for more decades than it's healthy for anyone to be in a job. Anybody who had the misfortune of being taught under his leadership knew him fondly as Evil Everett."
I force a noise out of me to show I'm listening.
"Though I preferred Basil the Bastard."
I should laugh. If I wasn't about to drop a bombshell, I would one hundred percent be laughing at the audacity of child Bess and my complete lack of surprise that she would choose a much more antagonistic name than the other children.
I push something up and out that could be interpreted as laughter. "Why was he a bastard?"
"He was mean. It's as simple as that. Mean in a way that played on your insecurities and let you know how insignificant you were. He wanted to make you feel worthless."
Now I'm paying full attention. This is clearly someone who had a large presence in Bess' life, and potentially not a very good one. "And did you? Feel worthless?"
"He told me at the age of six they might as well load me on to the knacker's truck now and save the education system a whole lot of money."
"Jesus."
"Yeah." Bess folds her arms. "It wasn't just me. He did it to most kids that were vulnerable. Jeanette, Lutek were victims of his abuse."
I immediately comprehend why Jeanette and Lutek might be ripe for the picking on – sweet, eccentric Jeanette and quiet, new-to-the-country-and-language Lutek – but not Bess. "Why were you vulnerable?"
"Because I had a father I never saw. He was always away working. And when he did come home, he was too tired to deal with children."
Bess has never shared this information with me. She talks about her parents, but not in any way that suggests her childhood parenting was lacking.
"I had a longing for a father replacement.
I gravitated to the two male teachers in the school.
I'd follow them around when they were out on patrol at lunchtime, like a puppy.
I'd make them presents. I was desperate for their attention and approval.
But...it's a small school, so it didn't take long for Bas to notice. "
Her words sound dispassionate, but there are small tells that this subject has taken a toll on her. The tightening around her eyes. The hard set of her mouth.
And just as if I'd been looking at Bess through glasses that were the wrong prescription, things are now coming into view.
Bess turns to look at me. "Do you know I visit his grave to show him how wrong he was?
That I – that Jeanette, Lutek and I – have amounted to so much more than he could have possibly imagined for us?
I tell him about all my accomplishments.
" She turns back to face the grave. "I've been visiting a lot lately. "
Something inside me cracks.
"I've been thinking recently – doing a bit of amateur psychoanalysis – that my conviction about men needing to prove their worth is because I had two men tell me I had none throughout my childhood. One through his words and the other through his actions.”
"I see."
She puts a hand on her hip in a gesture that reads as defiance and places the pointer finger of the other to her chest. "I don't need to prove I'm worthy. Not to anybody. Fuck that."
I allow the words to settle before saying gently, "Bess?"
"Yes?"
"You are, actually, doing exactly that. You do it every time you come here and try to rub Basil the Bastard's face in your success."
Bess goes very still. For a long, long time.
I can't be certain of what is happening inside her brain, but I imagine it's the difficult process of re-calibrating the relationship she's formed with this dead man.
The sound of a dop pulls my attention to her shoe, where a dark, round, wet mark sits in the middle of the leather.
I jerk my head up to look at her face.
Another tear sits waiting to disengage from her chin.
I have that unsettling sensation of having just stepped off a lift but still experiencing the motion of travelling on it. I've never seen Bess cry as the result of being upset. I've never seen Bess remotely close to crying due to unhappiness.
I take a step towards her and she throws her head towards the sky and yells the kind of yell that empties your lungs and makes the back of your throat raw.
There's no possible way, in this moment, that I can pull the kill switch.