by Miles Gibson
She had been ravished and plundered by that hairy giant of a man in every hotel in every large town between the Punjab and Madras.
At an ancient hotel in Manali, on a balcony overlooking the Kulu Valley, scented by the pine forest, in full view of the snow-clad Himalayas, he had stolen up behind her, torn open her skirt and fondled her belly.
In the Rambagh Palace, the sugar-spun castle that stands above Jaipur, they had anointed each other with jasmine oil and wrestled together, slippery as salmon, on the cold marble floor.
Locked in a room in Hyderabad, he had attacked her with fruit of every description, mango, guava and green banana, and could not be satisfied until she lay bruised and exhausted, the juices seeping from her body and her skin glistening with warm fruit pulp. Later, waking from her stupor, she’d discovered the fragrant syrup had dried and glued her against the bed linen so that she’d had hysterics and had needed to soak herself free in the bath.
The memory of the Captain made her ache with the weight of the years since their separation. Only her conviction that he could be retrieved from the grave had prevented her from taking her own life and flying to him in those first, anguished months after his death. She raised a hand weakly from her breast and took up a glass beside the bed, sipping at a little peppermint and Perrier for comfort.
Despite her lost love she had been spared many of the pains and disappointments of life. She might have starved on a widow’s pension, but sorrow itself had been the catalyst which had revealed the new and unexpected talents from which she now derived considerable financial comfort. Her health might have failed at any time during her period of mourning, but the years had matured and ripened her body where they might have shrunk and broken it. There had been opportunities for new romance in the past and, no doubt, there would be men who admired her in the future. But no one, she reminded herself, could replace the Captain. She remained faithful to him even in sleep, for when her dreams forced open her legs and sent her mouth fluttering it was the Captain she saw in her passion.
She languished for nearly a week and not until Mrs Reynolds paid a visit could she bring herself to pick up a dressing-gown and venture from the safety of her bed.
‘We were worried when you cancelled the magic circle. We thought you might be sick,’ crooned Mrs Reynolds as they embraced at the door. She was wearing a striped blazer and a big linen skirt, white stockings and shoes. The previous Christmas, inspired by brandy, she had cropped her long hair to bristle and kept the stubble stained a ferocious copper colour that seemed to smoulder now against the delicate, white face as she swept into the room. Her ears, so pink and naked without the shelter of her hair, had been dressed with silver barnacles. She turned and offered Mrs Clancy a dazzling smile, threw herself into the sofa and squirmed comfortably.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t been sick,’ said Mrs Clancy, sitting down beside her in a nest of silk cushions. ‘At least, it was nothing physical.’
‘Can you tell me about it?’
‘It’s not easy to explain,’ said Mrs Clancy.
‘I understand. Believe me, I won’t breathe a word,’ whispered Mrs Reynolds, like a good matron. She was younger than Mrs Clancy, although her exact age was a mystery. Mrs Reynolds enjoyed mysteries.
‘We’ve had a visitor.’
‘Yes?’ Mrs Reynolds blinked her soft grey eyes. She owned a guest house on the esplanade. She knew about visitors. They usually slept in her bed.
‘A visitor from beyond,’ said Mrs Clancy, raising a finger in the direction of the ceiling.
‘Yes?’ Mrs Reynolds blinked again. She had supposed clairvoyants were always entertaining guests from the grave.
Mrs Clancy shook her head. ‘It was terrible,’ she confessed miserably as her fingers prodded and poked at the cushions. Her voice was so small that Mrs Reynolds found herself leaning forward, straining to catch the words. ‘I thought it was going to drag me away. I must have fainted. It was sitting there, on the table, grinning at me. Horrible.’
‘Good Heavens! What was it?’ Mrs Reynolds began to sense that something was wrong. She had seen Mrs Clancy pluck phantoms from candle flames, catch messages from passing corpses and talk in tongues; but she had never seen her look so frightened and haunted. There were shadows beneath her eyes and her whole face seemed to be shrinking, as if her body had been invaded by some unspeakable horror that was sucking at her soul. What had she endured that was so dreadful it could frighten her almost to death?
