by Lara Dearman
Her head was pounding and she wondered if blood was pumped to it in times of crisis to aid the brain, so you could think more clearly, make life-preserving decisions. It wasn’t working. It was her legs that needed help now. They shook as she walked, her thighs stiff from the cold, protesting each step she took towards danger.
She was too far away to make out his features clearly, but there was something familiar about him. About the shape of him, the bend of his neck, the way his shoulders sloped. He was a tall man but looked uncomfortable with his height. She had known a boy like that once. But it couldn’t be him. If she was being followed, it was by someone from London, someone who knew what had happened to Madalina. Someone who wanted Jenny to keep her mouth shut. Bitch. But there was a sliver of doubt now. A flicker of fear that she’d got it all wrong, that perhaps it wasn’t her new past haunting her, but her old one.
As she got closer to the wall, he turned and ran. Not quickly, more at a jogger’s pace, but by the time she’d climbed the wooden ladder to the car park he was a spot in the distance, black top, black shorts, bright-white running shoes. She paused. Just an early morning runner, distracted by a lunatic swimming in the sea in winter. She let out the breath that was burning in her lungs. Felt her heart rate slow.
She was paranoid. There was nothing to be afraid of. She sat on the wall until her shaking legs were still.
* * *
Brian was waiting for her with a list of things he wanted her to follow up on, now the dust had settled a bit. Talk to the girl’s friends, he said, get a few quotes, follow up with where the police were, check if the results of the post-mortem had come through. What else was she working on?
‘I thought I might look into other similar cases, concentrate on the suicide angle.’
‘Yes, great idea. Focus on young people. Nobody cares about some fat middle-aged bloke topping himself. I mean readership wise, obviously.’ His face suddenly lit up. ‘Look at mental health funding too. This has been an issue before. We could tie it up with the recent budget cuts.’
‘Do you remember any similar cases, Brian? While you’ve been working here?’
He thought for a moment.
‘There’s been the odd body washed up. We ran a piece a couple of years ago after there was a spike in the rate. Tends to be men, you know. You women seem to be better at getting on with things.’
‘What about drowning, specifically?’
‘There have been a few. Not all suicides, obviously. Plenty of accidents. You know that, of course.’ He looked vaguely apologetic – and something else, uncomfortable, perhaps. It was unlike Brian to be sensitive to the feelings of others. She thought about acknowledging his sympathy, but decided ignoring it would be easier for both of them. She paused for a moment, before pressing him further.
‘I just wondered if there might be something there. Perhaps suicide rates are higher amongst women here than elsewhere. We could compare to the UK statistics. My mum mentioned something interesting, actually. A young girl found at the bathing pools, back in the sixties.’ She looked at him questioningly. Brian’s face fell.
‘Well, I wouldn’t remember that, would I? Good grief, how old do you think I am? And what has some story your mum told you got to do with anything? This is a newspaper, not a bloody WI meeting.’
He marched back to his office, shutting the door with a little more force than usual.
* * *
She walked down Smith Street. The results of the post-mortem were back. Death by drowning. The toxicity screening showed that Amanda had ingested several Valium in the hours prior to her death. No sign of foul play. There would be an inquest, of course, but the police expected a verdict of death by misadventure. Without a note they were always loath to call it suicide but everything pointed that way. Case closed by the sound of it. Even Brian seemed to have lost some of his earlier enthusiasm for the story, suggesting, as it all seemed open and shut, that she might want to turn her attention to the Save the Islander campaign, the story Elliot was working on. There was a demonstration planned for later in the week and it might need both of them, he said, and told her to catch up on the background. Which would have been a day’s work, except Jenny had already read everything there was to know about Save The Islander and Deputy Tostevin, the man who had started it all. So she could afford to spend another half a day doing her own thing, with Brian none the wiser.
