Village gossip reached me that ’Barnacles’, my humble little abode (as Les Dawson might have put it), had been nicknamed The Halfway House, due to the flotsam and jetsam of human life that I had collected there over the Summer. I can’t in all honesty say that I was thrilled about this.
Misty though was oblivious to it all. As it was now September, he was obsessed with the thought that our wedding was Only Next Month Now. He took to bouncing about the living-room, and on and off the sofa, which had already taken considerable wear and tear lately.
The telephone rang whilst I was at the canvas.
“If that’s Mr Beresford”, I said “Tell him I’ve died of exhaustion”.
“Hello?” said Misty, into the receiver “Oh hello, no I’m afraid he’s died of exhaustion”.
“Give that to me, and go and make some tea”, I said, nudging him away from the receiver.
“Was that little Misty having a joke?” said Mr Beresford, on the other end of the line.
“Yes, that was little Misty have a joke”, I said “What can I do you for?”
“I know you weren’t very interested in our ’Artist’s Paradise’ exhibition”, he said.
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested”, I said “I just forgot all about it. There’s been too much else going on around here”.
“Yes, I’ve heard all about your little commune”, he chuckled.
(Commune?! So now I’m running a bloody commune! Just call me David Koresh why don’t you!)
“I thought I would do something a little different this Autumn”, Mr Beresford continued “A sort of celebration of kitsch, inspired by that artist who died last week, the one who painted The Chinese Girl, I think it was. And … well I’m looking for ideas. We, the Committee, have been making notes of famous kitsch paintings, and we’ve got the green-faced woman, and the Jack Vettriano one of the couple dancing on the beach …”
(Oh blimey yes, the one Jeannette Temple has hanging on her living-wall).
“And the crying boy …”
“Hang on a minute”, I said “Not the crying boy? That painting’s cursed, Mr B! There was a spate of mysterious fires breaking out years ago in houses that had it”.
“I’m not superstitious, Gray”, h said.
Magda came bustling through the front door, clutching a rather snazzy-looking document-folder, and looking very upset. I told Mr B I would give it all some thought, and get back to him soon.
“It’s awful, Gray”, she cried, when I had put the phone down “I’ve just had the surveyor’s report on the apartment. He gives it a complete thumbs-down. Says it’s structurally unsound. There are large cracks in the walls and floor”.
“I didn’t see anything like that when I went there with you a few weeks ago”, I said “I’d have pointed it out to you if I had”.
“I know”, said Magda I’ve never noticed them either. But when I received this [she waved the folder about] I went over there to have another look. And he’s right! The cracks are so wide you could drive a double-decker bus through them!”
“That can’t be right”, I said “We would have noticed them”.
“It’s riddled with them”, said Magda, now virtually in tears.
“I’ll come and have a look with you”, I said “Misty, hold fire on the tea for now”.
Even after what she had told me I was still only expecting to see a few hairline cracks. I had put it all down to female exaggeration I suppose (yeah, go on shoot me, I dare you!). What greeted me instead was a horrifying sight. The apartment was riddled with thick open cracks, the likes of which had only seen before when the roots of a tree had forced up some slabs on a pavement.
Magda was in a terrible state about it. I tried to console her as best I could by pointing out that it was a good thing this had happened before she had actually parted with any money (apart from what she had paid for the survey of course), but she was inconsolable. She had set her heart on that apartment, and this had whipped the carpet out from under her feet. It didn’t make any damn sense, none of it.
When we got back to ’Barnacles’ I asked Misty to take her indoors and fetch her some brandy. I sat for a while at the steering-wheel of our van, and tried to make sense of everything that was happening. As I sat there a little old lady shuffled past down Beach Lane. I watched her absent-mindedly for a short while (watching her, but not really watching her, if you know what I mean), before I realised it was Jeannette Temple I was looking at.
Her hair, which had previously just been flecked with grey, had gone completely so. She was haggard, frail and walked slowly with a stoop. I was appalled. She seemed to have aged 40 years overnight. I watched her shuffle in at the gate to ’The Hedges’, as if I had to confirm to myself that this disturbing apparition was real.
