by Syd Moore
In profile Ethel-Rose could see that the housekeeper did bear a great resemblance to the woman she had seen on the beach. ‘Was it you there that I saw?’ she asked.
Mrs Trevelyan shook her head. ‘Not me but a hotchpotch of family gone back, years, decades, centuries past. Who knows? I don’t. Though I feel it each time – the blade through the heart.’
‘But, how can it be?’ she said, though she knew such things came to pass.
‘People like you wouldn’t understand,’ said the housekeeper, and shook her head.
Ethel-Rose nodded. ‘Actually, people like me fully understand.’
‘Not seers,’ said the housekeeper with contempt. ‘Outsiders.’
‘Oh,’ said Ethel-Rose, aware that this was an odd and flatly honest conversation she was having.
‘Now,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, brusque again and workmanlike. ‘We don’t talk about this sort of thing and neither should you. Was a nightmare that you won’t have again. And you’ll forget it. By noon the memory will have dimmed and all you’ll be left with is an uncomforting itch. Don’t let it spoil your holiday. Now perhaps you’ll take advice and not come back at the same time again.’
‘No,’ said Ethel-Rose. ‘I might stay put next year.’ Suddenly Essex, with its witches and assortment of oddities, seemed the most wonderful place in the world.
MADNESS IN A CORUÑA
As dictated to Samuel Stone, curator
of the Essex Witch Museum
Halloween is the worst time for it.
You ask me why?
Walking the streets is one thing. I find myself alert to slipping ghouls, dark-backed creatures, shadows unpeeling from crevices and walls. The taint of real horror that swarms in with them is real and profound.
Holiday fun, they say.
Not so for me.
It brings it all back.
Sometimes on those nights I must look behind, double lock my doors, light incense and thank God for friends and American travellers.
Yes, even me.
And you want to know why.
Well, your instincts are right. Doctor Bradley said you were smart. Though I doubt you will find any explanation in your books at the Witch Museum. Not for this. No. Though perhaps the old man will understand. Mr Strange, I hear, has led an interesting life.
All right then.
I don’t really want to mention how I came to be in A Coruña but I suppose it has some relevance to the story and you will desire to hear of it I expect, so I may as well get it over with.
I had recently divorced. There. Judge me if you will. It is the least of it.
Sheila, my former wife, was twenty-five years my junior and a student at Litchenfield University where, as you know, I lectured in semiotics. Before you leap to conclusions, she had not taken my course. Oh no, Sheila read Modern English, my colleague’s department – the much-feted popinjay and television celebrity, Professor George Chin. He was so much more ‘relatable’ apparently and certainly more glamorous than my humble self.
It was at Chin’s exclusive Christmas gathering, huddled round his minimalist wood burner, that I happened upon my future wife. If perhaps she had taken my own course, then she may have understood more of my character and our marital trundle towards collapse would have proved less arduous. As it was, we worked our way through several Relate counsellors and two tedious and expensive psychotherapists before reaching the mutual conclusion that happiness was not to be found in each other. Privately I had discovered this for myself a couple of months into the marriage: Sheila was lean and pretty, but shallow and materialistic in a way that I found distasteful. The revelation wilted my ardour.
My young wife, never the pragmatist, insisted on trying to save our doomed union. Or more likely she thought she might save me.
There was a reason, as there always is, that I had remained a bachelor into my forties, yet she was determined to ignore it. Perhaps I presented a challenge to her. I don’t know.
However, as the months passed and Sheila came to know me more, she began, also, to formulate the point of view that I was less aesthetic than aesthete. Women whom I have met and seduced in the past often assumed that when I am thinking, or abstracted, I am contemplating the depths of life (or them). Whereas I am simply vacant or considering the semiotic deconstruction of whatever advertisement, signage or symbol lies within eyesight.
