Brodmaw Bay

by F. G. Cottam

  He did not feel like staying in the Bermondsey house. He was disappointed by his reception in America. He was slightly jet-lagged from two transatlantic flights in as many days. He had been more affected by what he had read in Adam Gleason’s testimony than he had been prepared to admit to himself. He was shaken by what his wife had just told him over the phone.

  In some significant ways, James Greer was quite a stubborn man. This stubbornness did not just manifest itself in concerns about the integrity of the computer game he had devised. He was not the man be intimidated by folkloric myth or ghoulish coincidence into booking into a fucking Novotel when he had a perfectly good house in central London where the power was still switched on and where he remembered there still reposed a perfectly comfortable bed.

  The trouble was, he thought as he put his key in the lock, that he had seen the thing lurking in the garden with his own eyes. He had rationalised it, of course. But he had seen it. And then his daughter Olivia had seen it. And his brother had seen it and felt disturbed enough by the experience of doing so to warn him about it. Gleason had called it a Harbinger. Megan Penmarrick had called it that too. It was somewhere in function between an emissary and a footsoldier loyal in the service of the Singers under the Sea.

  It was ridiculous, he thought, switching on the sitting room light and dumping his bag on the sofa, aware of the weight of the laptop inside with his game prototype stored there, redundant now, just a broken dream expressed in lines of code encrypted on the hard drive.

  They signalled the need for sacrifice. They demanded fresh blood. They could hurt you physically. They could not be killed by the bullet from a Lee Enfield rifle coolly aimed by a vigilant teenage veteran of the conflict on the Western Front. They could grant a child’s vindictive, murderous wish.

  He poured himself a consolatory whisky and walked through to the study and stared out of the window at foliage stirring on fleshy-leaved shrubs against its rear wall in darkness. It was ridiculous, wasn’t it? He took a sip of Scotch. He remembered that Alec McCabe had told Lillian that Robert O’Brien had probably been frightened to death.

  He resolved then to do something the following morning. He knew that it might be a total waste of his time and he was anxious to get back to the bay and his family as soon as possible. Even a few weeks earlier, his failure in America might have shaken his marriage. His bond with his wife then had been weak. He had not known how weak. It was much stronger now, though. It was honest and crucial to both of them. He wanted to return to the bay and the wife and children he loved and found he missed even after only a couple of nights away.

  First, though, it was necessary to try to find something out. Either attempting to do so would be an exercise in futility, or it would provide the reassurance he hoped it would, or it would confirm suspicions he could not help his mind engendering since his reading of the Gleason testament and his bleak lay-by conversation on his mobile with Lillian of an hour earlier.

  He stood there in the darkness and silence of his study and watched carefully through the windows for any sign of furtive movement in the bushes and undergrowth outside.

  There were things James was afraid of. He was afraid of professional failure. Less so now than before, he was still afraid that his wife might one day stop loving him. He was afraid of harm coming to one or both of his beloved children. At that moment, he was afraid also of a spade-shaped face with a gaze of empty fury and grey skin as rough as burlap resolving itself over a squatting body in the gloom of the garden he stared into.

  He watched and waited for it. He sipped occasionally from his drink of Scotch. Then when his glass was empty and it had not come, he went back and turned off the sitting room light and climbed the stairs wearily to bed.

  The rest home to which Lillian’s mother had been taken occupied a handsome, sandstone building in Surbiton. Lillian had chosen it because it was near to the area in which her mother had lived for most of her life. She hoped that the familiarity of the streets, on those occasions when her mother was taken out, might stimulate her mind.

  It had not worked. Her dementia did not respond to stimulation. What was strange only intimidated and confused her as her mind retreated further and further into what was familiar and comfortable because she recognised it and regarded it with fondness.

  Lillian had taken in her mother when the first symptoms had made it impractical and then dangerous for her to live alone any longer. She had been their house guest for a year. Then, when her condition worsened, when she failed to recognise her grandchildren any longer and the incontinence became a daily aspect of her life, the decision was taken to have her cared for somewhere the job could be accomplished by compassionate professionals. They were thankful they could afford it. Lillian thought it the least her mother deserved.

  In truth, she did not visit much. It distressed her too greatly. The blank stranger who greeted her with polite bewilderment was not the woman she knew and remembered and loved as her mum. It was weak of her and selfish, she knew, but the visits declined until they were no more frequent than once or twice a month. That was why Cornwall had posed no practical difficulties. The visits could be fitted in when she came up to town to talk to clients or authors or her agent. Living in the bay, despite the distance, she would see her mother no less.

  James arrived at the reception desk of the home at 8 a.m. The elderly had a habit of rising early. It was true of those even with dementia, as though they were impatient for the opportunity to experience another confused and fragmented day. He knew most of the staff there by sight and three or four well enough to enjoy a conversation with. The girl behind the desk was called Magdalena and she was originally from Gdansk. She spoke flawless English and she possessed alert blue eyes and she seemed able to remember the name of everyone she had ever met.

  She smiled. ‘Mr Greer.’

  ‘James, please, Magdalena.’