I was so shaken by this sight that it took me a few minutes to pull myself together. When I eventually got into the house I found Misty and Magda had got well stuck into the brandy. I didn’t appreciate quite how well stuck in until I went to put the empties out!
I had a strange phone call from Mr Beresford a while later, asking me to pop into the church hall at Fobbington as soon as I could, and look at the pictures they had accumulated so far. The thought of trying to sound enthusiastic whilst looking at endless pictures that would have been more at home in a 1970s suburban living-room (I should have inserted a snob-warning there shouldn’t I!) didn’t greatly appeal to me, but Mr B was very insistent about it, saying that there was one picture was disturbing everybody, and he wanted my opinion on it.
I didn’t see what could be disturbing about a kitsch picture (not truly disturbing I mean), but my curiosity was aroused. I strapped Misty into the van, and drove over to Fobbington.
“It’s not The Crying Boy is it?” I said, as he led us to the far end of the church hall, thinking how odd it was to see Mr Beresford out of his crypt … sorry, shop.
“No something far more spooky than that even”, he said.
“I thought you didn’t get superstitious”, I said.
“I don’t”, he said, guardedly “As a rule. But even the circumstances as to how we acquired this are odd. Somebody must have just marched in one afternoon, whilst we weren’t looking, and just dumped I here. No note or anything”.
He propped it up on an easel. The picture was very chocolate box-y. A river in a forest, with a quaint little thatched cottage amongst the trees. What the heck was spooky about it? It looked like it should be on some calendar depicting Tranquil Country Scenes.
Mr Beresford handed me a magnifying-glass and told me to examine the picture very carefully. I went over to it, feeling like Sherlock Holmes investigating the scene of a murder.
“Can I have a look?” said Misty, impatiently.
“I haven’t looked myself yet!” I said “What am I actually supposed to be looking for?”
The words had barely left my mouth when I espied what appeared to be a tombstone sticking out of the long grass on one side of the picture. OK, it looked a bit out of place, but hardly weird enough to send everybody into a total spin about it!
“Now look at the windows of the cottage”, said Mr Beresford.
I gave a sigh and leant forward again. I had to admire the artist’s attention to detail if nothing else. Then I caught sight of something which made me jump back in alarm.
“It’s had that effect on everybody”, said Mr Beresford, with morbid satisfaction.
A skull-like face was peering out of one of the downstairs windows, with a hideous leer on its face.
“Well”, I said, when I had composed myself “All I can deduce from that is that the artist had a wacky sense of humour!”
“You think that’s all it is?” said Mr Beresford.
“Oh yes”, said I “He was probably fed up to the back teeth with churning out sweet little scenes like this one, just to earn a crust, and decided to pep it up a little. It might even have been a sort of secret trademark of his”.
I took the picture off the easel and turned it around.
“There’s nothing there”, said Mr B “No ID of any kind. It’s a strange thing to do though isn’t it?”
“Artists are strange people”, I said “You should know that by now!”
“It would be fascinating to know if the house was a real place”, said Misty.
“No way of knowing”, I said “It could be anywhere”.
I turned round and came face to face with a real horror. A large, luridly-coloured painting of a gypsy girl in a headscarf holding a basket of cherries. I was beginning to wonder if Mr Beresford was in full possession of his marbles in organising this exhibition. Everybody in the neighbourhood must be gleefully clearing out their lofts and garages of such monstrosities.
“Oh your friend Tara Mitchell is back”, he said.
“We weren’t friends Mr B”, I said “And what do you mean by ’back’?”
“Back in her old house”, said Mr B “And her landlady isn’t at all happy about it. She’s desperate to get her out. Says she’s prepared to go to prison if necessary to get her removed. She was hoping to lease it out to new tenants, but that’s going to be difficult with Tara in residence. I just hope she doesn’t’ dump anymore of her revolting pictures on me!”
I was thoroughly dismayed by this news. Tara Mitchell, the original turd-that-won’t-flush-away (I always thought ASBO’s prevented you from moving back to the neighbourhood you had plagued?). Anyway, I had hoped we had seen the last of her round here. My dismay must be nothing compared to that of her longsuffering neighbours though. I could just imagine how they felt having her around again!