‘It came from the crystal,’ Mrs Clancy said at last.
‘What shape did it take? Was it big? Was it horrible?’
‘Dreadful,’ said Mrs Clancy. She closed her eyes for a moment and there again was Beelzebub, squatting naked on her table and grinning as he beat on the skull with his beautiful, polished drumstick. ‘I couldn’t describe it,’ she gasped, fluttering her eyes to shake out the sight.
‘Oh, my poor friend,’ sighed Mrs Reynolds, glad to be spared a description of whatever loathsome monster had been conjured from the cemetery clay.
‘I’m afraid it’s a warning from the spirit world,’ said Mrs Clancy, staring at nothing. ‘Something is going to happen. Something terrible.’ Her voice faded away. She was surprised to find herself on the brink of tears and, knowing that her admirers believed she rubbed shoulders with demons every day of the week, she tossed her magnificent mane to hide her face in her hair.
‘But why should anyone want to hurt you?’
Mrs Clancy brushed the tears away with her hair and gave Mrs Reynolds a long, sad smile. ‘It’s wrong to disturb the dead. I’ve always tried to ignore the risk. But Satan could snatch me away with a snap of his fingers.’
‘And the rest of the circle?’
‘I don’t know. But we shouldn’t hold another meeting until the spirit world is at peace.’
‘You mean we could all be in some kind of danger?’ whispered Mrs Reynolds nervously.
‘I can’t tell you. Perhaps the town itself is in danger. Have you noticed anything strange happening out there in the last few days?’
‘No.’ Mrs Reynolds frowned and scratched her neck thoughtfully.
‘Ah.’ Mrs Clancy nodded, as if nothing meant everything.
‘Oh, Mercy Peters was attacked by some small boys – in her own bedroom if you please. But there was no harm done. She seemed to find it rather amusing,’ said Mrs Reynolds.
‘Wasn’t she frightened?’ gasped Mrs Clancy.
‘Good gracious, she isn’t frightened of anything.’
‘But didn’t they try anything?’ breathed Mrs Clancy in a shocked whisper.
‘No, they were just standing there, staring at her while she was resting in the bed. She closed her eyes for half an hour and when she woke up they were standing there, peering at her with their eyes as big as saucers. They must have got into the house while she was having a bath.’
‘What did they want?’
‘They said they were just looking,’ chuckled Mrs Reynolds and her grey eyes crinkled with pleasure.
‘Did she recognize them?’
‘Well, she has her suspicions,’ smiled Mrs Reynolds. ‘But she says all small boys look the same.’
‘Isn’t Mercy Peters the woman with the strange-looking child?’
‘Yes, but he wasn’t involved,’ explained Mrs Reynolds. ‘He was in bed with a cold and he slept through the whole affair.’
‘Women living alone are always at risk,’ declared Mrs Clancy testing the knot on her dressing-gown. There were times when she couldn’t even answer the telephone for fear of some diseased madman whispering filthy suggestions in her ear.
‘I told her to buy a dog,’ said Mrs Reynolds with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘But she said she has one in the garden.’
‘It doesn’t stop them. Some of them would think nothing of killing a dog.’
‘They were only children,’ protested Mrs Reynolds.
‘That’s what I mean – they get younge
r – it’s so sinister.’
‘You think it has something to do with what happened to you?’ said Mrs Reynolds, reaching out to touch her friend’s hand.
‘No,’ sighed Mrs Clancy. A woman could defend herself against the dandiprats but who knew what horrible appetites the devil might satisfy upon a fainting woman? When she had recovered her senses it had been dark outside, her nightdress was torn and the scrying crystal was empty. She had been surprised to find herself still in the land of the living. Yes, glad to be alive and unmarked no matter what lewd and disgusting rituals had been performed upon her sleeping body. But she knew it wasn’t finished. She had helped a jinnee from its bottle and, wherever the monster was hiding, it was only waiting to change shape and strike again. She wrapped herself in her arms and shivered.
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ asked Mrs Reynolds kindly.
‘You could pour us both a good, strong drink,’ suggested Mrs Clancy.
