The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ I purred, and so, for a short, happy hour I was once again a member of the moneyed classes. A young lad raced about the shop for me picking up toiletries and groceries, while I found myself drifting towards Ladies’ Clothing. The new autumnal range was in stock; I fingered polo neck jumpers and wool skirts, wishing I’d thought, on leaving home, to pack for future seasons, and not just the one I was in.

  After Ladies’ Clothing came Ladies’ Footwear and the special Modern Girl section, and of course they were there, the same fab white sandals that had been gracing the window of Lady Lucinda all summer. They had a thick round buckle and a low heel, and the tiny price tag attached to it read, in discreet handwriting, 45/-.

  I caressed the shoes furtively. They were five bob cheaper than they were in the shoe shop, not that it made any difference to me: I wasn’t about to buy them. Despite myself, my thoughts returned to the mountain of Dockie’s notes still squashed into the bottom of my bag, and I knew that he’d never notice how much I returned to him. He hadn’t even asked for a receipt.

  I wrestled with my conscience for several minutes, as another pleat-skirted, red-lipsticked salesgirl hovered discreetly nearby, waiting for my nod. I had helped him, after all; more than anyone else would have done. I would never, ever be able to afford the shoes. I would never be able to afford anything decent ever again – or, at least, not for years and years, which was the same thing. And what did he need the money for, in any case?

  ‘Can I help you, miss?’ The salesgirl took a step closer.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I thought of the day before I’d thrown everything up in the air, when I’d gone into town with my schoolfriends and had bumped into Harry, purely by coincidence, and he’d made them giggle and I’d said nothing at all. He’d tagged along, even though I hadn’t wanted him to, and as we were exclaiming over the white shoes in the window, he’d offered to buy them for me.

  ‘What, now?’ Sheila had said, and I’d caught the puzzled look that passed between her and Mary, and I’d known that it wouldn’t be long before they caught on.

  ‘It is my birthday in a month,’ I’d said archly, and they’d nudged and teased me for the way I’d said it, and I hoped I’d distracted them enough that they wouldn’t twig that all the little extra things I’d come to school with – the gold-nibbed fountain pen, the bound copy of Madame Bovary, the lipstick applied in secret at break time – hadn’t come from my non-existent savings but from the pocket of the man trailing us around town right now.

  Well, I was glad I was finished with that, although the presents had been nice, and I sort of wished I hadn’t got used to them.

  ‘Let me know if you need me,’ the salesgirl said a little wearily, clearly thinking I was a time-waster.

  ‘Wait,’ I said as she turned to go. ‘You wouldn’t have these in a size three, would you?’

  Sometime later I headed out of Bradley’s, several paper bags clutched in my fists, one of them containing a rather beautiful pair of expensive white sandals. The plate-glass door was opened for me, I was waved off with cheerful smiles, and I bounced back along Wellington Street, grinning at the shoes in the window, turning left on to King Street and then right at the seafront up Gaunt’s Cliff, pleased that I’d done a good turn, not only to the old man but also to myself.

  When I got back to Castaway, I went straight down to the basement and knocked on Dockie’s door with a confident fist. ‘Hello!’ I called. ‘Rosie here. I’ve got some things for you.’

  Just like yesterday, there was no answer, although this time as I hammered again I heard somebody behind the door opposite snarling at me to shut the fuck up. After several more knocks, which were again greeted with insults from across the way, I realized, belatedly, that he must not be there.

  I looked at the bags in my hand and glanced down the passageway. I had a feeling that if I left them outside his door they would be gone within half an hour, and so I tried the handle to his room. When it gave, I opened and stepped in.

  The smell of yesterday had lessened slightly, perhaps due to the open window. The closed curtains billowed inwards, rippling grey daylight across the dim room. I made out the shape of the table and went to put the bags on it.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  I yelped and turned, my heart hammering. The shape on the bed was shifting. In the dark I could just about see Dockie’s tangled head and lumpy body.

  ‘You scared the living daylights out of me!’ I dropped the bags, went to the window and pulled the curtains open. Dockie was lying on one arm; he had removed his overcoat and boots at least, which were lying on the floor, but the blanket was cramped around his much-darned stockinged feet. His eyes were half-closed and gummy.