At the beginning of our courtship Sheila would regularly catch me in this reflection and ask what I was thinking about. And so, in the early days, anxious to hang on to the fragile relationship and the exciting nocturnal theatrics it brought, I would tell her I was gauging the exact shade of her eyes, or the palette of her hair as the sun played upon it so I could burn them into my soul. I expected her to laugh, but she didn’t. She purred and was more appreciative in bed. I could have done more but I have never been partial to histrionics. Remember that, please.
Once Sheila and I had been joined in matrimony I thought it wise to be honest and, anyway, I was growing bored of her persistence and vanity. So when my wife would repeat her question concerning my mental attentions, I began to tell her the truth. Disappointment would cloud her eyes for a second, before she could recycle it into an outward show of interest. Though by our six-month anniversary her mounting dismay was harder to conceal. Soon after she stopped asking.
It was with relief not bitterness that I bade Sheila farewell. One warm spring day, I watched her jump into the car of her new lover, an art student of her own age, within whom she found, or thought she had found, qualities lacking in my good self. I wished her luck sincerely, though I doubt she believed me. I have never been an emphatic man.
When term ended, unencumbered by a wife, I found myself at liberty to wander wherever I pleased. And it pleased me to go to A Coruña where I might reacquaint myself with an old university friend. Xosé was a very decent chap who I had shared a flat with briefly at Cambridge.
It had been years since I had seen him. He had married Tatiana, an elegant, black-haired Spanish beauty, and produced two similarly blessed children. They had been unable to make our wedding, though I wondered if they had simply refused to bear witness to my undoubted humiliation. And perhaps that is why, out of everyone, I chose to visit them.
My first night in A Coruña was delightful. I caught up with Xosé in a tapas bar on what he informed me the locals called Calle Vino, ‘Wine Alley’. One of the children was sick and Tatiana had opted to stay in. But she sent her love and had instructed Xosé to introduce me to the local speciality, pulpo, boiled octopus, and to consume vast quantities of Galician wine and beer. He made a sterling effort.
Though I did not reveal it, the pulpo I could not get on with. I found the look of the dish aesthetically displeasing: swaddled in red sauce as if it were still bleeding, the bubbled skin was a rusty vermilion in shade. Purple shadows clustered round the suckers, like scorched bruises and septic sores. However, I surrendered eventually to Xosé’s inducements to sample the ‘pride of Galicia’ and popped a braised tentacle into my mouth. As I chewed it I could have sworn I felt it move in my mouth. Only impeccable manners prevented me from spitting the thing onto the table. With great difficulty I swallowed. But I couldn’t shift the notion that later the amputated limb would swim in my stomach, feeling for ways to get out.
Instead I favoured the wine, which was, thank goodness, excellent.
We drank non-stop, exchanged stories and news and, at leisure, Xosé pointed me to several A Coruña attractions I should ensure I saw. This week, he informed me with enthusiasm, was the perfect time to experience the city, for their famous fiesta had begun. Musical performances and parades were taking place in the squares and piazzas and, on Saturday, there was to be a special concert on the beach. Madness, the English ska band of great repute, were to play he told me with a wink, and reminded me of one of my more exuberant moments at our Student Union many, many years ago. I had finally given in to his demands to dance to one of their hit records and made a happy fool of m
yself in front of a gaggle of undergraduates. I rarely let my guard down and was known for my reserve. The incident had ended up in the rag mag and, for a moment in time, I was to appreciate a small measure of notoriety. I had forgotten about the episode entirely and, teased into laughter by my Spanish friend, found myself briefly dosed with optimism. Xosé, too, bolstered by wine and warmth, grew loquacious and went on to recall one of our other capers – a nocturnal dip in the baroque fountain situated in the city square – fully clad and fully inebriated. He clapped me on the back and told me that night had sealed our friendship. But his recollection was flawed, for that was not me but another fellow, limp, pale and effeminate, whom I had secretly loathed.
I did not correct Xosé.
Nor did I smile.