  ‘James, then, charmed, I’m sure.’

  It was their little ritual of spoken greeting. Magdalena told him that his mother-in-law was taking tea in the music room. He would find her alone there. Most of the other residents were still at breakfast. She did not need to show him where to go. He knew the location of the music room. She did not ask him what the bag he carried with him contained.

  April Matlock sat by the window, looking out of it, seeing, James supposed, whatever tableau from the past was unfurling through the remnants of her mind. Her hands were clasped in her lap. There was a slight tremor to them, or to one of them, which the other could not successfully still. Her long grey hair had been brushed and pinned and the trouser suit she wore was clean and recently pressed. The only wrinkles were the ones on her neck and cheeks, under the bright and vacant gaze her eyes wore, reflecting the sunshine through the glass.

  He pulled over a straight-backed chair and sat in it next to her, leaning forward with his hands on his knees to bring their heads to the same height. He was not so tactless as literally to look down on her. He did not think that she would remember or recognise him. She had not done so for more than eighteen months. He wanted her to think of them as equals, though, if she was capable of coherent thought at all.

  Without a glance at him she said, ‘I expect you have come about the drains. They have needed attention for weeks, you know. The lavatory has backed up most unpleasantly and the kitchen sink smells of sewage. It is neither hygienic nor acceptable.’

  ‘I have not come about the drains, April,’ he said.

  Now she did look at him. She said, ‘My Lily is very gifted at drawing, you know. She has a quite astonishing gift for a six-year-old. Mr Davenport at the school says that she is most precocious. He does not mean cheeky, when he calls her that. He means that she possesses a talent mature beyond her years.’

  ‘I’m sure she does. I am quite certain of it.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is James.’

  ‘A good English name, James. What is your surname?’

  ‘Greer.’ />
  She frowned. ‘Are you doing a survey, Mr Greer? Will there be a questionnaire to complete?’

  James bent down to where he had put his bag, between his feet. He took from it the book about Brodmaw Bay published by Chubbly & Cruff and illustrated by his wife, whose memory of having done so was as blank as the woman’s in front of him seemed on everything that had happened since her life as a young mother. He placed the book gently in her lap. She looked down at its cover and then began to turn the pages. Her eyes were no longer on the view through the window. But the expression on her face had not changed at all.

  April Matlock turned the pages. When she came to the spread on which her daughter had depicted the church, she stopped. She placed the flat of a hand on the image with her fingers splayed and expelled a sound that James thought might have been a sigh.

  ‘We had never thought about adoption,’ she said. ‘But by then we knew that I could not carry a child of my own to full term. I think my husband craved fatherhood. In fact, I know he did. He was friendly with Father Reid, who ran the refuge. The girl was only fourteen. She could not have looked after the child. She had fled Brodmaw to escape the scandal and had no means of supporting herself. She was too young for work, never mind motherhood.’

  ‘Do you remember the girl’s name, April?’

  ‘Of course I do. She was a beautiful child. I was quite jealous of two attributes she possessed. She had the loveliest eyes. I was jealous of her fecundity, of course. And I quite envied Angela Heart those striking green eyes.’

  ‘And the father?’

  ‘Penmarrick. She said he was important. He was sort of the squire, but more important than that. More like the lord of the manor, my husband said.’

  ‘Why did you not tell Lillian she was adopted?’

  ‘She never was, legally. Angela gave us her baby. It had to be a secret.’

  ‘Did Lillian ever visit the bay?’

  ‘Once, when she was five, we took her. We thought that she should see where she came from. It was a pretty place, very picturesque. She drank it all in, as a child will. There was an excursion to an island. The local Scouts had organised a jamboree. The bay possessed its own old-fashioned charm. I expect it is all quite spoiled now.’

  ‘Yes,’ James said, ‘yes, April. You are quite right. It is completely spoiled.’ He eased the book off her lap and put it back into his bag and rose to go.

  She raised her head to him and blinked once and said, ‘If you could fix the drains, we’d be ever so grateful.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Richard Penmarrick was charm itself when he called Topper’s Reach about ten minutes after Lillian had concluded her conversation with her husband on his instruction to lock their windows and doors. He explained that the following day was an inset day at the Mount. He apologised for the short notice, but asked if Lillian would consider helping escort the members of the Club to their island for a day’s activity and adventure.

  Lillian assented for two reasons. The first was that Richard had done so much for them that she did not think she could in all conscience refuse. The second reason was the simple human impulse of curiosity. She wanted to see the carving of the spoookmeister on the hut door for herself. She wanted to see the Harbinger it was considered unlucky to name and that apparently granted vindictive wishes. Olivia’s wish had been a ghastly coincidence. But she still wanted to see the thing that her daughter claimed to have seen in life in their old garden.

  She did not for a moment consider they would come to any harm. There were some pretty strange people living in the bay. She had had that fact demonstrated to her by the desecration in the church. The community was more insular than she had first supposed and the paganism of the shellfish ritual on the beach was stranger and more shocking, paradoxically, the more she thought about it. She did not think, however, that they would have been so warmly received if anyone thought ill about them. Their reception had been, in some ways, little short of rapturous.