The general weirdness continued. Back home I was informed by Robbie that it wasn’t just Jeannette who was crumbling to bits, her house was too. I remarked that ’The Hedges’ had always been a dilapidated old pile. He said no, the plaster was falling off her walls. There were big gaping holes of it in the living-room.
This news upset me far more than I would ever have expected (after all, looked at objectively, what the hell doe sit matter to me if somebody I can’t stand has plaster coming off their walls?!). I think it was just yet one more weirdity to add to the already over-burdened load. I had, for months now, accepted that odd, inexplicable things were happening here in the Shinglesea area, but this was all way too much.
“It’s all building up to something”, said Al, and I nearly jumped down his throat in nervous agitation when he said that! I didn’t want it to be building up to something. I just didn’t.
I was plunged back into another restless funk, not helped by more blasted nightmares. This time featuring hordes of demons carrying sharp knives chasing me along the beach. I re-read M R James’ ’The Mezzotint’, to see if it gave me any ideas about Mr Beresford’s strange picture. But as that story is about an old murder of a child that is re-enacted in a painting, it was hardly a comfort!
The weather turned hot again, and I took Misty to the beach. The schools had gone back, and the beach was quiet, reclaimed by the dog-walkers, the geriatric swimmers and the ones with their metal detectors. I sat on a bench, thought back over all the long Summer months, and almost felt bloody giddy with it all. It was hard to believe that this time last year I hadn’t known Henry and Jeannette, Rufus Franklin, Magda, Robbie, Jason, Al or Xanthe.
When we got back to the house, I marvelled at how quiet it was everywhere. That is, until (over the back of the fence) I heard Kristy letting rip at one of her gentlemen callers. I had always wondered why Kristy had such a rapid turnover in men friends. Admittedly, I’m no expert on women, but she’s a healthy, cheerful (most of the time anyway), bouncy old thing. I would have thought she’d be a plum catch for somebody. But after listening to this poor wretch getting a long and protracted ear-bashing, I found I was beginning to see things in a different light!
Bloody women. They seemed to be nothing but trouble at the moment. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate, what with his journalistic assignments and practicing to swim the Channel, Al decided that he would sort out Xanthe’s life for her as well. First, he tried to find her somewhere to live (no doubt he was as bored to death as we all were with her constant harping on about how cold it was in the wagon). This was a disaster. The only place he could find on the tiny bit of money she had left was a B&B, which was so cheap it looked as though it should have ’As Used By The Department Of Health And Social Security’ written all over it.
“The worst hotel I have EVER seen!” Xanthe raged “There wasn’t even a telly in the room!”
“Plenty of bog-roll in the bathroom though”, said Al, clearly trying to look on the bright side.
His attempts to find her a job were an even bigger disaster. Xanthe’s employment prospects were not good. I know there are a lot of weirdo’s, nutters and perverts about, but, even allowing for that, I really couldn’t see much public enthusiasm for a revival of her soft porn career! She was a passable cook, as we knew from our stay at Ghyll House (as long as you didn’t want anything more ambitious than salmon salad and defrosted chocolate cake!), so he found a job for her at the fish-and-chip restaurant down by Fobbington Harbour.
She lasted about 2 hours on the premises, and I’m amazed that it didn’t end with the manager chucking her head-first into one of the deep-fat fryers, or the United Nations sending in a peace-keeping force! When she was asked to prepare some fish for cooking she threw a tantrum so spectacular it will probably be talked about in the area for years to come. All of us killers and assassins for wanting to eat dead fish apparently (clearly all that salmon she practically force-fed us in Scotland doesn’t count).
She was still screaming merry hell when she got home, and I told her in no uncertain terms to put a sock in it. At which she turned on me and said that she betted she could please Misty with some “wrist action”.
“Only if he wasn’t fussy!” I retorted.
(Game, set and match, new balls please).
How I didn’t kick her scrawny little backside up into her wagon, I can only put down to a rare spasm of decorum and restraint on my part.
