Wavewalker Read online

  “See Max? I told you the best part about these huge old houses was that the neighbours never looked out of their back windows.”

  “Right hon, all except that old man who’s been staring at your gorgeous behind for the past ten minutes.”

  Anita spun around and looked up, shouting at their new neighbour, an old Chinese man who probably couldn’t understand a word anyway, even more so given that half her abuse was delivered in the northern Netherlands dialect favoured by her father in moments of anger. After that she and Max confined their lovemaking to the house – or nights when the San Francisco fog held back the moonlight.

  The house was part of a plan Max and Anita had talked about over long nights in Mexico. A big place where friends could come to stay, Max would have a couple of rooms for his practice and Anita would use another for classes – she was an advanced yoga student herself and was hoping to learn massage in San Francisco.

  “See honey, you will be able to be a doctor – a good doctor, help people physically and I will help them emotionally, holistically.”

  “But Anita, you haven’t even been trained.”

  “What is training? How many years did it take you to learn to be a doctor?”

  “Seven or eight.”

  “And how many of those years taught you what you really need to know?”

  “All of them!”

  “No honey, I mean really need to know. How to heal people, how to talk to the people who need you? Well?”

  “I don’t know, it was really just the last couple of years I suppose, actually working in the profession taught me more than most of what I learnt at school.”

  “Exactly. It’s like any job. You learn by doing it. So will I. You’ll see. People will come to us – the straight ones will trust you, the groovy ones will be interested in me – and we can both give them what they need.”

  “Even what they didn’t know they needed, like you did with me?”

  “Exactly. They’ll come.”

  “To live with us?”

  “Yes, we have to fill all these rooms you’ve spent so long cleaning and painting. Some will come just to see you or me. Others will want to live with us.”

  “But I want to live with you. Only you.”

  “So, yes. That may be what you want, but what you need is to live with other people – to make a new family to replace the one that is giving you such a hard time.”

  “A new family?”

  “Certainly. You have the old family that you were born into and you love them because you must. And we will make a new family that you will love because you want to. You won’t have to fight them. We’ll make a good house that is warm and loving and they’ll come. Just wait.”

  And come they did. Within a few short months Max began to very much like his life. He had his medical practice and was developing a good reputation in the district, he had his life with Anita where the sex was always great and the friendship warm, he even had the beginnings of a good response from his father who, while disapproving of everything his son was doing, was at least relieved that he was now a doctor – “Making use of all those family dollars invested in him.” But best of all, he had what Anita called “their family” – the people who had come to ask about Anita’s classes or maybe to him with a medical problem, but who had stayed, often at first just for dinner or a weekend and then, if they fitted, were what Anita referred to as “family people”, she would invite them to stay for good. People contributed what they could, money if they were working, possessions and time if not. Max’s income was steady and Anita always seemed to be able to lay her hands on enough food to fill the table whether it was for just her and Max or for another fifteen people. They developed a routine and after a while Max saw his new life take shape around him.

  Anita had been making their decisions since Max met her, and he’d been happy to go along with it, trusting her judgment, and whoever she judged worthy of a room in their home, he was prepared to take on too. By the early spring of 1971 Max and Anita had seven new housemates. And they did like Anita, were “interested in her” as she’d said they would be. Interested in her and reassured by Max. They felt safe with him – here was a fairly young man, very straight, very traditional, who was prepared to try a new kind of life. He made it easier for them to do so too, all living in the same house, all eating the same food. They listened to Max, who had somehow achieved a version of the traditional East Coast patriarch without ever having to set up a single college fund. In a way, his silence and Anita’s constant decisionmaking on their behalf, gave him the status and not her. Made it seem as if she was working for him, for his ideas. His natural reticence was interpreted as taking time for thought, so that when he did speak out he was always listened to. Anita wasn’t sure how it had happened, but after the first year of their relationship, the dynamic had very much changed and by bringing other people into their home she had actually brought this about. By setting Max up in his own large home, with his work and other people around him, she had unwittingly given him everything he’d been trained for from birth – status as “doctor”, as healer, a position as the father, the head of their family. By accident Max became the “head of the family”. By accident Anita brought about the birth of a traditional patriarch in her untraditional home. In July of that year she also gave birth to their daughter. The family was complete. Max became the father both figurative and literal and as his status grew, his family grew, all listening to him. All listening to every word he said. Maxwell North, father’s boy and mixed up East Coast “rebel” had become Max, patriarch of a new type of “hippie commune”. And he liked it. Very much.

  CHAPTER 4

  Saz Martin ran into the entrance of her South London council block and pushed the lift button. As usual, both up and down arrows lit up and she turned on the heel of her brand new Reeboks and began the five-storey running climb to her flat. She double-locked the door behind her, shed her sweaty running clothes and forced herself under a cold shower. Two minutes later the bathroom door opened and a sleepy voice called, “Coffee? Or is that too poisonous for the woman who insists on waking me at the crack of dawn, just to ensure her breakfast will be ready when she gets back from her five-mile run?”