  ‘Whassgoinon?’

  ‘It’s me. Rosie.’ I returned to his bedside and looked down at him. ‘I’ve brought your shopping.’

  ‘Ugh.’ He put a hand to his brow to hold back the light.

  ‘You asked me to buy you some things. You gave me money.’ I opened my handbag and took out his change, putting it on the table where the torn envelope still lay. No, I decided, he would never, ever notice the missing forty-five bob.

  He grunted something which sounded like, ‘My head,’ and rolled over on to his side.

  ‘There’s more being delivered later,’ I said brightly, conscious of the shoes in their clean white box, wrapped in tissue paper. I was still holding this bag in my hand, and placed it carefully beside the door. ‘But look, I’ve brought you some groceries. Shall I make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Tea.’ He snorted. ‘Tea.’

  I thought that might be some sort of assent, and took one of the bags to the kitchenette, filling the kettle at the sink and setting it on the gas. ‘You do remember, don’t you?’ I said, lighting the flame with a match.

  ‘Mmm.’ There was a pause. ‘You’re the girl. You came before.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m Rosie. You’re Dockie.’ I looked over at him; he appeared to be hanging half off the bed now. ‘You left Dublin?’

  I heard another ‘Mmm’, but it sounded more certain now. I busied myself with spooning tea into the battered metal pot and setting a chipped cup and saucer on the side.

  ‘The house,’ he muttered. ‘The name of the house.’

  ‘This place? Castaway House?’

  He grunted. ‘Yes. Oh, God, my head.’ There was a squeak of bedsprings and he shuffled himself up to sitting, resting his back against the wall. ‘I have a problem … with my head. It doesn’t allow me to … to breathe.’

  I glanced at him. ‘To breathe?’

  ‘To think. To remember.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, as the kettle whistled and I poured boiling water into the pot. ‘You said you’d been on a bender.’

  ‘Ah. Of course. The bender.’ His gummy eyes peeled open further and appeared to take me in for the first time. ‘You … went shopping?’

  ‘You asked me, as a favour.’ My cheeks burned as I poured the tea and spooned in powdered milk, wondering if he’d notice my mangling of the truth. ‘To, you know, buy you some clothes and whatnot.’

  ‘I think I remember.’ He breathed slowly, as if unsure of his lungs. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ I opened the packet of sugar and shook some into the cup. ‘Here’s your tea.’

  I brought it over to him and he took it from me carefully. I pulled out a chair from under the table and sat on it sideways. ‘Do you want me to call a doctor?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ He blew on his tea. ‘I shall be fine very shortly.’

  ‘It’s just that you don’t seem …’ I paused. ‘At all well, really.’

  He sipped his tea and sighed. ‘I have a problem with my memory,’ he said. ‘It’s not the booze, you know. The booze is medicine, to stop these headaches. I am plagued, you see, by terrible headaches.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’ He glanced up at m
e. ‘The tea is excellent. You will make someone a good wife one day.’

  I barked a sour laugh and put my chin on the back of the chair. ‘So you still don’t know why you’re here?’ I asked.

  ‘Castaway House …’ He sighed. ‘A tattoo on my heart. Castaway House.’

  ‘Items from a newspaper, you said.’ I recalled mentioning that to him yesterday, although this time he forbore from going through his pockets yet again.

  ‘Ah. Yes. That rings a bell.’ He frowned. ‘I believe it was the reason for the bender.’

  ‘You read a newspaper and went on a bender?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps. I suppose I read something important.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s gone, I’m afraid. Maybe it will return.’

  I glanced at the table beside me, where I’d laid the money. Beside it was the tatty envelope. ‘That photograph, from the envelope,’ I said, sliding it out and showing him. ‘This isn’t what you meant, is it?’

  He looked at it. ‘I have always owned that,’ he said. ‘I was born with it.’

  I put it back inside the envelope. ‘I thought it might be you as a baby,’ I said. ‘But I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Ah, now, as to that I have no idea. If it is indeed a baby, I am at a loss as to which baby it might be.’

  I frowned. ‘But you said you were born with it.’