Al soon had other things to occupy him. A county newspaper wanted him to do a double-page spread on the joys of staying at the Darklight Cove camp-site. Mainly because this place seems to have been getting an even worse public response than one of Tony Blair’s speeches at the moment! It wanted some good publicity for a change. Al was to stay in one of the caravans for one night at a weekend, and do a write-up on his experiences … presumably I suppose to show that he was still alive and in one piece at the end of it.
The only problem was that Al was scared stiff by the prospect.
“I can’t stay there alone”, he said “And over a Saturday night too! It’s a 4-berth caravan they’re giving me, can’t you and Misty come as well?”
“Who can we put in the fourth bunk?” I said, feeling that if he suggested Xanthe or Henry I would have him certified on the spot!
“Well I’d like Magda to come”, he paused and looked all around him furtively, and then dropped to a whisper “I’ve got a bit of a thing about her, to tell you the truth”.
“She is a magnificent woman”, I began, cautiously.
“You don’t have to say anymore”, he groaned “Not with that little brat Aleck in the equation!”
“It’d be great if she’d come”, I said “It’d be a total blast”.
“But Aleck’ll probably put the mockers on it”, he rightly concluded.
I thought it best if I kept Al’s feelings for Magda away from Misty. He disliked Aleck so much that he would move heaven and earth to get Al and Magda together, and I thought that situation was already potentially tense enough, without some Misty-style meddling thrown in!
I didn’t think much more about the caravanning weekend until Al suddenly announced to me the day before, that he had asked Kristy to come along and fill up the fourth bunk.
“Kristy?” I said “Are you mad?!”
“I thought you liked her”, he said “Anyway, she jumped at it when I suggested it to her”.
“Of course she jumped at it!” I said “She’s one of the biggest spongers there is around here. I’m surprised all her men friends haven’t been declared bankrupt by now! For the first time I can understand why Owen Maddock is as stingy as he is, it’s pure survival!”
“Look, it’s just for one night, that’s all”, said Al “One night. You’ve always got on with her before, so I don’t see why you can’t now”.
“Alright”, I said “But don’t come running to me at the end of the weekend because she hasn’t so much as bought a single drink!”
I turfed Henry out to sleep in Al’s wagon whilst we were away, and sent Paul home (sulkily) to his mum’s for a couple of nights. I wanted to lock ‘Barnacles’ up completely. I didn’t want Henry or Xanthe at large in it whilst we were away.
Al had booked a taxi to take us all out to the camp-site, and I swear Kristy didn’t stop talking from the moment we set off. We heard all about the Madonna concert in Paris. About how Madonna looked EXACTLY the same in Real Life as she did in magazines. No air-brushing at all. (I bit my tongue and said nothing about stage make-up).
Just inside the main gates of the camp-site was parked an ice-cream van. Kristy insisted we all stop to get one, and we had to clutch the wretched things and try and stop them from melting in the heat, whilst the taxi-driver drove round in circles looking for our caravan. We finally located it right at the back of the caravan site, up by the perimeter fence, overlooking the marshes. I was relieved to see that, because it was now mid-September, the site wasn’t too busy, although I did uneasily speculate how many stag and hen nights might descend later.
Al had barely unlocked the caravan door when Kristy dropped the remains of her ice-cream in the sink, saying that it was a full meal in itself and that she couldn’t eat it all. I had to point out that she had ice-cream on her nose.
We sent Al across the site to pick up some fish-and-chips from the takeaway near the entrance, because we felt it was his fault we were here I suppose. We ate these (Al got lost trying to find the caravan again on his way back, but he found us eventually) whilst Kristy gave us details of all the explicit e-mails she had ever received from Mr Charmless Pillock The Builder.
“Some of them were pretty explicit I can tell you”, she said, practically nudging me off the bench in the kitchen “But sometimes I think that can be even better than the real thing don’t you?”
“No I wouldn’t say that!” I said, in astonishment.
“N-no nor do I”, she said, back peddling like a Tour de France cyclist in reverse.