Mrs Reynolds stood up, walked over to the little Turkish cabinet and searched through the spirits for a bottle of brandy. She felt encouraged. Whenever they had shared troubles in the past they had also shared their brandy. It had fired them, inspired them and given them strength. When the winters were so long and lonely that they thought they might leap from Whelk Pier and drown themselves, they had drowned their sorrows, instead, in brandy. When Polly had nearly died from summer fever Mrs Clancy had arrived at their door with the brandy bottle and had sat all night beside the bed. Mrs Reynolds had not forgotten. And now, please God, the brandy would work to burn out the ghosts that were haunting them.
‘Isn’t that the doctor down on the esplanade?’ asked Mrs Reynolds as they stood at the window, sipping brandy and staring mournfully out to sea.
‘We don’t need a doctor,’ said Mrs Clancy with a toss of her head. ‘We need a priest.’
Chapter Seven
The doctor tried to forget Mrs Clancy. He set to work on a long and controversial paper attacking the placebo effect of herbal medicine. He learned to build bookshelves and painted the waiting room green. But it wasn’t enough. At night, when he could find no work to occupy him, he would go out alone, walk along the beach, stop at the Dolphin to sit for an hour with a glass of beer, and stroll reluctantly back to Storks Yard. His loneliness grew with the stealth of a tumour.
The landlord of the Dolphin was an old wrestler called Big Lily White. He was a short man with a foul mouth concealed beneath a large moustache. He liked to brag of his career as the Masked Terror. But no one listened. He had lost his hair and his muscle had melted to fat.
Lily White’s favourite story was his assault upon the world mid-heavyweight championship. The belt had been held at the time by Cocker Harris of the notorious Bedlam Brothers. Cocker Harris was vicious but Lily White was cunning. They spent the first round of the fight threatening each other and shouting at the audience. In the second round Lily White gave Harris several hard postings to knock the air out of him and then, with no more than a neat leg dive, rolled him into a perfect folding press for the first pinfall. Harris turned nasty in the third, converted a crutch hold into a punishing pile driver and followed it down with a kick in the face. But Lily White retaliated in the fourth with the surreptitious employment of his fists until Harris began to grovel. Big Lily White maintained he would have won the belt in the fifth, if he hadn’t been trampled and thrown through the ropes. He broke his nose and several teeth.
When Big Lily White retired he bought the Dolphin and learned to wrestle with barrels of beer. He missed the old days. Sometimes he would practise the head twist and strangle on old Tanner Atkins who helped to wash glasses. Tanner adored him.
The landlord disliked the doctor. He was of the opinion that it wasn’t healthy for one man to want to worm another and he viewed the doctor with loathing.
‘I once went to a doctor,’ Big Lily White confessed to Tanner one evening while the doctor was sitting at a table, nursing a glass of Badger beer.
‘Is that right?’ said Tanner Atkins.
‘It was after my last big fight,’ said the landlord, blowing through his moustache. ‘I got headaches. Terrible headaches. I thought I might be having a turn. So I went to a doctor.’
‘Is that right?’ said Tanner Atkins.
Big Lily White glared across the length of the bar and slapped a puddle of beer with his hand. He sniffed his fingers and wiped the hand on his apron. ‘I just wanted something for the pain,’ he grumbled. ‘Anyway, this so-called doctor tried to make me see a psychiatrist. He must have thought I was mental if he thought I was going to see a psychiatrist. Once they get hold of you they never let you escape. A headache doesn’t mean you’re mental, does it?’
‘Plenty of people get headaches,’ said Tanner Atkins, nodding his head and giving the landlord a twisted grin.
‘Plenty of people with headaches walking around the place all the time,’ grunted Big Lily White. The two men leaned on the bar and watched the doctor in silence for a few moments.
‘It’s some of these doctors who should have their brains examined, in my opinion,’ continued Big Lily White with a shudder.
‘Is that right?’ said Tanner Atkins.