  ‘On the docks. I was born with it on the docks.’

  ‘You were born on the docks?’ He’d muttered something about this yesterday, but I hadn’t been paying attention.

  His red-rimmed eyes flicked in my direction. ‘By which I mean,’ he added, ‘that I was found on the docks.’

  ‘Really? How odd.’

  ‘By Frank. He found me on the docks, wrapped in a torn blanket, clutching this photograph, and there I was born, because prior to that moment I have no memory at all.’

  I leaned forwards on my chair. ‘What do you mean, no memory?’

  ‘I mean exactly that. Of what happened to me before, there is nothing but smoke and fog.’ He shrugged. ‘But it was a long time ago, you understand. It is of little consequence now.’

  ‘But that’s … but that’s … how old were you? I mean – you weren’t a child?’

  ‘Not in physical form, no.’ He breathed heavily. ‘But in many other respects, that is exactly what I was.’

  I put a hand to my mouth. ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘And ever since then … you see, the headaches. They get in the way of my remembering. I have a brain somewhat akin to a Swiss cheese.’

  ‘But you must have been told, surely. I mean, who you are, what your name is.’ I frowned. ‘You know what your name is? Your real name.’

  He shook his head. ‘I know nothing. As I said, I was born on the docks.’ He took another sip of tea.

  ‘Yes, but …’ I hesitated. ‘People don’t just turn up. Somebody must have been looking for you.’

  He shrugged. ‘Alas, not in my case. It appears that nobody wanted to recover me at all.’

  ‘But that’s awful.’

  ‘Not at all. Who needs memories? Weighing one down with a lot of nonsense.’ He nodded firmly. ‘Frank was of the same opinion. He used to say that if I’d ever wanted to remember my past, it would have come back a long time ago.’

  I looked down at the table top and thought of my own nonsense and how if I could erase my memories – at least, certain ones – then I surely would. Another thought occurred to me. ‘So when you came here before, to Castaway House, it must have been before you lost your memory.’

  Dockie shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. I could have been here last year and forgotten about it. Frank remembered things for me, you see, but now Frank is dead and I have to rely on myself. And, as you see, I am not very reliable.’

  ‘Perhaps if you knew who the photograph was of …’ I stood up. ‘Perhaps that would help?’ I trailed off, feeling inadequate, as if nothing I could say would ever match the enormity of losing who you’d once been.

  He waved a hand in the chilly air. ‘I need no help. When one has a faulty brain, one must learn to adapt to the flow of the river.’ He frowned. ‘Except that I find myself here, without the slightest notion of why, when I could be in my own room with Mrs O’Shea bringing me soup on a tray.’

  ‘I made you soup yesterday.’ I went to the kitchenette and looked through one of the bags. ‘By the way, I brought you this.’

  Dockie squinted at the bottle of Wincarnis Tonic Wine in confusion. ‘Hmm.’

  I put it on the side. ‘You’ve some more things arriving this afternoon. Look, the money’s on the table, okay? You can count it.’

  He gave a dismissive shake of his head. ‘You’re a good girl,’ he murmured, and as I went past he held out a hand. ‘Thank you.’

  I smiled at the hand, not really wanting to touch it. ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘And now, to rest.’ He put his cup of tea on the floor.

  I opened the door and swung back on it, looking down at him. ‘Do you want me to … I don’t know, pop down tomorrow? Make sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Oh no. You’ve done quite enough.’ He nodded, and guilt curled my spine because I really had done quite enough.

  ‘I shall be fine now,’ he went on. ‘I have food and clothes and a good wine. What more could I want?’

  ‘Well.’ I waggled my fingers. ‘Bye-bye, then. I mean, I’m sure I’ll bump into you in the hall or something.’

  ‘I shall return to Dublin as soon as I am fit.’ He wheezed out a sigh. ‘What a foolish adventure.’

  I left him staring blearily at his holey socks, twisted into the end of the bedclothes, and climbed the stairs back to the ground floor. I was walking along the passageway towards the hallway when I realized I’d forgotten the shoes. They were still in their pristine box, wrapped in tissue paper, in an innocent-looking Bradley’s bag sitting beside the door.

