by David Haynes
Chapter 10
“I wish you’d spoken to me first. Ollie was full of it last night.” Lou sounded tense.
“I thought it might help.” Chris hadn’t slept very well and he felt strained too. “He said he didn’t want to go to bed. I just thought if he was thinking about coming here it would distract him. I did try to talk to you but you were...”
“Oh yeah, that worked until about three o’clock this morning and then it was bad, really bad.”
“Nightmares?” It was a stupid question.
“Screaming, thrashing. He was hysterical, I didn’t know what to do with him.”
“That’s it, I’m coming home.”
“And do what, Chris? What exactly will you do when you get here? Frighten him some more when you see her? Scare him when you think you’ve seen a ghost in one of his pictures? What will you do? You tell me?” She wasn’t just tense, she was angry.
“I just...”
“You’re no use to us at the moment. You’ll do more harm than good.”
The words stung but she was right. Especially how he felt after last night. “But I’m feeling better, that’s why I suggested half-term. I’ll be fine by then, I promise. I’m getting there, I promise you, I’m getting there.”
There was silence from the other end.
“Is he there? Can I speak to him?”
“He’s in the shower, he wet the bed again. Talk to him tonight, okay?” Her tone had softened.
“I can hang on?”
“Tonight, Chris. Speak to him tonight.”
There wasn’t much he could do. “He’ll get over the nightmares. It’s just a bad phase.”
He heard Lou grunt. This was as close to agreement as he was going to get.
“He thinks there’s someone in his room, that’s why he won’t go to bed.”
“Someone in his room? Who does he think it is?”
“I don’t know and he won’t talk about it. I don’t want to push him about it either, it’ll just make things worse, so don’t mention it when you talk to him later. Okay?”
“Okay, if you think that’s best.” He wasn’t sure but Lou was the one dealing with it, not him.
“Talk to you later then.”
“Half-term? Ollie would love it, and so would Joe.”
“I’ll be speaking to Joe before we go anywhere. I need to make sure, Chris. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” They ended the call. It finished with them on better terms than they had been at the beginning but it was a long way from happy families.
Chris was still lying on top of the bed, where he’d collapsed. He was still dressed in the same clothes as he’d worn last night and they smelled of body odour and cider. He stripped off, changed and bundled his clothes up to go in the washing machine. He had no idea what time Pat woke up or what time his daily drinking ritual began, but he wanted to be there early.
At some point he’d fallen asleep, he must have done because his alarm woke him up, but he couldn’t remember at which point his eyes had grown too heavy to keep open. He’d stared at the ceiling for so long that he could almost see her shape forming in the darkness. At one point the sound of her voice had been broken by another sound, the sound of screaming. But it had been a dream, a thin and nasty dream, inhabiting the space just under the lightest levels of sleep, where every sound was as real as if it were in the room with him.
He was pushing the clothes into the machine when Joe came in.
“It’s a chilly one.” Joe rubbed his hands together and walked straight over to the kettle. “It’s blowing a gale out there. I wouldn’t be going out fishing today. Tea?”
“Please, I was just about to make one but these are a bit ripe.”
“Yep, a night out with Pat will do that.” He pointed to the Bushmills bottle and the glass on the table. “And it’ll do that to you too.”
Chris stood up and winced. The bottle was now almost empty. “Sorry, I’ll get some more today.”
“Don’t worry. How was he?” Joe was already boiling a pan of water for the eggs.
“Drunk. At least I think he was. It’s hard to tell with him at the moment.”
“No change there then. Where did he take you?”
Chris was trying hard not to think about it. Not yet, not until he’d spoken to Pat again.
“We drove up the road to the park, up along the road to St Ives to The Trewellard. Just a general drive about really.” He deliberately left out the visit to Pendeen and to the lighthouse.
Joe turned and smiled. “Told you some stories about your dad, did he?”
Chris smiled back but he didn’t much feel like it. “He did. A couple you might not have heard before.”
Joe turned back to the pan and put two slices of bread into the toaster. “And if Pat was involved then I probably don’t want to hear them either.”
Chris took the tumbler from the table and rinsed it.
“You needed the drink to settle you back down, I imagine. A night with Pat can be hard work.”
Chris put the bottle back in the cupboard. “Something like that, Granddad.”
*
Chris drove up the lane toward the village. He had left Joe listening to the shipping forecast on Radio Four. It wasn’t particularly important for Joe to hear it anymore but after so many years, it was a habit he refused to break. The windscreen wipers activated automatically as a light but steady drizzle fell. It was just after half past eight which he had a feeling was early for Pat, but he didn’t care. The longer he sat with Joe trying not to think about Pendeen, the more it crept into his thoughts. The more she crept into his thoughts.
Pat lived in a terraced house on a street, tucked back on the way out of the village. The houses had all belonged to miners when the industry was thriving but there were no miners there now. The street was a dead end and at the bottom there was a Methodist chapel. Someone with a lot of money had bought it several years ago and turned it into a place where glossy magazines went to photograph the latest interior designs. The exterior wasn’t pretty but it was dominant.
