Death and the Seaside

by Alison Moore

  After finishing her cigarette, she went back inside, locked the door and went up to her room, where there was an air of mouldering, as if something was damp. She touched her hand to the carpet, and to the wallpaper, pressing down, but she could not find the source of the swampy smell.

  She climbed into her bed, and went to sleep.

  14

  It was the longest day of the year, and Bonnie had spent it in the backyard, working on her story. Her laptop was plugged into a socket in the kitchen, the lead stretching out to the deckchair in which she was sitting. She had been working with the laptop balanced on her knees, and it had seemed inside out, to be sitting in the garden, typing; she had felt like she was in that short story of Raymond Carver’s, ‘Why Don’t You Dance?’, in which all the furniture is out in the yard, and a boy turns on the television set and sits down on the sofa to watch.

  Now she had finished for the day. She had closed her laptop and propped it against the side of the deckchair. She climbed into her bed, and went to sleep. Bonnie wondered if that was a reasonable place to stop. She felt as if half the scenes in her story ended with Susan going back to sleep, as if there were some force in the narrative relentlessly drawing Susan to her bed; as if, in daylight, Susan was only ever marking time until she could go back to her bed and sleep; as if day was only ever leading to night, although of course it was.

  In Bonnie’s own backyard, afternoon had become evening. She was just wondering what to do with herself when Sylvia came through the passageway. ‘Oh, Bonnie!’ said Sylvia, when she saw Bonnie sitting there. ‘Don’t you normally have a shift now? Why aren’t you at work?’

  ‘I didn’t feel like going in,’ said Bonnie, glancing at her watch. She ought to have been at the Lab an hour ago.

  Sylvia noticed the laptop leaning against Bonnie’s deckchair. ‘Have you written more of your story?’ she asked.

  ‘A little bit more,’ said Bonnie. ‘It’s still not finished.’

  ‘When can I read it?’ asked Sylvia.

  ‘When it’s finished,’ said Bonnie. This was what she had said after writing the previous instalment, and Sylvia had responded by badgering Bonnie until she handed the pages over to her after all. Bonnie half-expected a rerun of the episode now.

  Sylvia gave her a smile. ‘All right,’ she said. She turned to look at the planters. The clematis and the wisteria were not doing well. ‘What have you done to the climbers?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Bonnie.

  ‘I’ll give them some water,’ said Sylvia, moving towards the back door. ‘May I use the kitchen?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bonnie.

  Sylvia went inside and turned on the tap. After the water had been running for a little while, it occurred to Bonnie that if Sylvia was looking around for a jug, there wasn’t one. She was about to get up and go inside when the tap was turned off and Sylvia came out carrying the kettle. She watered the climbers, and said to Bonnie, ‘Have you remembered to print out your story?’

  ‘I can’t at the moment,’ said Bonnie. ‘My printer’s not working. Or at least it isn’t recognising my laptop.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sylvia, emptying the kettle into the last of the planters.

  ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ asked Bonnie, preparing to move.

  ‘I can’t stop,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ She returned the kettle to the kitchen. ‘I’ve sorted out the accommodation for our holiday. I was going to leave you a note. I’ve got us rooms above the Hook and Parrot.’

  ‘Have you?’ said Bonnie. ‘I didn’t think they did rooms.’

  ‘They do now,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘I really need a ground-floor room,’ said Bonnie.

  ‘You need to be in a room above the Hook and Parrot,’ said Sylvia, ‘because that’s where Susan stays.’

  ‘I don’t actually say it’s the Hook and Parrot,’ said Bonnie, ‘or that it’s Seaton.’

  ‘But it is,’ said Sylvia, ‘really.’ She gave her climbers one last disappointed look. ‘We’ll get that story of yours finished,’ she added, and she disappeared down the passageway again.

  The sinking sun shone through the bare trellis, leaving the backyard crosshatched with bars of shadow, behind which Bonnie sat for a little while longer, before going inside.