  “Almost seven miles actually. And that’s not fair. I woke you at six in the morning because I couldn’t bear to leave without caressing your gorgeous body once again.”

  “Naturally.”

  “If you couldn’t get back to sleep and if you then felt obliged to make my breakfast – possibly as a form of repayment given that you’ve spent the past week in my flat –”

  “I thought…”

  “Not that I’m complaining,” Saz continued to shout as the shampoo bubbles filled her ears. “In any case, your sense of Catholic guilt is hardly my responsibility.”

  “Do Presbyterian Asians have a sense of Catholic guilt?”

  “I don’t know my Bengali baby, you tell me.”

  She poked her head out from behind the red plastic shower curtain. “Pass me the towel.”

  “Is that politically sound?”

  “Wanting a towel? No idea.”

  “Calling me your Bengali baby.”

  “Not sure. Probably not. Let’s see, ‘my’ implies ownership…”

  “Very un-PC.”

  “And ‘baby’ implies the diminutive, which at – what are you? Five foot nine?”

  “Nine and a half.”

  “Certainly not diminutive then. Not sure about Bengali – purely descriptive I would have thought. You were born in Calcutta after all.”

  “Yeah, and brought up in Dunoon.”

  “Haggis honey, then?”

  “You’re hopeless!”

  “Hopelessly in love or hopelessly politically unsound?”

  “Both I expect.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to trust you not to call the dyke police, won’t I? Now, could I have that towel, or do you want me to pull you into the shower with me?”

  Twent
y-five minutes later Saz and Molly Steele, her new love of three months, emerged from the shower.

  “Aaah! Saz! It’s eight o’clock – I’m going to be late again!”

  “Just tell them your girlfriend had an urgent problem and you had to give her a hand.”

  “Consultant paediatricians at Great Ormond Street tend not to understand the finer complexities of lesbian innuendo, babe.”

  “More fool them. You get dressed, I’ll make the coffee.”

  Half an hour later Saz had her flat to herself and was musing on the tedious predictability of falling in love – yet again – while making the bed. She’d met Molly by accident, literally. Her sister’s daughter had been run over and was transferred to Great Ormond Street when her local suburban hospital had discovered that the latest health cuts meant that the intensive care required for a seven-year-old girl with a fractured pelvis, two broken legs and all the other “minor” injuries associated with a car going 40 m.p.h. round the corner from her school, just wasn’t available. However, once transferred to the London hospital it was Amy’s parents who weren’t available. At seven months pregnant, with three other small children and a twenty-mile drive to the hospital, Cassie and Tony couldn’t make it to visit Amy more than once every two days. Which was where Aunty Saz came in, a flexible work schedule and open visiting hours meant that Amy was kept happy and, once Saz had met her niece’s doctor, so was she. Molly was tall, friendly, intelligent and stunningly good-looking, her Asian mother and Scottish father having combined to give her flawless brown skin, jet black hair and perfectly almond-shaped pale green eyes. Saz was taken aback by her gorgeousness, but she was even more shocked when, having seen her almost every day at the hospital, she bumped into Molly at a club a few weeks later.

  “Oh! Hi … um, you’re my niece’s doctor … Amy Wallace?”

  “Yeah, right. Saz isn’t it? I’m Molly.”

  “I know, Amy told me.”

  “You asked?”

  “Just in passing.”

  “Right, she’s a great little talker your niece.”

  “She is?”

  “Yep. We have lots of chats. She’s very fond of you.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Though she, like your sister I might add, seems to think it would be nice if you were to settle down. Find a nice girl … I believe that’s the expression your mother used.”

  “I’ll kill her!”

  “No don’t, you’d miss her terribly. And anyway, she’s lovely. The whole family is. They’re all very fond of you.”

  “Great. I think I need a drink. Do you fancy pushing through that crowd at the bar?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, sorry, are you here with someone?”

  “No, I don’t fancy pushing through the crowd. I fancy you.”

  “Ah. And I thought I was upfront!”

  “Well, I’ve found it doesn’t pay to waste time.”

  “Right. So do you want a drink?”

  “Answer’s still no I’m afraid, I was just about to leave, I’ve got a very early start tomorrow, I mean today. Were you planning to come and see Amy later?”

  “Yeah, about two.”

  “Good, I finish at three-thirty. Fancy meeting for a late lunch?”

  “Sure, I’ll be waiting at the bedside.”

  “I’ll come and find you. Bye.”

  “Yeah … oh, and Molly? I … I fancy you too.”

  “I know.”

  “What … how?”

  “Your mum told me. See you tomorrow.”

  Saz and Molly had lunch, dinner and then, much later, breakfast. That was three months ago and things were still very rosy. They were having good sex, good talks and good times. Molly had already met most of Saz’s family at the hospital and the two women were planning a late summer return trip to Molly’s parents in Dunoon, via a couple of weeks at the Edinburgh Festival. Saz, after almost four years of self-imposed celibacy, was excited, enthralled and terrified. As she’d explained in a two-hour transatlantic phone call to her ex-girlfriend Caroline.

