I Do Not Sleep

by Judy Finnigan

  We walked out onto the porch, Queenie bringing tea towels to dry off the chairs. I brought out the cushions I’d hastily removed the previous evening when the storm began to crackle in the distance. Len sat down with his Scotch and lit his pipe. Queenie and I poured more wine, and settled on the porch with sighs of contentment.

  ‘Cornwall is so amazing,’ I sighed. ‘Just when you least expect it, everything is perfect again.’

  Len turned to look at me, and leaned deeper into his chair. I’d left the front door open, and the soft candlelight and fierce blaze of the fire looked safe and welcoming behind me.

  Lulled by the moonlight and the wine, I snuggled back into my cushions and asked, with the faintest hint of insolence, ‘So. What’s a Charmer, Len? Are you a sort of magician, or a white witch?’ I smiled.

  Len puffed on his pipe, silent and perfectly at ease. He raised his eyebrows at me and I immediately felt a fool.

  I finished my attempt at conversation; Len sipped his whisky, and Queenie began a sort of formal, self-conscious introduction. This seemed ridiculous, since we’d all just shared supper, but I soon realised it was necessary for both of them. Queenie was cross with me for being sceptical and needed to bolster her friend’s credentials. And Len? Well, Len just needed to drift for a moment, zone out; as I watched him smoke, his eyes contentedly closed, I tried not to think about school kids, students, Ben and my boys, puffing on spliffs, turning on and tuning out. But Len needed no illegal substance, just his tobacco and Scotch. He sat on the porch, wheezing slightly, smiling gently, rocking back and forth on his chair.

  Queenie said, apologetically but also full of self-importance, that she’d told Len about Joey and his accident–also that his body had never been found.

  She’d told him about me too, my anguish; my conviction that my son wasn’t dead, and my belief that he was begging me to find him; that Joey was not at the bottom of the sea, but trapped in a place from which he was desperate to escape.

  I felt a bit upset. Joey’s accident and my grief were hardly news, and yet I felt the story was mine to tell, not Queenie’s.

  From Len there was more silence, more rocking and supping. I wondered if he was getting drunk. I looked at Queenie, raising my eyebrows and signalling that I was not enjoying this. She shook her head, raised her fingers to her lips and mimed Shh!

  ‘Look, Queenie,’ I said quietly but truculently, ‘all I want to know is what exactly is a Charmer? You’re the one who keeps telling me about them, and to be honest I’m still none the wiser.’

  ‘Molly,’ said Queenie, trying to sound lofty but starting to get annoyed, ‘You’ve been coming down to Cornwall for years. Surely you know what Charmers do?’

  ‘Actually, no, I don’t. I’m sorry, Len. I don’t want to be rude, and it’s lovely to meet you. But to be honest, this is all getting a bit much. Queenie’s right about one thing; I’m desperately unhappy about my son Joey. I’ve never been back to Cornwall since he disappeared, but my family persuaded me to come here this summer. It was meant to be a healing process, but for me it’s turned into a nightmare. Since I came here, he’s come back to me–he needs me; I have to find him, and if I don’t, well, I think I shall probably lose my mind.’

  Queenie opened her mouth again, but Len stopped her speaking with a peremptory gesture.

  ‘Molly,’ he said, and his voice was gentle. ‘You say your family meant this stay to be a healing process. Well, they call the likes of me “Charmers”, and that’s what we do. We cure. We have a gift, God-given, not magic or witchcraft but holy, which tells us what to do to stop people hurting. Not just people, mind you; animals too. There are those who say we cast spells, or charms, to end suffering or bad luck. And yes, I suppose it’s all a little medieval; we use stones, bits of material, people’s hair, whatever, to help the spell along. We write down incantations too; the power of language to soothe suffering humans has always been very strong. But to be honest, although I’ll do all of that to make people feel better, I know that some of us, just a few, are rooted not only in nature, but in something else, something just as profound, every bit as fundamental, and yet more difficult to understand. The supernatural, we’d call it. And I don’t mean witchcraft, although the old belief in Wicca, using nature’s own magic to help prevent misfortune, is at the root of what we do.

  ‘The point is, Molly, that we try to help. And I’d like to help you.’ Len paused and poured himself more whisky from his hipflask.

  ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘I remember what happened when your son’s boat was found wrecked near Looe. Everyone was talking about you, how you were staying in your boy’s cottage in Polperro and used to walk the coastal path every day, down past Talland beach, and on over the path to Looe. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘That time is just a blur to me. I do vaguely remember walking every day, as if I was possessed, but not where I was going to, or why.’