It turned out that Charmless Pillock hadn’t been in touch with her at all for two weeks now, and she seemed to want my reassurance that all was still well, and was coming up with far-fetched ideas as to why he hadn’t contacted her, even going so far as to say he might have accidentally dropped his phone in the sea whilst our fishing! I knew that Charmless Pillock had certainly been in our neighbourhood, as I had driven past him replacing a garden fence one day. It should have been obvious to anyone with half-a-brain that he hadn’t been in touch for the simple reason that he wasn’t interested anymore. He’d had his fill of her. But I was soon to learn just how naïve and self-delusional Kristy could be at times.
After we had eaten Al decided to check out the entertainment on site. Inside the main building we could hear bursts of somebody shouting into a microphone, followed by whoops of laughter, and then short snatches of music. It all took me back to my childhood really.
Misty got narked because he said he didn’t understand why we couldn’t hold hands. I said we had to see how friendly the natives were first, but he was still narked, so I took him into the amusement arcade to try and cheer him up. We got carried away on some of the machines, and I didn’t realise how much time had passed until Kristy came to find us. She was clearly cock-a-hoop about something.
“A man has just told me I’ve got nice tits”, she said.
(Could only assume in that strappy little number that he couldn’t miss them. Big girl is our Kristy).
“And he wanted to come back to our caravan with me”, she went on.
“I bet he did!” I said.
Kristy was sounding as euphoric and starry-eyed as a Victorian maiden receiving her first proposal of marriage, not an experienced woman of over 50 being hassled by some old drunk in a bar! Any sophisticated woman would have brushed him off like a bothersome fly, but Kristy was euphoric. It bothered me. Let’s face it, as I just said, Kristy’s over 50. She’s been married, had kids, she should know better.
“Isn’t it weird”, she went on, delightedly “Nobody ever told me I had nice tits when I was young, and now I’m getting told it!”
She clearly couldn’t get over this guy wanting to go back to the caravan with her, whereas in fact she should have given him a hearty riposte of “in your dreams, mate!” and left him standing there. What abysmally low self-esteem she must have deep down.
“Were you very young when you got married, Kristy?” I asked, as we followed her out of the arcade and towards the bar.
“Late teens”, she said “It was all very different then. The singles scene has changed so much. In my day you expected the man to always make the first move, and now … well they expect us to, and people are so much more upfront about things. All matter of fact really”.
Two girls rushed past us in the doorway. Both were wearing little skimpy tops, and showing masses of bra strap.
“In my day it wasn’t the done thing to show your bra straps”, she said “It was considered tarty, but now everybody does it”.
(I couldn’t help remembering that in my day actually girls simply didn’t bother wearing bras under their boob-tubes (as they were called then). These days it seemed to be a case of wearing bras but no knickers. I’ve lost track of the amount of well-ventilated women in very short skirts I’ve seen around Shinglesea this Summer!).
We finally got to the bar, sweat pouring of us in the heat, and ordered some drinks.
“How did you get on with Owen in Paris?” I said, as there had been no mention of him whatsoever yet.
She looked at me blankly as though I’d mentioned someone she barely knew who had died 20 years ago.
“Alright”, she shrugged “Awkward sharing a room with someone you’re not involved with though. I had had get dressed in the bathroom. Here”, she gave me of her violent nudges and roared with laughter “You wouldn’t believe it, but he said he woke up in the middle of the night, and sat there watching me sleeping!”
(Poor old Owen Maddock).
Through the nearby crush I could see Al sat talking to an old man, who had white hair, a red face, and about one tooth in his entire head.
“This place went downhill when they started doing these 10 quid a night special offers”, the old man was saying “You go out and look round at all the cars parked outside. So many fucking old rust-buckets there”.
Thoroughly disagreeable old man, I thought, and decided to leave Al to get his copy by himself. (Although I couldn’t get over how the old man thought he was a cut above the rust-bucket owners!). A boozed-up Scouser at the bar was giving Kristy some of his own unique chat-up lines.
“S’alright luv”, he was saying, jokingly “I can’t marry you, you know”.