The evening was shortened by an unexpected power cut, which seemed to provoke much consternation in the locals. I was keen to continue but, despite power returning within minutes, the bars shut and Xosé informed me he should check on his family. However, the occasion had proven so pleasant that we agreed to do it again and meet same time, same bar the following evening. Xosé promised he would see if they could get a babysitter so he could bring Tatiana along.
My hotel room was perfectly adequate but uninspiring: the view took in an empty apartment building built during the housing bubble and abandoned once it had burst. So the next morning I breakfasted and got out into A Coruña as soon as I could.
The hotel was situated right on the avenida, or promenade, as I kept calling it. A curving stone balustrade had been built at some point in the last two centuries to prevent people falling off the walk onto the rocky beach some fifty feet below. Being an Englishman abroad I felt it only polite to sample the waters and take myself for a morning dip.
Seagulls squawked and dove in circles just above me as I descended the seventy stone steps to the beach. I found a patch of silver sand near the steep rocks that curled either side of the bay and disrobed somewhat self-consciously. The Spanish families paid me no attention as I entered the sea. I was an unremarkable middle-aged man, set apart only by the radiating whiteness of my skin and lack of muscle definition. I have never been a gym man.
The sea was part of the Atlantic and, I found, sixty shades of shivering blue. Undeterred by the icy quality I took the plunge, literally, and, once the shock had passed through my limbs, swam out into the deeps. A Coruña was luminous and, despite the cold, I found myself relaxing into what Sheila would have called ‘holiday mode’.
The rust-coloured cliff on my left was peppered with bathers on towels and a couple of statues – a mermaid in green and some kind of religious character I couldn’t make out. Above them the promenade pushed its cafés and bars forward for custom. The streetlights, I noticed, were shaped like crucifixes, their lights fixed either side of the cross. They pointed firmly out to sea, forming a linear barrier to any unholy visitors who might consider sailing in. Or perhaps, I considered later, to keep them in.
After fifteen minutes or so I had had enough and turned inland, propelling myself back with a leisurely breaststroke.
It took me a while to notice the man on the balustrade. I had been enjoying the view of two pleasantly shaped young ladies playing bat and ball and was disappointed when the taller brunette missed (I had backed her for a winner). Her attention had been caught by something high up. Her partner shouted out some rebuke but when the brunette did not reply she too followed her friend’s gaze, as did I.
Standing on top of, not behind, the stone balustrade was a young man, casually dressed in shorts and T-shirt. It was clear that he was in some distress. He was shouting, but not at anyone in particular. His face pointed up to the sky, at which he threw up a fist before slapping hard at the right side of his neck. Some others on the beach, those not prone on towels but who had been standing or walking or engaged in some other activity had also become aware of the man and a ripple of foreboding spread in waves through them. I felt it too as I looked up, and increased my speed to the shore.
On the promenade a cluster of people had formed around him, and I wondered suddenly if this was a performance scheduled as part of the fiesta. The reaction on the beach suggested if this was the case it was certainly not appreciated. An old couple by the rocks shook their heads, and I saw the life guard, who had been lazing in a deck chair, set off at speed towards the stone staircase.
As I got closer I could see that some of the families had called in their children and were huddling together unsure of what to do.
The young man seemed not to notice the crowd around him and continued his strange routine, yelling to the heavens then again striking hard at his neck until, as I looked on, he rather suddenly stopped. His hands dropped to his sides, and his body became slack, as if he were surrendering to something or someone. Then, as we all looked on, he spread his arms out in a Christ-like pose. I saw his mouth open and shut but was too far away to hear what he said. I think he closed his eyes, I’m not sure, but something happened, some small gesture that spoke to the audience before him, and I, like them, at once realised what he was going to do. In the next instant, before anyone could galvanise themselves into action, the young man took a step off the balustrade.
His fall was not flailing. There were no signs of regret as he pitched forwards and landed with a loud crack on the rocks below.
At first no one moved or spoke. It was as if collective shock had paralysed the entire community of witnesses. Then someone screamed and the beach fell apart into hysteria. Too late we heard the police siren approach.