  ‘Do you remember the place you always used to stop?’

  I shrugged. ‘No. Well, I suppose Looe, to get a cab back to Polperro? It’s a long walk there and back.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But no, you never even went into Looe, and you always turned straight round after you’d finished looking at… the place you sought, and walked back to Polperro. The whole trip took you at least a couple of hours, depending on how long you stopped.’

  ‘Stopped where?’ I asked sharply. I knew this was important.

  ‘You stopped at a place on the footpath where you could get a good view of the island. Looe Island, just a couple of miles offshore from the mainland. You really don’t remember?’

  ‘No. I’ve never heard of it.’

  Queenie leaned forward. ‘Oh, Molly, you must know Looe Island. You can’t miss it.’

  My heart began to thump. I tried very hard to remember an island near Looe. For the life of me I could not.

  ‘What’s it like?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s small,’ Len said, ‘only about a mile in circumference, twenty-two and a half acres in all. It’s very ancient; geologically the rocks in the area were laid down some three hundred and fifty million years ago. It has a very interesting history.’ Len paused. ‘It’s also known as St George’s Island. But its original name, back in the earliest times, barely remembered now even among folk who’ve lived here for generations but fortunately passed down in ancient scripts, is the Island of St Michael of Lammana. That dates back to the thirteenth century.’

  Lammana. The name wound its way through my head. I felt absolutely rigid with terror. My head ached, my stomach filled with sourness. I wanted to vomit. And then there was clarity; and I found I knew.

  St Michael of Lammana was the place I dreamed about, the place from which Joey’s desperate voice called. Mother. Mother. Find me. Find me.

  I asked Len to excuse me. I needed to go to bed. Would he mind leaving? He said he needed to show me the island; it was the right thing to do, he told me, the only way forward. To persuade him to go, I agreed he should meet me here at the cottage tomorrow morning after breakfast. I watched him leave. When he got to the bottom of the steps he turned, saying goodbye with a slight wave. The porch light caught his face, and in that moment I knew I’d seen him before. His eyes, his mouth, his shuffling walk, were infinitely familiar to me. And yet I was sure I’d never met him, or laid eyes on him before this night.

  I found myself shivering as I watched him walk away down the path. I closed the front door. Queenie was still there, pouring more wine, in the sitting room. She gestured that I should sit by the fire, and reluctantly I obeyed. I was glad she was there; I was spooked, and her presence was a comfort.

  The old grandfather clock, sturdy and strong, struck the hour with its mellow chime. Eleven o’clock. I couldn’t believe we had been talking for four hours. The whole evening seemed like a dream; I couldn’t remember what I’d said, or what Len had tried to tell me. My head was as muddy and confused as it had been in my haunted sleep at Coombe.


  Queenie told me gently that I needed to go to bed. I was all too willing, and yet I wanted her to leave first. It was clear from the way she was fussing around me that she intended to stay. There was a comfortable spare bedroom, and I could tell all too easily she had her eye on it. I felt a bit weak, but determined she should leave me alone. I didn’t need a nanny on this strangely eventful night. I needed to be in a quiet, solitary bower, all humans banished. All I wanted was to wrap myself in a dream and see Joey.

  Eventually, Queenie got the hint and prepared to go home to her cosy house next to the Blue Peter, telling me she would be back with Len in the morning to take me to the island. She closed the front door. I heard her footsteps leaving the porch, and twitched the front curtain. I watched her turn right and walk sturdily towards the village. I felt both sorry and relieved to see her go.

  I went up to bed and fell instantly asleep. All I dreamed of was last night’s storm. It crashed around the house, and in my sleep I watched through the bedroom window. The sea was black and grey, the lightning crackled and shot out bolts of broken silver. The waves were terrifying, high as mountains. And bobbing around on the tumultuous ocean were dozens of boats, small, fragile, completely unequal to this massive Atlantic tsunami. One by one, the boats disappeared; they broke up, shattered like matchstick toys as the waves devoured them, and I saw them sink down to some dreadful fate, to be swallowed up for ever by this inexorable and merciless emperor of death.