  She ate some leftovers, then got into bed and began reading Rebecca again, much of which she had forgotten. She remembered the stark ending, but not how it came about.

  From her bed, through the gap in the curtains, Bonnie could see the sky, in which, at eleven o’clock, there was still some light. It was not quite like daylight – it was not a sun-in-the-sky kind of light, or it was at least as if a raincloud were covering the sun – but the sky was still a kind of blue. The street lamps were on, though, as well. Even an hour later, there was still a dusky light in the sky, as if someone had forgotten to bring the dimmer switch all the way down.

  While she was reading, she drifted off, and when she opened her eyes again she did not know how much time had passed. The starlit sky was cornflower blue. At three-something a.m., when the night still did not seem really to have got started, the birds began singing. It was as if whoever was in charge of the lighting desk and the sound desk in the control booth had made a mistake, had fallen asleep on the job. Bonnie dozed again, and when she woke, the sun was shining in between the drawn curtains. It was the morning after the longest day – it was downhill now, her grandmother would have said, all the way to winter.

  15

  Over the next few weeks, Bonnie saw very little of Sylvia, so little that she started to think that something might be up, that perhaps she had completely misread Sylvia. ‘I’m getting paranoid!’ Bonnie said to Fiona. ‘She hardly ever comes round now, and when I do see her she’s dashing off somewhere. If she’s gone off the idea of us going away together, maybe you and I could do something instead.’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ said Fiona. ‘I’ve already made plans.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Bonnie.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ said Fiona. ‘But I am going.’

  The Lab was not a place where anyone stayed for long. Bonnie was well aware that Fiona hated the place, and Mr Carr. She asked Fiona how long she was going to stay there for, but Fiona would not say just when she would leave or what plans she had made.

  ‘How about you?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘I’ll probably stay,’ said Bonnie, although she disliked it too.

  On a Friday in July, a few days before Bonnie was due to go on holiday with Sylvia, Bonnie watched a matinee showing of a science fiction film before heading for her evening job. As she passed the ‘CUNT’ bench, on which two women were sitting, talking, one of them said, ‘Just quit.’

  Bonnie bought a chocolate bar and ate it while she walked to the Lab. Halfway down a quiet side street, she became aware of two or more men, wearing dark clothes, baseball caps and shades, following some distance behind her. They were like something escaped from the film she had just seen, and she walked a little faster. When she looked back over her shoulder, the men had gone.

  Fiona was already in the staff room. She was sitting down while Mr Carr stood over her, with his shirt open, showing off the tattoo on his chest. When Bonnie came into the room, Mr Carr rebuttoned his shirt, although Bonnie caught sight of the legend, or part of it, tattooed across his broad chest: I am the master. It reminded Bonnie of her student housemate’s recitation: ‘I am the master of my fate.’ It was from an old poem. That was probably what Mr Carr’s tattoo said as well: I am the master of my fate. Perhaps they were, she thought; or perhaps they were like Number Six in The Prisoner, trapped in the Village and insisting, ‘I am a free man!’

  ‘Go on, then,’ he said to the two of them. ‘Get to work.’

  Bonnie cleaned her corridors, and was on her way back to the staff room when she saw Fiona coming from the
store room. She could see that Fiona had already collected her belongings, and as they neared one another, Fiona, with a spring in her step, said, ‘I won’t see you on Monday.’

  ‘No,’ said Bonnie. As far as she knew, she was still going on holiday. ‘But I’ll be back at the end of the week. I’ll see you then.’

  ‘No,’ said Fiona, ‘I won’t see you again.’

  ‘Are you quitting?’ asked Bonnie.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Fiona, passing her by with a grin, without stopping, turning her head to say, ‘I have to go. My friends are waiting for me.’

  Bonnie had to go to the staff room to pick up her jacket and her bag. She was not looking forward to seeing Mr Carr. She had dragged her feet over asking for time off for her holiday. Mr Carr did not like it when people asked for time off, and Bonnie had continually failed to start the conversation, until eventually it had got too late to ask. If he saw her, he would say to her, ‘See you on Monday, don’t be late,’ and Bonnie would have to mumble something in reply. Under her breath, she said, ‘Please, please, please.’