Jenny had felt death. When she’d stared, through eyes swimming with tears, at her father’s coffin, it had been dull and heavy in its inevitability, its truth real but distant, an ordeal you knew you had to face but had years to prepare for. When her own life had been threatened, it had felt quick and sharp, like the knife at her throat was already in her gut, twisting her insides, and she’d known, if it came down to it, she would do anything to stay alive. But this girl, Amanda … If the police were right, she’d felt death and embraced it, overridden the most basic human instinct. Jenny wanted to know why. And if the police were wrong, she wanted to know why a young woman had been found dead on a beach with no clue as to how and why she got there – like Elizabeth Mahy, all those years ago. Either way, Jenny figured there was a story.
The sky was the same colour as the pavement and the air was damp and cold. She kept her head down as she walked through the narrow streets of St Peter Port to Market Street. Cafes nestled under the archways of the fruit and vegetable halls and the main building, a beautiful nineteenth-century structure of brick and granite, was filled with clothes shops and a record store. The closest thing to a market here now was a small branch of the Co–op, selling imported, cling-film-wrapped versions of what went before. She remembered coming here with her dad to choose a crab for Saturday lunch. They would look for the one with the fattest claws, where the sweetest meat would be, and put it in their basket along with a fresh baguette, a slice of pâté de campagne, some French ham. She could smell the place: the earthy sweetness of the skinned cow carcasses hanging from the ceiling, dark flesh marbled with yellow fat, the barrels of live lobsters, fresh and briny, the smoked mackerels, their black, iridescent skins set against crushed ice.
Opposite the market stood the Guille-Allès library, a tall, handsome building with steep steps leading up to an entrance arch. The last thirty years of the News had been bound and archived at the Guernsey News’s office, an expensive project, which had been abandoned halfway through due to a lack of funding. So, while budgets were being balanced, pre-1985 copies were kept here, at the top of the library.
Automatic doors slid open as Jenny approached. She walked through them into a high-ceilinged entrance hall with an intricately patterned tiled floor and a sweeping staircase, which led to the main collections. Self-checkout machines and a small information table had replaced the imposing wooden front desk that Jenny remembered standing on tiptoes to place her books on as a child.
She climbed the stairs, past the adult fiction and children’s sections, up another flight and through a door marked ‘Archives’ which led along a narrow corridor and up a winding staircase on to a small landing. The ceiling here was low and uneven, reflecting the shape of the roof above. Afternoon’s fading light glinted through a small window, the only one in the room. An elegant woman in her fifties, with close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair, sat at a desk peering through a magnifying glass at a glossy sheet of microfiche files.
‘Hi, Miriam.’
The woman looked up from her desk and smiled. Long silver earrings shaped like feathers dangled from her ears. ‘How are you, Jenny?’ She stood and kissed Jenny on both cheeks. ‘How’s your mum?’
Miriam had lived round the corner from Jenny for years and had babysat her on the rare occasion Margaret and Charlie had gone out for dinner, years ago. She dropped in for a cup of tea every now and then. Jenny told her they were well and that she must pop in and see them sometime soon.
‘What can I help you with today, Jenny?’ Jenny gave her the dates of the newspapers she was looking for and waited while Miriam fetc
hed the relevant films from the heavy steel cabinets which lined the walls, then followed her into the reading room. Miriam loaded the first slide in. ‘Well, you know what you’re doing. Just shout if you want anything printed.’ She closed the door, leaving Jenny in a room barely bigger than a closet, a bright screen speckled with grey flecks displaying the lopsided front page of the Guernsey News, 13 June 1966. She turned the handles on the front of the machine, one to angle the page correctly, the other to focus. Only a few lines accompanied the headline.
BODY FOUND AT BATHING POOLS
The body of a young woman was discovered early yesterday morning at the bathing pools at La Valette, St Peter Port. Police are unable to release any further details at this point but are appealing for witnesses. Please contact Police Constable Roger Wilson with any information.