  And then there was just one left, one small child’s boat; just a tub really, with a jaunty red flag tied to its mast. This one looked like it might make it, so determined was it as it sailed over the towering seas. The little ship had an air of dogged confidence, as if it could conquer all, as if it would climb up the massive foamy crests as easily as Jack scaled the beanstalk. And as I looked, I cheered that tiny boat as it fought bravely against the massive odds around it: the furious ocean with its insatiable jaws; the monster that would always win, would always triumph over a small vessel and a small human life. And I watched as that little boat broke, snapped, smashed; and I watched as the small figure sailing it fell into the waves, and drowned.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When I woke it was daylight and I was safely tucked up in bed at Hope Cottage. Outside there was no storm, no tumult. All was quiet. I walked to the bedroom window and pulled back the curtains. Cornwall had vanished. All that was left was a dead grey mist. A fret had followed the storm. Beyond the cottage, beyond the ghostly picket fence cowering against the invisible sky, was a swirl of nothingness. No footpath, no white rocks or stones bordering the lane down to Talland beach, the trusted markers warning walkers away from the treacherous edge. No ocean, no swelling god of the deep surging up to claim his earthly kingdom.

  There was nothing; nothing at all. Just silence, and a world without point–a world in which I felt completely lost.

  My mobile rang. The signal worked in Polperro; it was only in Talland and at Coombe that cell communication was useless, some quirk of the landscape and topography. It was Len. I suppose I was half expecting his call. After all, in this weather our hike over to Looe wouldn’t be any fun. Surely he was ringing to cancel?

  Len spoke gruffly. ‘Molly? There’s no point going out to the island today. You won’t see a thing from the path, not with this sea mist. And none of the fishermen will take us over there in this weather. Landing is quite tricky at the best of times. In conditions like this, it’s just too risky.’

  My heart thudded. Landing? Len hadn’t mentioned visiting the island last night. I couldn’t cope with that; everything was going too fast. ‘Right, Len,’ I said sturdily. ‘Another time, eh?’

  There was a pause. ‘Look, Molly–let’s not play silly buggers. This is important. Believe me, you need to get to the island as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, I know, I’m sure,’ I replied almost merrily. I was so relieved not to have to visit the bloody place today that I wanted to cheer. ‘I really appreciate all your help.’

  Another pause. Then Len actually growled at me. ‘Molly. I’m not messing about here, girl. I tried to be gentle last night but to be frank, I don’t have that much time left. I have to take you to Lammana and tell you about Joey very soon.’

  I stiffened. I assumed Len was telling me he was not in good health. Did he mean he was dying?

  ‘Are you ill. Len?’ I asked. ‘Look, if you’re not well I don’t want to be any trouble. Forget about me. Just say what I can do to help.’

  Len sighed. ‘Molly, dear, you don’t understand. I’m not ill, but I am very old. The lights are dimming. I know I’m fading; I won’t last that much longer. I have one task left, and I can’t rest till it’s done. It’s you, Molly: you and Joey. I’ve known I had to do this for a long while. I was just waiting for you to ask, because we can’t do anything without permission.’

  ‘We’? Was he talking about Charmers? If they were white witches, as Queenie had said, I supposed they had to get consent before they cast their spells. After all, white witches were benevolent and… What rubbish was coursing through my head now, I thought crossly. I seemed to be always ready to swallow everything and anything: that stupid scarecrow at Jamaica Inn. I’d believed in that, hadn’t I? Next I’d be thinking that…

  Len was talking again.

  ‘We’ll sort it out, my dear, for good or bad. I’ll call you tomorrow. Please prepare yourself. This can’t wait long.’

  And he rang off.

  I stood looking out of the window at the leaden world outside. What should I do? This business about the island; it was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? This was the first step in the quest on which I’d embarked. Len sounded certain that I must go to Lammana, but I was terrified. A voice in my head screamed at me to leave the place alone. I was sure that what awaited me there was nothing but sorrow.

  Wait, I told myself, wait. The instinct that had led me to look for Joey, my certainty that I should move to Polperro and wait for guidance, was surely paying off. Len had offered to show me the way forward, and his was the only suggestion since my son had disappeared which pointed confidently in a positive direction. I realised that if I funked it, if I cowered here in my pretty seaside cottage and refused to risk the short journey to this mysterious island, then I might as well have stayed in Manchester. And although I wished I had, although I’d cursed Adam for bringing me back to Cornwall, now that I was here I was committed to following a plan. If I didn’t see it through, I would be denying Joey’s call for help. I would be forsaking him, and I would blame myself for that until I died.