He pulled up outside Pat’s. The downstairs curtains were open which was a good sign but it wasn’t conclusive. Pat was the sort of man who went to bed without bothering about whether curtains were drawn or not. Chris had brought Ollie here once as a baby but never brought him back. Back then Pat hadn’t been anywhere near as bad with the booze, but even then keeping a clean house had been low on his list of priorities.
He got out of the car and banged on the door. He was determined this was not going to degenerate into another row or even a fight. He wasn’t under the same pressure as he’d been last night. Neither of them were. In the cold light of day, there was no way Pat could deny any of it.
He banged again and stepped back into the road. The upstairs curtains were open too. He cupped his hands around his face and peered in through the downstairs window. The window was foggy, not through the weather but from the build-up of grease and grime. It was just as he remembered. There was a small sofa, a coffee table in front of a ragged-looking armchair, and a television. There was a kitchen beyond that but the window was too dirty to see much detail that far back in the house. It didn’t go unnoticed that there was a number of cider cans and an empty two-litre bottle on the table. If that was breakfast, then he was setting himself up for a good day.
He pushed the letterbox open and shouted, “Pat, it’s Chris. You in there?” The air inside smelled stale. “Pat?”
He allowed the letterbox to close and stepped back into the road again. He could be ignoring him of course, but that wouldn’t be like Pat. He was argumentative, belligerent and occasionally aggressive but never ignorant.
Where to now then? Pat didn’t have a car anymore. That had gone around the same time as his licence had been taken off him by the court, so he never went very far. Chris looked up and down the street and bit his lip. He needed to get some more Bushmills for Joe and some other supplies to make them
both dinner tonight. He was going to make him a chilli, hopefully one with enough poke to satisfy the old boy.
There was Pat to think about though. He really needed to speak to him. He banged on the window one last time and climbed back into the car. If he couldn’t find him now, he knew where he would be come eleven o’clock – in The Queen’s. It wasn’t ideal but it might do for a start.
He drove back into the village and parked up on the square. It was virtually empty except for a few faces he vaguely recognised. He sat for a few minutes hoping Pat might spring from one of the shops, from the butcher’s or the bakery, but he never did.
The Co-op was similarly quiet which was good because the shop was tiny; in the summer months, customers queued all the way around the store. He chose what he needed and walked to the till.
“Hello again.” A voice came from behind.
He turned and saw it was the barmaid from the pub, Susie Curnow. The image of the park flashed through his mind. The park where his dad had removed her bra.
“Hi, how’s it going?” he asked.
“Not too bad, yourself?”
He paid the young lad at the till and took his bags away. “Good thanks,” he lied. “You haven’t seen Pat this morning, have you?”
Susie blew air loudly through her pursed lips. “I see him every day and not once has it been before opening time.”
Chris nodded and started to walk away. “Okay, cheers. Have a good one.”
“He wasn’t a bad-looking lad when he was younger.” She followed him out. “Not as handsome as your dad, mind, but he was...” She sighed loudly. “Now look at him. He needs a good woman to sort him out.”
They walked together for a few strides until Chris reached the car. He opened it and put the bags on the back seat. “Can I give you a lift anywhere, Susie?”
She opened her mouth but whatever she said was immediately swallowed up by the sound of a siren screaming toward them. First a police car raced past then an ambulance quickly followed behind.
Both vehicles turned onto the road leading to Joe’s cottage and Hawk’s Cove.
Chris jumped into the car without saying another word and drove away. His tyres squealed on the road as his foot pressed hard on the accelerator. The car had taken a battering over the last few hours and it was about to be tested again. His heart sank as he drove down the lane. There was only a handful of cottages on the road and if it was Joe... he couldn’t bear to allow his thoughts to go any further down that line.
Another siren blared from behind. He looked in the mirror and saw flashing headlights and a pulsing blue beacon bright in the mirror. It was almost on top of him but there weren’t many passing places on the road. He drove as quickly as he could and the driver, seeing there was nowhere to pass, switched off both the sirens and the lights.
As soon as he was able, Chris pulled over and let the police car pass. He immediately pressed down on the pedal and tried to keep up with it. As he rounded the final bend, he expected to see a collection of liveried emergency vehicles lined up outside Joe’s cottage. It was then that he released his breath. He had no idea how long he’d been holding it for but it erupted from his mouth with a bellow. There were no more houses farther down the lane, so unless there had been an accident on the road, there was only one place the ambulance and police cars were going.
He slowed the car down outside Joe’s but didn’t pull in. He wasn’t about to go gawking at some unfortunate person’s accident, especially when it was at Hawk’s Cove, but something about this didn’t feel right.
“Go on!”
He’d been staring so intently down the lane that he hadn’t seen Joe come out of the cottage. He was climbing into the passenger seat.
“I don’t like the feel of this, lad. Not at all.” Joe grimaced as he sat down.
Chris pushed down on the accelerator and they moved away. This was the first time he’d passed the invisible line he’d scratched into the road since his dad had died. There was a sign too, a sign that only he could see and on that sign it said ‘DO NOT PASS!” in bright red letters. He glanced at it as he drove past. The letters were running down the sign and dripping onto the grass like blood.
