Nothing happened; no sudden stiffening, no sweating, no knuckle-whitening. ‘Not much. Pat didn’t talk much about him at all. Divorced way back. He’s dead now, I think.’
‘Have they got his name or yours?’
‘Mine.’
He was concentrating now, moving between the fairly tightly packed boats towards his mooring. I looked ahead and saw a tall figure standing by the pylons; she had a rope in her hands and was tugging at it nervously. Guthrie followed my gaze.
‘This’ll give you another idea of what Ray’s like’, he said. ‘That’s his girl, Jess. You never met a nicer kid.’
She was the young woman who’d been sitting on the wall, smiling into the lens. But now she was standing stiffly, she looked older and she wasn’t smiling anymore.
4
The deft, unhurried movements she used to help Guthrie tie up the boat seemed to be second nature to her. She was tall and athletic; the short hair, shirt and jeans gave her a practical look and made no concessions to the usual ideas of femininity, but she was as female as you’d want-which is better. She had Paul Guthrie’s full approval, apparent in every movement he made. He nipped up the ladder, hugged her and made the introductions enthusiastically.
‘Cliff Hardy, Jess Polansky. He’s going to look for Ray, Jess.’
This news didn’t seem to fill her with delight. She brushed back her light-brown hair and looked at me as if I was the understudy, not the star. ‘I thought… oh hell, I saw you take the Satisfaction out, and I thought it might mean Ray was coming back. Or something…’
She burst into tears and Guthrie eased his shoulder over for her to huddle into. She had to bend to do it. As I looked at them I tried to interpret what I was seeing. Does a son want the girl his father so obviously wants for him? It struck me that I was getting out of my depth with fathers and sons, although I was old enough to have a son of Ray Guthrie’s age. As I’d told Cy Sackville, I didn’t even have a brother, and my own memories of my relationship with my father weren’t likely to be of much help. He was twenty-plus years dead, a quiet inner sort of man who didn’t seem to approve of anything much. I still occasionally had dreams in which I tried to win his approval, and failed.