  Mr Carr was not in the staff room. Bonnie collected her things and headed towards the gate. She would still have to face him when she got back. Although, in fact, she had started to think about quitting. She would make that decision later though. Right now, she needed to do her packing, and nothing was clean. She had been meaning to go to the launderette but she had not got around to it.

  As she left the complex, she half-expected the men in black, the men in dark glasses, to be there, waiting, but she did not see them.

  She put in her earphones. She had abandoned the language course. Instead, she half-listened to music as she wandered home.

  She passed a gym with posters in the windows that said ‘JOIN NOW’. She had been a member of this gym, despite the fact that she had never really been able to afford the fee. She had only ever been inside once, to use the swimming pool, and although she had always meant to go back, somehow it had never happened. She had already signed their forms though – they had her bank details – and so her membership money had been direct-debited from her bank account at the start of each month for the rest of the year. She ought to swim more though, she thought; she ought to get fit. She ought to join again.

  For supper, Bonnie worked her way through a family pack of crisps. She opened up her laptop and discovered that the connection to her printer was working again. The elves, her grandmother would have said, had been working their magic. As a child, Bonnie had been troubled by the thought of these elves who let themselves into people’s private rooms and worked their strange magic, fixed their shoes in the middle of the night, and then left again without being seen, although you knew that they had been there.

  She printed out the latest part of her story and put it away in the desk drawer with the rest. She finished the crisps and left her laptop to go to sleep. ‘But what happens next?’ she said to herself. Where could she go from where she was? And where was she? Susan suspected Joe of coming into her room while she was sleeping, but that was not likely to be the case, reckoned Bonnie as she brushed her teeth. And Susan had been thinking about Halloween coming, thought Bonnie as she put on her nightie, or about whether or not it would be coming to the seaside. And then she climbed into her bed, and went to sleep.

  16

  Waking late on the Saturday morning, it occurred to Bonnie that she had not told her parents that she was going away. They would want to know, she thought. She would not mention, though, that she was thinking of quitting her job. She would have to not say that. Do not say that, she told herself.

  The landline was in her bedroom; her telephone was on the bedside table. She would be able to make or take an emergency call in the middle of the night without leaving her bed. She had an old-fashioned style of telephone, the type with a dial on the front and the receiver in a cradle. Her mother had worried that it would take too long for her to dial 999, but Bonnie had explained that the dial was just for show, that it was really a push-button model. It had been sold as a novelty telephone, which made it sound as if it would not actually work, as if it were just a prop. It was black, and whenever she used it, she felt as if she were a femme fatale in a Hitchcock film, although she mainly used it to call her mother, or to call for pizza.

  She phoned home and spoke to her father, who said, ‘I’ll put your mother on.’

  When her mother came on the line, Bonnie said to her, ‘I forgot to tell you that I’m going away on Monday. I’m going to the seaside with Sylvia for a few days.’

  ‘Who’s Sylvia?’ asked her mother.

  ‘My landlady,’ said Bonnie. ‘You met her at my birthday meal.’

  ‘Why are you going away with your landlady?’ asked her mother.

  ‘She suggested it,’ said Bonnie, ‘and I said yes. We’re going to Devon.’

  ‘What about your job?’ asked her mother. ‘Have they given you time off?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Bonnie. ‘But I was thinking of quitting anyway.’

  ‘Oh Bonnie,’ said her mother. ‘You’re going to quit, again? Listen . . . Are you listening?’

  Half an hour after putting the phone down, Bonnie’s mother was at the back door. She had brought Bonnie’s father along too.

  ‘Talk to her,’ said Bonnie’s mother.

  Bonnie’s father said to Bonnie, ‘You haven’t got an ounce of sense.’ He positioned himself in the doorway that led from the kitchen to the lounge, leaning against the frame.