I came up onto the shore and grabbed my towel. Although I tried to avoid it I could see the bloody mess where the boy’s head had been. He hadn’t survived the fall.
Taking my cue from the families fleeing, I clambered over the boulders to the right and made my way over another beach then up a different flight of steps.
The police had begun cordoning off the area, which included my hotel. Traffic was snaring up around me, drivers honking their horns, pedestrians gathering for a peek at the body.
I hurriedly put on my clothes and, not really knowing what to do, slipped off the main drag and into a tiny side street.
The experience of witnessing the suicide had upset me. No, not upset me. Perhaps unbalanced my mind for a moment. I am not given to sentimentality and realise that life, with its woes, is not for everyone. After Sheila’s departure, despite my relief, I can admit that I experienced some dark thoughts. I firmly believed men and women should have the right to end life, if it is their own, as much as they have to create it. Not everyone was suited to twenty-first-century living. However, I was aware I had witnessed a violent tragedy that would affect many people. Not just the young man and his family but everyone who had been on the beach.
Briefly I wondered why the fellow had chosen such a public spot. But when people reach that state, rationality has already evaporated. I knew that. It was not worth thinking on. Instead, I realised, I should shirk off my growing unease by way of self-medication. I entered the first bar I came across.
There were others in there who had witnessed the suicide and when I explained to the woman I wanted a whisky, she eyed my wet shorts and beach towel with sympathy and fetched a large shot at once.
I took my drink out onto the terrace and tried to immerse myself in the sights of the street. Men who had been on the promenade were clustered around the bar, only a few feet behind me, and I could hear what they were saying. My Spanish is not good, but I caught a few phrases. I gathered the young man believed he was being pursued. By whom or what I could not translate. They were referring to the incident as an accident, though I was sure it had been premeditated to some extent. The word ‘volver’ cropped up a lot. One rare occasion when I accompanied Sheila to the cinema we watched an Almodóvar film of the same title, so I understood the word meant ‘to return’. The young man had apparently been shouting it earlier, as a warning. He thought that someone was coming back to A Coruña. Why this should terrify him to the point of self-
annihilation was beyond me. The talk and speculation became wilder and less coherent. My poor grasp of the language and inability to follow began to irk so I made off back to the promenade.
Police tape clung about the street lights and balustrade and wound itself around the front of my hotel. No one was allowed entry. Luckily I had had the foresight to bring my day pack, which contained my wallet, a t-shirt, some water and a map of the town. I would need them all now. I turned and made my way through the narrow warren of streets. Named affectionately by the locals as ‘the neck’, it links the round land mass at the north (the head), to the greater part of the mainland (the shoulders).
At some point during my stay I had intended to visit the city’s unique lighthouse, reputed to be the oldest in the world. Unable to return to the hotel, I decided that now would be as good a time as any.
Set high upon a rocky outcrop, the Torre de Hércules was built in the first century by the Romans, who labelled this part of Spain Finis Terrae – the end of the world. Looking out into the grey Atlantic that stretched to seeming infinity, I could see why they had named it so. This part of A Coruña had a peculiar atmosphere to it. Or perhaps it was that the sun had clouded over, dimming the light, and my spirits had not yet recovered from the shock of the morning. The landscape felt besieged and anxious. Tense. Like it was waiting for something to happen.
After queuing for twenty minutes I was let into the monument. Navigating around the foundations I learned the tower got its name from a local legend. Early on in its life the town had been plagued by Geryon, a strange vindictive creature said to be the grandson of Medusa. Often described as a monster, or a shade with human faces, he was immortal, pale as snow and uncomfortable in the light, yet born with the ability to grow wings at will and fly.
Understandably the natives were rather upset with him setting up locally and feasting on the blood of the young peasant population, whom he would infect with a lunacy that led them either into the pit of insanity or compelled them to become his followers and slaves. But what could they do? Geryon was immortal.