  Queenie called. She had spoken to Len and agreed that the weather was too bad to walk down the cliff path to Looe. She suggested that instead I should join her at the Blue Peter for lunch. Although I knew she meant well, trying to offer me company and comfort, I refused. She had a good heart, but she was a bossy woman, and the more I saw of her the more I felt she would try to influence me, tell me forcefully what she thought I should do. I could do without that at the moment. Self-preservation and dislike of being pressured while I was so stressed made me put her off. She sounded disappointed, but said a graceful goodbye.

  I was hungry. I put the kettle on and made breakfast; tea, toast and a boiled egg. I missed the newspapers. No home delivery in Cornwall; at Coombe, Adam or Danny had driven into the nearby village of Duloe every morning to fetch them before breakfast. I’d have to go to the newsagent’s, and I realised I needed to buy food as well. I’d meant to shop yesterday, but the storm had reduced me to childish tears and impotence. I hadn’t left the house since I moved in, and this morning the cupboard looked very bare.

  I looked out of the window again. The sea mist was still intimidatingly thick. Mist, my arse, I thought crossly. It looked more like an old-fashioned pea souper to me. Or rather a white-onion souper. At any rate, it was very damp out there, and I remembered again I hadn’t brought a mac or wellies with me. Belatedly summoning my initiative, I began to delve in cupboards and wardrobes, and of
course practical Josie had provided plenty of wet-weather gear. I tried on a vivid red PVC poncho with a matching hood and wellies. I looked at myself in the mirror, smiling at my reflection. Little Red Riding Hood, I thought. Hope I don’t meet a wolf before I get to the baker’s. I opened the door and walked down the steps to the path.

  The silence was eerie. The mist felt tangible, as present and unnerving as a spectral companion. I couldn’t see the sea, and the cliff side on my right loomed above me, shrouded as a sepulchre. I passed the iron gates leading to the steps that climbed upwards through the gardens of Seaways and The Watchers. The big, beautiful houses on the cliff top were invisible. Not so much as a matchstick glow announced their presence. Walking through the Warren, nobody was about, although now I was on the same level as the cottages, I could see lamps glimmering dully through windows. I caught the occasional glimpse of a television, as comforting to me as it must have been to the stranded holidaymakers inside, drinking tea and watching This Morning instead of showing their children how to go crabbing with special lines dangled down from the harbour wall.

  At the village shops, normal life resumed. Local residents went about their business, unfazed by the mist that deadened their footsteps and wrapped itself around the street like curtains billowing across a stage. Each glowing shop seemed to frame a rural Cornish scene, the dramatic action taking place upstage at the cash till and serving counter. Customers busily bought meat, eggs, fish and vegetables. Bread and newspapers rapidly changed hands; and before long I’d left the stage and was back on the street with a full shopping bag, on my way back to my little cottage, Hope. My hooded head was down, and I was feeling dreamy; I felt as if I were an extra in a Charles Dickens story, perhaps a version of A Christmas Carol, set not in the London snows of December but the rolling, sinister mists of summer on the Cornish coast. And as I passed, another scene caught my eye, framed by a wide bow window, paned and mullioned like a Victorian toyshop. The shop’s interior was artfully lit with golden lamps and electric candles, which contrived to flicker like the real thing. The window was full of magical junk; brass piskies, swords with the legend EXCALIBUR emblazoned on the shafts, while a helpful sign above pointed out that these were ‘replicas’ of King Arthur’s enchanted weapon. There were plastic dragons that promised to breathe smoke; knight’s helmets and plastic cloaks; tiny ornamental wishing wells, and, next to them, just a few books. It was these that arrested my gaze. They weren’t what I’d call proper books; no novels, except for a rack of paperback Daphne du Mauriers, the only writer summer visitors associate with Cornwall. But next to these was a shelf of local tourist guide books; there were flimsy offerings about Cornish ghosts and legends, spells and wizards, and one small booklet which stood out so vividly it was as if it reached forward, tapped on the glass and beckoned me in. This was The Looe Island Story, written by someone called Mike Dunn. On the cover was an aerial shot of a small, green, scrubby chunk of land, surrounded by a grey, baleful-looking sea. I didn’t recognise it at all. In fact, I was sure I’d never seen it in my life. This cheered me up a bit. So this was a photograph of Looe Island, previously known as St George’s, and before that, way, way back, as the Island of St Michael of Lammana. It meant absolutely nothing to me, any of it, and emboldened by ignorance I marched into the shop and bought it. The girl behind the counter slipped it into a paper bag, but as soon as I got outside I took it out, leaning against the window as I flipped through the pages.