Kristy (the daft bint) was twittering all over again at yet more masculine attention. Misty and me went to sit at a table by the window which was heaped with empty crisp packets. We were enjoying sitting on the fringes, watching everything, most particularly the hordes of hen night women in their compulsory uniform of strappy top, mini-skirt and joke head-gear. (I couldn’t help thinking that any Roman emperor worth his salt would be delighted to find this buxom up-for-it lot in his harem!) Then, to my dismay, I saw Kristy coming over to us with the Scouser in tow.
“Alright mate”, he said to me “Where you from then?”
“Shinglesea Beach”, I said.
“Ah you’re a local then?” he said.
“Not originally”, I said “But we live here now”.
“Londoners originally”, said Misty.
“I fucking hate Londoners”, said Scouser.
(Oh … great).
“Gobby bastards”, he went on “Think they know everything”.
Nearby was a woman with a real fog-horn voice, who I could only assume was a school-teacher, from the way she had of braying at people at top volume, and punctuating every sentence with “actually”. The combination of her and the Scouser was too much for a human body to stand, and I suggested to Misty that we go across the road for a walk along the beach.
“Hey, I hope you don’t think I was getting at you, mate”, said Scouser “No offence and all that, mate”.
I had to reassure him (for the sake of his delicate feelings) that I wasn’t offended in any way, and we left, watched by a boot-faced Kristy, who clearly thought we should be utterly delighted to spend the rest of the evening listening to her and Scouser exchanging bawdy banter.
We held hands on the beach, which was very nice, and then ambled slowly back towards the prison gates. Suddenly a car came careering along the road, weaving about all over the place. It came to a screeching halt right by us.
The man in the driver’s seat wore black-rimmed glasses and a smart black suit. The woman in the passenger seat had very long hair, which was doing its best to escape from a bun at the back of her head. She wore an elegant rope of pearls around her neck. Neither were wearing seat-belts, and it didn’t occur to me until afterwards that there was something vaguely old-fashioned about them, as though they were from the 1950s. I didn’t notice the make of the car, as it was a very dark and thundery night. I did notice right away though that both of them were extremely agitated.
“We want to go where there are lots of people around”, said the woman, with a slight American twang to her voice.
I gestured through the iron gates at the main building on the camp-site.
“It’s packed in the bar there”, I said.
“A town would be better”, said the man, who had quite a posh drawl, reminiscent of the late Peter Sellers, or Rob Brydon doing a posh character.
I said Fobbington was only a couple of miles in the direction they were heading. The man thanked me and then drove off. We stood and watched their rear-lights disappearing into the gloom, and then it occurred to me that the noise from the camp-site was gradually returning, as though somebody was turning a radio back up again.
“Did we just see ghosts, Misty?” I asked in bewilderment.
“We both saw them, and they both spoke to us”, said Misty “I’ve never heard of a ghost talking to people like that before, but I spose it can happen”.
And the little vacuum we had been in whilst we were speaking to them, it was like the pocket of silence Xanthe had experienced when the strange men had visited ’Barnacles’. We didn’t have time for further speculation though as the heavens opened and it absolutely tanked down.
We got drenched almost immediately, and we went briefly into the bar to get the caravan keys from Al. Some commotion was being caused by a kissogram in a black leather corset and fishnet stockings, who had been hired as a surprise for some unsuspecting innocent. I found Al talking to the Scouser, whilst Kristy sat nearby, with her hair sticking up from perspiration.
“You alright, mate?” said the Scouser “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“I should have known somebody would say that!” I said.
Me, Misty and Al went back to the caravan soon after, getting soaked again in the torrential rain on the way. Whilst the two of us (me and Misty) were drying off in the bedroom with the double bed in it, he asked me if I was going to tell Al about the incident with the agitated couple out on the road.
“I’d rather not at the moment”, I said “I can’t make any sense of it”.
Kristy surprised me by coming home at about 2 A.M. I was expecting her to be out all night. In the morning she told me that the Scouser hadn’t taken her back to his caravan, tent, or whatever he hung out in, but had insisted she accompany him to his car in the main car-park.
