Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 8

by Michael Kelly

  Once she’s back at The Mariners Reef, the very moment she comes through the front entrance, she’s aware of the vibrations, the sense that every room in the building is now occupied. She stops and listens. No voices or footsteps on the stairs. The reception desk is deserted. On the wall above, there’s a picture in oils of an orchard. It reminds her of the frontispiece of Robert Tamar’s book. Although it’s clearly by another hand, the angle of the boughs and the gentle rise of the slope beyond suggests that it may be a different view of the same place. The artist has failed to evoke the strangely buoyant quality, a sense of light lifting off every surface, captured in Tamar’s work. From where she’s standing, the painting appears unsigned. Is the place popular with local artists? Perhaps the proprietor will know.

  As she climbs the staircase, she can hear the subdued whispering, the softest tissues of sound, from behind the closed door. Are the promised party of schoolchildren at last in residence? If so they are either far from boisterous by nature or afraid of their teachers.

  On reaching her room, she finds a key in the lock. The door is slightly ajar. A cleaner? She pushes and walks in. A young boy with a narrow white face is standing in the middle of the carpet with his back to the window. His features seem unnecessarily long yet not too wide for his scrawny body. Unkempt hair with the grey-black sheen of pencil marks spills onto his forehead. The large green eyes are set too far apart, although the nose between them is small. He appears to be about ten.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Instead of replying, he brushes the hair back from his forehead to reveal a bright gash, evidently deep, the blood almost congealed, but not set quite as firm as jelly.

  “That looks…” She is about to say ‘nasty’, but that seems too trivial to express the severity of the wound, which is surely in need of immediate treatment. “Shall I see if I can find something for it?”

  He nods, only moving his heads very slightly, as if fearful that too violent a motion will break open the injury.

  “I’ll see what I can find. But someone will have to take you to a doctor… or the hospital. You need to get that looked at properly.”

  She goes into the bathroom and opens her overnight bag. Somewhere amongst the sponges, toothpaste and make-up she knows there are plasters, but possibly none are likely to prove large enough to be suitable. At least she has some antiseptic cream, but it will have to be applied with great care.

  “How did you do it?” she calls out, while continuing to rummage.

  In reply there’s nothing but a rustling, which could be a weak attempt at articulation, the breath hardly able to move across the tongue. She finds the tube she’s been looking for and returns. The boy’s vanished, as if he were no more than a temporary shadow, but for a second there’s a suggestion of a dark scar in the air, a freakish alteration in the light or a memory of wound that was real.

  *

  The next morning it takes her a while to work out that the breakfast room is in the basement. As she makes her way down the staircase, she hears a continuous clink of cutlery and echoing conversations in a cavernous space growing louder. At the bottom there’s a corridor with pictures on the wall. She stops to look at them, but none of them are of the white cottage, the orchard and the coast; the majority are nothing more than cloudscapes or of rock pools with the sky reflected in them. She gives one more than a fleeting inspection. A portrait of a man, possibly the proprietor, it’s clumsily executed. The subject’s hands appear either heavily bandaged or clad in oversized white gloves. Then she’s aware that while she’s been examining the painting something has changed. The sounds from the breakfast room have stopped. She opens the door. Inside, it’s much smaller than anticipated: a few tables, no more than four or five, a sideboard with a selection of cereals and a hotplate. There’s a window with dark brown earth and gravel pressed against it. Presumably this floor must once have been above ground. What caused it to subside?

  After she’s helped herself to cereal, she realises that there’s a couple in the room. They must have come shortly after her, and yet from the dirty plates in front them they appear to have finished their meal. The man, elderly and with a porridge-pale face, looks at her and she nods at him, but in return she receives nothing but an unblinking stare from cold blue eyes. Once she’s seated they resume a conversation that they must have started earlier.

  “…fell out of the air. Engine failure, it’s believed.”

  The woman’s speaking with a kind of subdued excitement. Her face is whiter than her husband’s.

  “So there’ll have been flames then?”

  “Yes, there were flames. On impact. There always are.”

  “And burns?”

  “We can expect them to have been burnt.”

  The old man nods, evidently satisfied with this assessment.

  As there’s no sign of any service, Samantha helps herself to a second coffee then leaves. Once again, there’s no one on the desk. This time she decides to walk to the centre of the town. It’s another wonderful day, the sky a lucid blue, unsullied by cloud.