  “Listen Carrie, it took me two years to get over you …”

  “Perfectly understandable.”

  “And I don’t want that again. God knows, I don’t need another friend.”

  “You want a wife?”

  “A fiancée will do.”

  “You can’t afford the flash ring, Saz.”

  “No, but I can’t afford the heartbreak either.”

  “Good luck. And when you find a lover that comes with a guarantee, let me know and I’ll call the Serious Fraud Office for you.”

  Over three months later, while Saz still had no guarantee, she was starting to ease into believing in a future with Molly.

  With the bed made, dishes done and flat tidied, Saz threw open her windows and took her coffee and letters out to the tiny balcony of her 1960s flat to enjoy what she could of the hazy spring sunshine. Looking down at the communal “garden” – an uneven rectangle of green, with a small dirt mound and a selection of rubbish from several of the more popular multinational takeaways in her local high street, she sighed and thought of Molly’s rather more sophisticated home.

  “London, I’m very fond of you, but you’re a hell of a lot easier on the eye in Hampstead than Camberwell!”

  She opened her mail – a red phone bill, a blue gas bill, two bank statements in varying shades of red and black, a postcard from Caroline in New York and another from her friends Helen and Judith in Naxos.

  Hot, wet, delicious – and that’s just us.

  Hope love’s young dream is still sleeping soundly! H&J xxx

  She took another sip of her strong coffee and opened the last letter. Inside the A4 manilla envelope was an old photo of a young man smiling directly at the camera, a photocopied newspaper cutting and a small envelope. Nothing else. Saz unfolded the cutting – “Eminent physician Maxwell North, arriving with his sculptress wife Caron, at the Arts Ball.” The picture showed a seriously beautiful couple. He was obviously the same man as in the photo, twenty years on, with shorter hair and no smile. Still mystified, Saz took the cutting inside to spread it out on the kitchen table, ripping the envelope open as she walked.

  “This is more like it!”

  Inside the envelope were twenty crisp new fifty-pound notes.

  “Goody! That’ll pay the phone bill!”

  There was nothing more. No address, no letter, not even a note to tell her where it came from. She checked the big envelope and saw it had a WC1 postmark.

  “No help there either. OK, I’ll make some preliminary enquiries about Mr and Mrs Beautiful North, pay the phone bill and delight the bank with the rest. Manna from WC1 – well done Saz, yet another morning’s splendid work!”

  She then turned the answerphone on, the telephone off and went back to bed as she usually did, to sleep soundly until one o’clock when she could enjoy the afternoon news in the glad knowledge that the horrifyingly addictive morning television she so despised wouldn’t accidently catch her unawares and force her into a wasted morning of minor soap stars and new breastfeeding techniques.

  CHAPTER 5

  She didn’t have to wait long for further information. By the time the alarm went off at 1 p.m., she had several messages, one from Molly which brought a smile to her lips and a good glow to certain other parts of her body.

  “My right hand has a sense memory of your smooth hip imbedded in it. I can’t seem to hold a pen properly – is there any known cure? I’ll expect you for a consultation at my place tonight – I don’t mind if we have to invest in some serious research. Enough of the doctor stuff – usual time, I’ll be waiting for you. Bring beverage.”

  One from her bank manager which brought neither smile nor glow, and one other which made her even more excited than Molly’s.

  “Ms Martin, I hope you received the correspondence this morning. I would like to engage your services to investigate Dr North. This morning’s cash payment is the first of many – as many as it takes
. I will provide you with more material at the appropriate time. In the meantime I suggest you start gathering information on Dr North. He’s a very interesting man.”

  Saz took the tape out of her answermachine and replaced it with a new one, she then played the answerphone tape again on her little portable tape recorder. The voice was that of a woman, indeterminate age and transatlantic. Either an American who’d lived in Britain – probably London – for a while or vice versa. Rounded vowels, rolled R’s. Saz wrote north and the date on an envelope, put the tape in it and placed the sealed envelope in the lockable drawer of her immaculately tidy writing desk. She then called Molly. While she was waiting for her to be paged, Saz looked through the article again. When Molly finally came to the phone Saz asked,

  “Know anything about a Dr Maxwell North?”

  “What’s that got to do with my inability to hold a pen?”

  “Nothing. Not much to do with my glorious, if somewhat over-rated, hip-bones either, but could have a lot to do with why I’m going to be late for dinner tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  “Just answer the question Moll, Maxwell North – any ideas?”

  “Upper class, rich, American…”

  “Where from?”

  “I don’t know, Ivy League, East Coast, why?”

  “Just a little project. How do I find out more about him?”

  “Personally or professionally?”

  “Both.”

  “His professional life is no problem, I can get you a career record from my old college, he’s taught there a bit and they’re always printing stuff about him in the college magazine.”

  “And personally?”

  “That’s more your department isn’t it?”

  “Mmm. When can you get the stuff for me?”

  “If you get off the phone, I’ll call the college librarian, she could probably fax a couple of biogs through by this evening.”

  “She’ll get it for you just like that?”

  “We have an understanding. Or should I say had?”