  Bonnie’s mother had also brought along a shopping bag full of food, as well as her apron and recipes, and clean plates and cutlery. ‘Because you don’t eat properly,’ she said, unpacking everything onto the kitchen counter. When Bonnie had still been living at home, she had tried every now and again to make the family meals, but her efforts had never gone right. She did not have the knack of getting everything onto the plates at the same time, so something was always going cold, while something else was still half-raw or half-frozen. Her father would eye with great suspicion the dishes that she made. Her mother would at least try things before saying that she was not all that hungry. Bonnie’s attempts had invariably ended with a trip to the fish and chip shop.

  While Bonnie’s mother was preparing the lunch, Sylvia came into the backyard, looked in through the kitchen window and opened the door.

  ‘Perhaps Sylvia can talk some sense into you,’ said Bonnie’s mother, turning to Sylvia to say, ‘She’s thinking of quitting her job.’

  ‘Is she?’ said Sylvia, coming into the kitchen and closing the door behind her, and Bonnie felt as if she were at the centre of some kind of intervention.

  ‘I’m making lunch,’ said Bonnie’s mother to Sylvia. ‘You’ll stay, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ said Sylvia. ‘I just popped by to speak to Bonnie. I didn’t realise she had visitors.’

  ‘Well, have a drink at least. Bonnie, nobody has a drink.’

  Bonnie made a cup of tea for her father, but Sylvia declined. ‘I can’t stay long,’ she said. ‘I just want a word.’

  Bonnie took her father and Sylvia through to the lounge. It was the weekend of the Wimbledon finals, and Saturday’s match was due to start. Bonnie asked her father if he wanted to watch it. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘It’s only the ladies playing this afternoon.’ He tried his tea, pulled a face, and said, ‘So, you’re going down to Devon on Monday, are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bonnie.

  Her father looked at Sylvia and said to her, ‘I hope you’re doing the driving. Don’t let that one behind the wheel!’ He pointed at Bonnie. ‘If you drive,’ he said to Bonnie, ‘you’ll crash! Or else clear the roads first,’ and he put a hand up to his mouth, making it into a loudhailer through which he bellowed, ‘Clear the roads!’ He sat back, laughing.

  Bonnie’s mother came in, brushing her hands off on the front of her apron, which said, �
�I’M THE BOSS!’ She said to Bonnie’s father, ‘Have you spoken to her about quitting her job?’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll struggle on without her,’ said Bonnie’s father.

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I mean she’s talking about quitting, again, and with nothing lined up, nothing to go to.’

  Bonnie remembered then to say to her mother, ‘Sylvia said you used to know each other, when I was little.’

  ‘I thought you looked familiar,’ said Bonnie’s mother, but at the same time she was clearly struggling to place Sylvia.

  Bonnie said to Sylvia, ‘How did you say you knew Mum?’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Sylvia, ‘I wonder if I made a mistake about that?’

  ‘No,’ said Bonnie’s mother, looking hard at Sylvia. ‘You do look familiar. But I can’t think . . . Which school did you go to?’

  Twenty questions later, Bonnie’s mother was still none the wiser, and she had to go back to the kitchen to see to the meal.

  ‘She’s failed her test three times,’ said Bonnie’s father to Sylvia. ‘Three times.’ He held up three fingers.

  ‘I passed in the end,’ said Bonnie.

  ‘They must have been desperate to see the back of you,’ said her father.

  ‘Shall we watch the tennis?’ said Bonnie, but her father had the remote control.

  ‘Where’s your lavatory?’ he asked, and when Bonnie directed him through the kitchen, he took the remote control with him.

  Now that they were alone, Sylvia turned to Bonnie and said, ‘Are you all set for Monday?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Bonnie, who had not actually started packing but planned to do so first thing in the morning, after visiting the launderette.

  ‘Have you managed to print out that new section of your Seatown story yet?’

  ‘I have,’ said Bonnie. ‘The printer’s working again.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Sylvia. ‘And have you written any more?’

  ‘No,’ said Bonnie. ‘I was going to think about it last night, but I fell asleep instead.’