  Far above, there’s a solitary hot air balloon, hanging like an inverted exclamation mark and almost motionless. The centre is further away than it seemed the previous day—or the taxi diver must have taken a short cut. The buildings on both sides are the same type of guest houses and down-at-heel boutique hotels that dominate the bay in the other direction: Fair Breeze, Captain’s Cabin, The Galleon, The Haven, The Safe Harbour. There are no private residences. For a moment, she panics. Does the whole town consist of nothing more than substandard accommodation for tourists? Then she reaches a crossroads. On the far side there are chip shops, restaurants with garish seaside frontages, an art gallery and in its front window and on an easel a preposterous painting of a mermaid. Then there’s an estate agent. Samantha stops to look at the properties for sale. None of them have prices listed, although there are a few with stickers slapped on proclaiming they’ve been sold. Inconspicuous amongst the four-square country houses and spacious apartments, she spots it: a photograph of the white cottage set in its orchard, a sliver of the shingle just visible below the front garden. No pictures of the interior, but a few bald details: the property is for rent—no figure specified; the usual rooms listed; central heating. Not even the name has been given. A bell rings gently as she enters. To her surprise, the couple she’d noticed at breakfast are in there. They’re sitting in chairs set hard against the wall, as in a dentist’s waiting room. Although they both glance at her, neither of them gives a glint of recognition. There’s no one behind the counter. She presses a buzzer and looks around the room: pictures of properties, listings, a grey filing cabinet, a table with a kettle on it. The couple are now talking, in low tones that nevertheless carry clearly.

  “… there was nothing they could do.”

  “And head on, you say?”

  “The fog played its part.”

  “You’d have thought the driver would have swerved.”

  “A cliff face one way—a sheer drop the other.”

  Instead of looking at each other, the couple stare straight ahead, their voices almost emotionless. In spite of the favourable weather, they are both wearing gull-grey raincoats buttoned up to the chin.

  “Can I help?”

  She swings round. A man with a head of tight black curls and a flat, block-like face is standing on the other side of the counter.

  “Oh… yes. It’s about a property in your window. For rent. Unfortunately I… didn’t see the name… but it’s a white cottage, with an orchard.”

  “I know the one.”

  “I’d be interested to learn more about it. It wouldn’t, by any chance, have any connections with the writer and painter Robert Tamar?”

  “He owns it.”

  “Owns? But surely he’s long dead?”

  “It’s correct to say Mr Tamar’s no longer in residence. And the family who were there have… been moved out.”

  The man’s voice
is quietly insistent: a churchwarden’s undertone…

  “Would it possible for you to take me to the cottage?”

  “Not today.”

  “Is it in good order?”

  “That’s not easy to ascertain at this distance.”

  “Perhaps it would be best if you took me over there tomorrow. Will you pick me up? At about 11 o’clock. I’m staying at the Mariners Reef.”

  The man inclines his head, a movement that almost qualifies as a nod, and mutters what sounds like a syllable of assent.

  “So that’s settled. I’ll be outside the guest house on the hour.”

  A tremor runs through him, causing his head to droop for an instant. Agreement or the onset of a neurological disorder?

  “Well, I’ll see you then,” she adds.

  This time he sits down and logs onto his computer. As she turns to leave, she notices that the elderly couple are no longer there. Somehow they have dispersed without a sound, as though they are less than mist.

  *

  Samantha wakes up slightly later than usual. From her bedroom, the street with the palm trees on the far side and the curve of the bay are an enticement to step into the morning.

  She does not want to go down to the basement for breakfast. It occurs to her that when searching for cafés she has been looking in the wrong direction. There must be somewhere across the road on the seafront where she can get a cup of coffee.

  As she steps out onto the corridor, a door opens at the far end and two boys step out.

  One has an arm that dangles uselessly by his side; the other has a head that appears to have been crushed slightly out of shape, although there is no sign of blood. Both have the same pallor as the child she’d found in her room. They look at her with no obvious expression before making off in the direction of the staircase. She’s reminded that she hasn’t told the proprietor about the previous day’s intrusion, but then she hasn’t seen him since the day of her arrival. Perhaps there will be someone at the desk. She looks up and down the corridor. If all the rooms apart from hers are occupied by schoolboys, they’ve been commendably quiet. But then something appears to have happened to them. A misadventure en route that requires them to rest?

  Once she’s outside and walking along a promenade some distance from the guest house she realises she’s forgotten to see if there was someone at the reception desk. She glances at her watch. Enough time for a walk before going back to the Mariners Reef to meet the estate agent.

  There are some steps leading down from the sea wall onto the beach. The pale-yellow sand is soft and inviting. It will already be slightly warm, although the sun is still low in the sky. In the distance, a group of people, their sex unidentifiable from so far off, are looking up at a cliff face. Something about the way they are standing suggests they are holding clipboards.

  At the bottom, she finds a café built into the wall. More than a mere kiosk, it has a counter and three tables and chairs. A parasol with a semi-circular bench stands just outside. The geologist is there, a cup of coffee and folded paper in front of him. He waves at her to join him.

  “How was your conference?”

  “Fine. But our departure… has been delayed. Some of my colleagues,” he says, gesturing to the figures further up the beach, “are doing a little field work to fill in the time.”

  Once she’s ordered she decides to join him. It’s been a while since she’s spoken to someone who isn’t either hostile or evasive.

  “What are they doing?”

  “They’re looking at the strata exposed in the cliff face over there. Hoping to get some idea if it represents true geological time or is just some kind of trick.”

  “A trick? Why on earth would it be that?”

  “Well, there have always been people who believe that the deity created everything just like that, with a snap of his celestial fingers, but many of these features have the appearance of being created separately, over unimaginable aeons.”