‘Well, it’s obvious when you think about it,’ he growled. ‘They sit in their fat leather chairs all day and get young women to undress and parade about the room and then they fondle them and everything and most of the time there’s nothing wrong with them. So they talk a lot of fancy language and scribble of lot of nonsense and the women don’t know the difference.’
‘They probably don’t even know the difference,’ grinned Tanner Atkins.
‘I know these so-called doctors are meant to be special from ordinary people. But I don’t believe it,’ grunted the landlord, pulling himself up to his full height.
‘Is that right?’ said Tanner Atkins.
‘How would you feel if lovely young girls came to your house and asked you to examine them?’ asked Big Lily White as he cracked the cap from a bottle of cider. ‘I mean, they actually stand there in the complete nude and ask for it. You never stop feeling human, do you? You never stop having thoughts. If you ask me, it’s the doctors who are mental. It gives me the willies just thinking about it.’ He sniffed his fingers and wrapped them carefully in his apron.
Chapter Eight
The stranger appeared late in the afternoon. Charlie Bloater was the first to see him. Charlie lived aboard a boat in a cabbage patch on the Upton Gabriel Road. He was a small man with chipped and tattered hands. His eyes were barely blue and his soft, grey hair curled out of his skull like smoke. He gave off a rich, vegetable smell and wore a set of cheap teeth that clicked when he opened and closed his mouth. He had lived so long in the cabbage patch that he’d grown to resemble a scarecrow. His legs were stiff with arthritis and he stuffed his boots with straw.
Charlie had lived all his life among cabbages but he dreamed he was lost at sea. As a small boy, watching his father battle with root fly, weevil and moth, he would stand waist-deep in the green and crinkled undergrowth and dream he was sailing Atlantic waters, adrift on the dark Sargasso. In the evenings, while his father slept by the cottage fire, Charlie learned to make ships in bottles: smacks, cutters and men o’ war, fully rigged with darning thread. He loved and feared the open seas. As a young man he had planned to sail from Rams Horn as far as the Caribbean, find the Panama Canal and reach the Pacific. He would anchor off Fiji, Samoa and Tonga and when he grew tired of the islands, he would follow the humpbacked whales into the Southern Ocean. He drew charts and made maps for the voyage. But his father died and left him the cottage and cabbage patch.
For a time it seemed that Charlie’s dreams had run aground. His father had managed to slip away while he still owed money to all the shopkeepers in Rams Horn. The cottage roof leaked, the cabbage crawled with caterpillar and the old man’s burial took his savings. After the funeral Charlie went down into town, stayed drunk for a week and slept on the beach. Then he went back to the co
ttage on the Upton Gabriel Road. He worked all day stuffing the rotten thatch with bracken and he worked all night washing the cabbage with vinegar and milk. And while he worked a great plan was taking shape in his head. At first the plan was no more than a dream to comfort him while he struggled to pay his father’s debts. But soon it devoured him.
The following spring he began to build a boat in the cottage. It was a boat of his own design, a big-bellied, clinker-built ark with a fat stern and a high bridge. It took him three years to build his boat and when it was finished it filled the cottage from floor to ceiling. During the last few weeks of its construction he had to sleep beneath the hull, on the kitchen floor, in a pile of wood shavings. And then, since he no longer wanted the cottage, he knocked down the walls, burned the thatch and lived in the boat on his cabbage patch sea. He fitted the cabin with a table, a stove and his charts of the coral islands. He washed from a bucket and slept in a hammock.
During the winter when the wind was sharp with salt and the rain screamed through the trees, he liked to lock himself below deck and listen to the force of the storm above him. When summer nights becalmed the boat he would sleep above deck, rolled naked in the hammock, with his face exposed to the stars.
Charlie was sitting on board, smoking a pipe, when the stranger came walking into view of his shipshape world. It was a hot and breathless afternoon. The heat had flattened the hedgerow and scorched the rump of the hill. The boat timbers creaked. The cabbages stank. The air was spangled with pollen. The stranger appeared as a long, black shadow in the dust of the white gravel road. He wore a black suit and thick black boots. He held a black suitcase in his black hands and, as he drew level with the boat, he turned a black face towards the cabbage patch.