  There were mysteries in the village she wanted solving. She did not think Angela Heart had told her the whole truth about the Reverend Baxter. But Baxter’s ordeal had taken place in the aftermath of the Great War and uncovering what had really happened almost a century ago, whatever it was, was hardly an urgent priority.

  The shock of her daughter’s confession wore off somewhat as she listened to Richard on the phone, outlining the Baden-Powell-ish nature of the following day’s programme. In his tone and language, he managed to be enthusiastic and ironic about it all at the same time. He was gently sending up both himself and the tent-peg and bugle, jamboree nature of what they had planned for the kids.

  ‘We’re expecting a swell, so we’ll probably go over in a small flotilla of sturdy boats. We need some cargo space, you see, for the instruments the band will play if the weather is fine at the picnic in the afternoon. And we will have to ship the raffle prizes too.’

  You can butter crumpets from now until kingdom come. Rupert Brooke isn’t coming to tea.

  She thought that the island trip, with its mundane and cheery timetable, would help Olivia put her wish concerning Jack’s attackers into a perspective where it could only be an unfortunate coincidence. The next time she confronted that carving on the hut door, it would be with the comfort of her mother’s arm around her shoulder and it would seem like exactly what it was: a good luck symbol, no more than a rather crudely executed image of a figure from local mythology.

  Lillian had found the bay a bit claustrophobic since James’s departure. She was aware of it as she locked the doors and windows. Topper’s Reach was a spacious house, it had large rooms with high ceilings and in the daytime it was gloriously bright. But it was still hemming them in. The absence of the car was probably, she thought, the main cause of this feeling of being slightly trapped.

  Angela’s arrival at the church had made the feeling worse because it had almost suggested she was under some kind of surveillance. The boundless expanse of the sea, the exposure of the island itself, would be an antidote to how she felt and pass the day pleasantly and when they returned here, her husband would have arrived back.

  She did not really care that the trip to America had gone badly. She was confident that James, this new and tougher and more resilient James, would have given a good account of himself. He was no longer the type of man to go to pieces in front of an audience under the pressure of delivering a presentation.

  She cared, for him, because she wanted him to succeed on his own terms and the game was something on which he had spent a lot of time and creative energy and in which he had invested a significant amount of hope. She thought that he would be disappointed. His tone and language in their brief phone conversation had suggested that. But she knew that career disappointment was no threat now to their relationship. They were locked on. They had never been closer. They had survived the ordeal of her adultery and emerged as though tempered by fire.

  She suspected that the Americans had suggested some sort of compromise that James felt threatened the integrity of what he had created. Projects like that were collaborative and the finished article seldom very much resembled its original concept. James had been open to compromise once. It had been a feature of his character. Jack’s accident had changed him in that regard.

  It could have been argued that he had compromised his principles on the matter of her betrayal, but he hadn’t, really. His defining imperative in that matter had been his love for her.

  Lillian thought that in the long term, James would be better off if she was right and he had refused to capitulate to the demands of the Colorado software outfit. His strength, the new strength and confidence he possessed, enabled a measure of self-respect in him that had not been there before. He was a better man for it. He was not just better, he was much happier too.

  James climbed into the Jaguar in the rest home car park, tossing the bag with the book inside it over onto the rear seat. He sat and glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was still only eight for
ty in the morning. He took out his mobile and called Topper’s Reach. There was no reply. He called Lillian’s mobile, but there was no signal.

  He wondered where they could be. The children did not have to be up for school. Neither of them would be enrolled at their new schools before the start of the new academic year in September. Jack was not habitually an early riser if he wasn’t getting up for school or for a football training session. He was like every thirteen-year-old: pretty much comatose until he was physically roused. They must have gone out. But without the car, where would they go so early in the day?

  There was a phrase in his head. He could not get it out of his mind. It was the words Richard Penmarrick had used in greeting Lillian on her arrival in the bay. They had come down from their room with the glow of their recent lovemaking still on them to the saloon bar of the Leeward where he had been standing, waiting for them. ‘Welcome home,’ he had said.

  James called Alec McCabe. ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘Only if it’s life and death, I’m not on duty until noon.’

  ‘It’s life and death.’

  ‘I was joking, James. I recognised the number. If I wasn’t prepared to talk to you, I wouldn’t have accepted the call. I assume you’re joking too, by the way.’

  ‘No. I don’t think I am, Alec.’

  ‘I told your wife as much as we know last night. The circumstances are pretty gruesome and, so far, totally inexplicable. We’ve got some very experienced people. None of them has ever seen anything like it.’

  ‘I’m not calling you about that. I’m calling you about Robert O’Brien.’

  ‘Not my case.’

  ‘I remember you said a mate of yours was the investigating officer. Totally off the record. Just between us, as a favour, Alec. It really could be life and death.’

  ‘I like you, James. You are an honest man, no bullshit, and in a world mired in bullshit, I respect that. And that lad of yours is an absolute gem. If you are in some sort of trouble, tell me. Tell me truthfully and I promise I will do everything I can to help you.’