  I closed my eyes and leaned on the snail-shell end of the banister. I should go back now, make up some excuse about just checking if he was still all right, then whip up the bag and high-tail it away. ‘I didn’t know he was ill,’ I muttered to the painted-over Anaglypta below the dado rail, scuffed by a hundred passing bodies.

  At that moment the telephone pealed into life and I jumped out of my skin.

  I stared at it, frozen, as it rang, accusing me. I felt unable to take a step towards it or away; instead I clung to the banister like a life raft, as the overhead light clicked off and I was left in the dim milky light of the afternoon.

  The phone continued to ring and then I heard a growled, ‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’ The door to the ground-floor flat burst open and I steeled myself, gripping the banister harder, as Star emerged with an apron over her Mod-girl striped top. She switched on the light, darted to the phone and, as she picked it up, saw me and gasped as loudly as I’d done when Dockie had surprised me just now.

  ‘Shit,’ she muttered as she pulled the receiver towards her, and shook her head sharply before barking into the phone, ‘Helmstone 4895.’

  I smiled a weak apology, but she frowned at me and said into the receiver, ‘Who’s that? Rosie?’

  I shook my head frantically and waved my hands. Star continued to look at me as she said, ‘No, I’m sorry, she’s just gone out … No, no idea. Sorry.’

  Thank you, I mouthed to her. She nodded at me and curled the telephone wire around her long fingers. ‘Okay. Do you want me to ask her to call you back?’ She paused. ‘Oh. Well. Look, I’ll make sure she sees it, anyway.’

  I took a step away from the stairs towards Star as she took the chalk from its shelf and scrawled on the board, Rosie – your mother called. Again. ‘On the top floor, yes,’ she was saying. ‘Yes. Yes, I know her.’

  I leaned my head on the wall as Star turned slightly away from me. Odd notes had been scribbled all over the area beside the telephone, perhaps in the days before the blackboard, and they loomed in close-up: Carry Me Home 5:2 (D’cster 3.18), Oral 15/-, Full
£3, Tel. Mr Rattle 8390 (urgent!)

  ‘Um … well, fine, I suppose.’ I noticed two spots of pink light up Star’s cheeks. I had never seen her blush before. ‘As far as I know. Yes. I suppose. Very happy … No, no, carry on.’

  I heard the tinny chip of my mother’s voice speaking through the wire, and felt my own cheeks burn red. I looked away from Star, towards the open door to the ground-floor flat, through which I could make out a small hallway and, beyond that, what seemed to be a bedroom.

  ‘Well, the thing is, you see, I don’t really know her all that well,’ said Star, turning slowly back towards me. ‘A boyfriend?’

  I shook my head again, my eyes bulging inside their sockets. Star nodded slowly, listening. The telephone wire spun long waves about her fingers. Her sharp haircut gleamed under the overhead light. It suddenly occurred to me that Star belonged even less to Castaway House than I did. She’d have fitted in more on a yacht, holding a glass of champagne in one hand, wearing a one-piece swimsuit and laughing at the spray kicked up by the turns of the boat.

  ‘No. Not that I’ve noticed.’ Star looked me up and down and said, in a careless sort of way, ‘Not at all. She doesn’t seem the sort … Oh well. I’m sure she’s fine … It’s – um – it’s Star … as in, you know, the night sky.’

  I waited, my heart hammering, as Star said, ‘I’ll tell her … All right then … Goodbye.’

  She placed the receiver carefully back on the telephone and surveyed me, her head to one side. ‘She wanted to know if you had a boyfriend.’

  I smiled. ‘You know what mothers are like. Always worrying.’ I spread my palms out. ‘Anyway, you know I haven’t.’

  Star leaned one elbow on the end of the banister. ‘And she asked if you’d broken up with anyone. If I knew about any man who’d upset you.’

  I pressed myself back against the wall. ‘My mum!’ I laughed. ‘She thinks there’s some big secret behind it all. The Reason Rosie Left Home.’

  Star reached out and touched my shoulder. ‘You can tell me, you know.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ I drew away from the wall, into her touch. ‘Nothing important. Anyway, you’ve got secrets.’