  Wearing the same green jacket, he hardly seems dressed for the beach. His brown brogues have lost their shine. Now that she is closer to him his skin appears not merely tanned and rough but slightly scorched.

  “I see. I remember you said that the geology here is very varied.”

  “That’s correct. But what we’re now beginning to wonder is whether it isn’t simply an illustration.”

  She allows this observation the reproachful silence she always accords to the incomprehensible. The geologist, now disinclined to elaborate, is gazing across the bay at a ferry on the horizon... She’s not sure whether it’s sailing towards the mainland or on its way back to the island. She watches, hoping it will either grow larger or diminish, but it appears motionless, fastened to the margin where sky and water meet.

  A banner headline on the newspaper piques her interest. Although it’s upside down, she’s able to read it: COACH PARTY IN CRASH. TWENTY CHILDREN KILLED. Are the boys in the Mariners Reef the survivors of this accident?

  “Do you know this coastline well?” she asks, taking Tamar’s book out of her bag.

  He turns towards her. His expression is strangely remote, as if he’s been so absorbed in his contemplation of the ferry that he’s having difficulty in adjusting to what’s near at hand. He has no eyelashes.

  “No, only a little. We went out on a boat yesterday, but we didn’t have time to reach the far side of the island.”

  “You don’t happen to recognise this?” She shows him the frontispiece and one other illustration of the white cottage.

  “Well, yes. It’s on the bay on the far side of the promontory. There are very few houses on that stretch of the coast. I can’t think why.”

  “And so I could walk there?”

  “Assuming time’s no object when you’re holiday.” Now he’s looking back towards the geologists, who have moved slightly closer to the cliffs. “I wonder if I should join them. They might not welcome it.”

  “Really?”

  “Weeks ago I chartered the plane that brought them here, but they seem to resent the fact that I arrived separately.”

  “That’s very unfair.”

  “Apparently the flight was a… difficult one. As some sort of payback, they’ve taken to claiming I’m dead.”

  “Ridiculous!”

  “Someone saw it in a newspaper and then told the others.”

  “Well, you look in pretty good shape to me.”

  But does he? There’s something about the texture of his skin that suggests it’s either burnt or weathered by many months of medical treatment. He’s still wrapped up in heavy clothes, although there’s no edge to the breeze. She puts the book back in her bag and stands up.

  As she’s close to the cottage, she might as well go over there. There was something about the estate agent’s manner that implied he’d no intention of keeping their appointment.

  “Thanks,” she says. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  He’s still absorbed in his contemplation of the ferry, fixed on the skyline; there’s no reply.

  Once back on the road she wonders whether reaching the white cottage will be easy. The geologist saw it from a boat. It’s possible she’ll face a steep climb down a track.

  Even though it’s the season, the hotels and guest houses to her left are so numerous it’s scarcely credible that there are sufficient souls to fill them. The names have taken on an aura of inevitability: Cliff House Hotel, The Sea Spray B & B, Eternal Waves, Avalon Island Apartments, The Anchor, The Shoreline Shadow, The Tide’s Reach. She must be walking quicker than she’d realised for the ferry is no longer visible. Or perhaps, it has been moving all the time; not vanishing, it has now crossed the horizon to sail under a different light.

  Then before she’s fully aware of it the guest houses have been superseded by short springy grass on chalk cliff tops. A delirium of sunshine hazes the path ahead, but the sky’s so determinedly blue that it seems on the point of solidifying, becoming something that could break. Certainly the light seems
to be bouncing back off it in a conspiracy to blur and soften edges.

  As soon as she sees the lane down to the white cottage she recalls it. Of course, she’s been down here many times. The bend that conceals the last stretch of the track down to the cottage, the lie of the camber beneath her feet, are familiar. And now there it is, straight ahead: the white cottage, the orchards with the apples almost luminous in day’s gleam, the shingle that traps the sea-whisper. The front door’s open, but then why shouldn’t it be? This place is her home.

  It’s once she steps over the threshold that she notices the alteration. At last she achieves some sense of why she left. Robert Tamar’s paintings still hang on the wall. How could she have forgotten that she owned every picture in the book? The furniture is as she left it. No, it is something about the incorrigible depth of the silence. The sense that whatever joy was once in the house has fled. She switches on the radio: “It is believed that hours after his wife left him, he slit the throats of his two children before turning the gun on himself. His wife has not been seen since she caught the ferry at…”

  She turns the voice off.

  Now she remembers how she boarded the ferry to the mainland. A foul morning, the sea’s turbulent green; the spray rising as she walked out onto the deck, even though they’d been told to stay inside, safe on the right side of the rain-streaked windows. So how had she found herself returning to the island, as if it was a place she’d never known? To a day suffused with the innocence of first holidays, beaches with fine warm sands, the salt air heady with adventures? Then she recalls how she walked on the slippery deck to the rails. Below her the waves, the foam webbed like scar tissue. The solution lies in the sea, that was what she’d told herself.