She scrolled down but that was all the information about Elizabeth’s death in that day’s paper. She loaded the next slide.
BODY AT BATHING POOLS LOCAL SCHOOLGIRL
The body of the young woman found at the bathing pools at La Valette, St Peter Port, early yesterday morning, has been identified as that of Elizabeth Maude Mahy, 16, a student at Les Beaucamps Secondary School. She is believed to have spent the evening before her death in St Peter Port, specifically in the bar at The Yacht Hotel. Police are appealing for witnesses who may have seen Miss Mahy on the night of the 11 June, particularly anyone who might be able to identify a gentleman companion she was seen with, to contact Police Constable Roger Wilson.
It was the picture, though, not the words, which caught Jenny’s attention. It was a school photograph, black and white, a little grainy. She turned the handle to sharpen the image. Long blonde hair, big, pale eyes, dazzling smile. She was younger, a little rounder in the cheeks perhaps, but the resemblance was striking. Elizabeth Mahy looked just like Amanda Guille.
* * *
It was nearly dark when she left, but not late. A miserable drizzle now fell from low-lying cloud and the cobbles of the high street were black and slippery. There was just enough wind to make an umbrella a waste of time. She turned up her coat collar, pulled her hat over her ears and clutched her bag to her side.
Two girls drowned forty-eight years apart who happened to look alike. Hardly a story. Still, she had sat in the archive room for another hour, printing off copies of the News following Elizabeth’s death so she could read them later. Then she had compared Amanda’s picture to Elizabeth’s. It wasn’t just the hair and the eyes or the smiles. There was something else about them, she thought. A look. A vulnerability. They were both school photographs, which probably explained it. Both smiling in that same, slightly forced way, both on the cusp of adulthood, self-conscious, perhaps, in their uniforms. It was probably nothing. It was definitely nothing. A coincidence.
The dull, comforting familiarity of the high street. Only mid-November but already decked out for Christmas, the shop windows sparkled red and gold. Stripped of clothes, the mannequins of Creasey’s department store wore outfits of bright wrapping paper, finished off with huge parcel bow hats. Little gold boxes sat next to the diamonds and watches in the window of the upmarket jewellers. Poetic phrases stuck to the window reminded shoppers that true love cost real money. Next door the cut-price option offered 20 per cent off of everything and cash for gold by the ounce, so at least there was something for everyone.
She took a left on Smith Street and walked towards the public records office, or the Greffe as it was known. She wanted to check the death records. Check how many other people had drowned over the last fifty years. If there was nothing interesting in the records she would wait for the official verdict into Amanda Guille’s death, get a couple of quotes from her friends and put the story to rest.
She passed the Sunken Gardens. Steps led down to a little patch of grass, a few flowerbeds, a green wooden bench. The same wooden bench where, years earlier, she’d lost her virginity to a Nirvana-obsessed, angst-ridden seventeen-year-old. They’d carved their initials on the back of it with a penknife. No doubt it had been painted over many times, but it was etched on her memory, the whole mortifying experience. The guy worked for a bank now. He was clean-shaven and wore smart suits, carried a briefcase. She knew because she saw him all the time. At the coffee shop, or in M&S, or on the way to his car after work. Ironic really, that this was where she had come to escape her past. Because that was the thing about Guernsey: your past followed you, bumped into you, waved hello. There was no running from it, no hiding. You had to smile at it pleasantly instead.
14
October 1961
Mill Street was a bustling part of town. The post office, located halfway up the winding, cobbled hill, brought plenty of shoppers to the grocer and chemist and the bric-a-brac shop and to Island Books, which was nestled between a picture framers and an antique dealers.