“Nor do I.” He looked at the road ahead, watching the blue beacons swinging one way then the other as the drivers navigated the lane.
As soon as he turned around the first corner, nausea hit him like a freight train. It rose quickly up from his guts and coated his mouth in sour bile. He swallowed it back and wound the window down.
“You okay, boy?”
Chris nodded once and swung the car around the bend. The view that opened up took his breath away and at the same time sent a ripple of nausea up his throat. He heaved and spat the acid out of the window.
“It’s beautiful,” he whispered. And it was, it was one of the most dazzling vistas he could imagine. It was also hideous.
“They’re all down there.” Joe pointed toward the car park. It was unnecessary because that was where the road ended. There was nothing more except for a path down to the cove. He knew it well. As much as he tried to scrub it from his mind, it was all imprinted on his memory in high-resolution clarity. He drove forward slowly and parked near the top, out of the way of the emergency vehicles.
He knew every inch of Hawk’s Cove as if he’d lived in it for the last thirty-three years. In a way he had. Joe started to climb out of the car. “You stay there.”
Joe’s face was lined with battle scars. They were deep and would never heal. Battling to keep going – to stay alive when God had kicked him in the nuts, not once but twice – had made his face a patchwork of pain. He covered it up with a smile and a wink but it was still there and you didn’t need to look very hard to see it.
Chris sat there for a moment and watched him walk down the gradient toward the ambulance. Joe’s slight figure disappeared for a split-second as the wipers flashed across the screen. He turned the engine off and opened the door. The air smelled different here. The sea spray was like glitter, lacing the air with a tangy metallic odour that filled his head with fear.
“No!” It was Joe’s voice, there was no mistaking it. He followed it up by smashing his fist against the side of the ambulance. It was louder than the sound of the waves raking the pebbles below.
“No, no, no!” He looked up at Chris and put his hands to his head. “No!” he roared and fell against the side of the ambulance.
Chris waited. To move would be to take a step closer to the cove, to his own hell. To simply wait would be to leave Joe in agony. He’d been too young and too locked in his grief to see what Joe had gone through when his dad had died. And nobody except Joe knew what losing Lizzy had done to him. But as Chris looked at him through the steady fall of rain, he knew it would take something like that to reduce him to this. No, not something like that. Exactly that.
To stay where he was wasn’t an option. To leave the man he loved as a father, crumpled against the side of an ambulance like that, was unthinkable. He sprinted down the incline and took Joe in his arms.
“He said he was going to do it one day. He told me what he was going to do,” Joe wailed.
He was sobbing and his body was heaving but as Chris held him, he looked over his shoulder into the cove. Everything was there, just as he remembered it, down to each tiny, insignificant detail; the colour of the pebbles, the tangle of lobster pots, the fishing boats and the dazzling whiteness of the ocean smashing into the rocks. Everything was there but this time there was something else. There was someone else, somebody who hadn’t been there last time.
There was a body. A body which leaked blood as black as the ocean from two deep ravines cut into his wrists. Pat Bailey’s body lay as if he’d been crucified.
Chapter 11
The blood was congealing in two long streaks down the slipway. It looked thick and black like an oil spill from one of the fishing boats. The tide was coming in and the waves tasted the ends of the blood trails before coming back and nibbling at t
hem again. The sea had always enjoyed the taste of human blood. Always.
There was no mistaking Pat. His unkempt beard and grubby, green and red chequered shirt were all anyone would need to identify him. There were two policemen and two paramedics down there with him. Their fluorescent coats were a dazzling contrast to both the bleak backdrop and the awful situation. They gathered around him as if there was something that could be done to help him, to save him.
One of the paramedics looked up at them and said something to his colleague before walking up the path toward the car park. Joe had stopped sobbing but he clung to Chris as Chris had clung to him many times before.
Chris looked down on the scene and hoped someone else, something else, wouldn’t decide to make an appearance. But all of the time, the sea raked the pebbles and hissed at him in a warning. Keep back.
The paramedic approached them. “Do you know him?” he asked quietly, out of breath. His hair was plastered to his head with rain.
“I do,” Chris replied. “We both do.”
“I’m sorry.” He opened the back of the ambulance and pulled out a collapsible trolley.
“We’re going to bring him up now. The police will want to speak to you.”
“His name is Pat.” Joe pushed Chris gently away and stood up straight. “Patrick Bailey.”
The paramedic nodded and smiled. “Well, we’re going to bring Patrick back up here as gently and as quickly as we can. Okay?”
Joe just stared without saying a word as the paramedic wheeled the trolley down the path. Chris watched him as he went. “Why Pat, why?” He didn’t love Pat the way his dad had or the way Joe did but there was a bond between them, between them all.
Joe rummaged in his pocket and pushed a piece of paper at Chris, who read it aloud. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The paper was covered in the same words over and over again. He looked back at Joe. “Is this from him?”
Joe nodded. “It was on the mat this morning.”
“What? Why didn’t you say anything?”