The shop front was painted royal blue. Elaborate gold lettering spelled out its name in a rainbow shape, stretching right across the window. The whole thing was an indulgence, his uncle had explained, but he had reached a point in his life where he could afford to do something he loved. A small section at the front was dedicated to bestsellers, but if people wanted paperback fiction they could go to Buttons on the High Street and get a much-wider choice at a cheaper price. Island Books was the place to come for George Métivier’s Dictionnaire Franco Normand, for Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la Mer, and for a wealth of work and essays on Guernsey history, some never published; the only copy held in the shop and available for reference only.
It was amongst these books and papers that he found some of the most fascinating words he’d ever read. There was one book in particular he went back to time and again, a diary written by a German soldier posted in Guernsey during the war and left behind in the rush to leave. A local German speaker had translated it. He lost himself in those words, saw the island through the eyes of one of those great invaders, who seemed to view the place as nothing less than a paradise. This unnamed soldier wrote of the fine weather, the beautiful beaches, the hidden coves, the richness of the farmland and the abundance of fruit and vegetables which grew on it. He seemed also to be something of a historian and several of his entries told of stories he’d heard from locals, legends surrounding landmarks, beaches to avoid at full moon, where to find the Devil on All Hallows’ Eve.
The islanders were superstitious, he knew that. Mother used to buy little packets of powder from the woman across the street, reputed to have knowledge of healing, and bury them in the garden once a month, to help cure her ‘headaches’. He was certain it was nothing more than Brown and Polson’s, but Mother swore it helped. Then there were the witches. All the local children knew you shouldn’t walk down Pedvin Street if you could avoid it. Too many witches lived there. If you were unlucky one might give you the evil eye and then you’d get sick or be plagued with misfortune until you paid her to reverse the spell. But those were fairy tales. Strange, that a German soldier would be interested in them. He asked his uncle about it. Uncle Peter, who, most surprisingly, considering he was related to Mother, was an almost entirely inoffensive presence, expressed surprise that he should ask such a question. Didn’t he know the Nazis were fascinated with the occult? Hitler himself was said to have called on the advice of mystics during his rise to power in Germany. Some even said the Nazi party had its roots in an ancient pagan sect, that it was more of a religion than a political party.
‘In that way, they probably found themselves right at home here.’ Uncle Peter smiled.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, if you believe the stories, Guernsey is a better place than most to meet with the Devil. If you are interested in the island’s legends you should read this.’ Uncle Peter handed him a large book, its jacket faded green leather, tooled with intricate patterns. Guernsey Folk Lore by Sir Edgar MacCulloch.
‘This is one of the original copies, published in 1903. I’d appreciate if you read it only in the shop.’
He nodded, placed the b
ook on the counter, and began to read.
* * *
Le Trépied. Of all the places he’d visited since he’d started his reading, this was his favourite. He had been several times. On a clear night, he would lie on the large, flat stone, which formed the roof of the tomb and look out over Perelle Bay and towards Lihou Island. He would close his eyes and imagine the witches at Friday-night sabbats. He would try to conjure the sounds of laughter and dancing and he could almost see them, naked and beautiful and worshipping and he would reach out and fancy he could touch them, feel the lightest brush of soft skin or the gentle flick of long, loose hair as they whirled round and round, until he opened his eyes and the vision was gone.
Tonight, it was raining, so he sat inside, soaking up four thousand years of history from the chamber’s walls. He touched the rough, dry stones and thought about who had placed them here; about the gods they were trying to please or the dead they were hoping to honour. There was nothing like this now, he thought. There were churches, of course, and prayers. But not like this. The people who laid these stones had asked, not for redemption, but for survival, for fair weather and good crops, freedom from plague and pestilence. And the ones who came thousands of years later, the witches and the Devil worshippers, they had understood. There was something pure and true here. He took the German soldier’s diary out of his pocket. He had read it so many times his uncle had let him take it, amused that he found it so fascinating. It was fascinating. Because after the Druids and the pagans, it was the Nazis who had really appreciated this place. This one, and the dozens of others like it, spread across this tiny island. They had recognised it. Tried to harness it. This deep, elemental connection between the ancient and the new.