“Such an odd thing to do wasn’t it?” she gabbled “He said to come with him there at 1 A.M. I mean, wasn’t that odd?”
By now alarm bells were ringing all around my head.
“And you went I suppose?” I said.
“I didn’t see any harm in it”, she mumbled, in embarrassment.
“Was it well-lit this car-park?” I asked.
Al was washing up the breakfast things when I said this, and he turned round to look at us.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at”, Kristy snapped, ramming all her various jars and tubes back into her make-up bag.
“Dogging?” said Al to me, later.
“I hope not, for her sake”, I said “Or her ample charms will be cropping up on mobile phones all over the place!” I gave a deep sigh “It might just mean he’s got a little wifey tucked away in the caravan of course”.
We rounded off the stay by checking out the indoor swimming-pool (pretty good), and then one of the restaurants for lunch (good bog-standard stuff, if you know what I mean). Al said he had enough material for an article by now, and we got a taxi home. Kristy was subdued, and departed from us quickly once we got back to Shinglesea, saying she had gardening to do.
Back at ’Barnacles’ (which I was mightily relieved to see was still in one piece), Jason informed us that he had spent several hours on the chemical loo in Al’s wagon. He and Robbie had got totally bladdered at ‘The Ship’ the night before. Came home with an attack of the munchies, and found that all there was in the food-cupboard were 4 tins of pilchards in tomato sauce. They had scoffed these, and found out afterwards that the sell-by date on them was February 2001!
“Silly clots!” was Al’s perfectly accurate judgement on them.
Our extraordinary weather ensured we had nearly a 30 degree heat at the Autumn Equinox, which made all the old Pagan philosophy about preparing for the onset of Winter at this time, seem downright surreal! Even so though, there was a freshness to the air that certainly hadn’t been there in July. Light, squally winds came off the sea, the sky was a startling blue, you could get high on just the air alone on a day like this.
I heard more news of Tara Mitchell. Apparently she was running true to form. She intimidated people coming to look round the house she was virtually squatting in, by following them around in her dressing-gown. She didn’t say anything to them, but then again, she didn’t need to. They were thoroughly spooked by her presence alone. She was a very sick individual.
I found out from Mr Beresford that she had been making odd little voodoo-style dolls, made out of her empty pill bottles, scraps of material, and her own hair, and trying to get some shops in Fobbington to take them for sale. As you can imagine these little treasures weren’t exactly snapped up by eager shop-keepers, and then she would become very abusive. I could see another ASBO looming at this rate!
Some of my friends were concerned that I was spending too much time listening to talk about Tara’s dreary adventures. Magda said I should be concentrating on my wedding, but I said there really wasn’t much to do. Misty was happy as long as it went ahead, and he could try on his leather coat several times a day! The general consensus from her and Mrs Jackson was that I was being A Typical Man, and not giving enough thought to Misty.
This was very untrue. Everything I did I did for Misty, including trying to clear up all these weird mysteries. The thought of Misty coming to any harm was too terrible for words. This became even more apparent to me one evening when we had a strange phone call. We were alone in the house for once. Paul had taken Henry out to do some night fishing. We played music and sprawled on the sofa. Misty was dozing on top of me when the phone went. I struggled across to answer it. At first I heard nothing, and I was about to let rip a string of expletives, when a distant voice whispered faintly “be very careful”, and hung up.
Just that. Nothing more. The voice was so faint that I couldn’t even make out if it was male or female, young or old. Misty got cross and said it was probably somebody pratting about, we would be mad to take it seriously. “Probably Jeannette or Tara trying to frighten us”, he said. This seemed only too darn plausible!
I locked the house up securely, and we went to bed.
Al was in trouble. The article he had written on the Darklight Cove camp-site had been published in one of the county newspapers , and … well not exactly to universal acclaim let‘s say. People weren’t happy about it. The general consensus was that he had made it out to be the favourite dive of chavs and pikeys.
“If the cap fits”, he said, unrepentantly.
“What’s all this about posh self-catering apartments?” I said, reading one of the vitriolic letters on the letters page “The ones that you deliberately haven’t mentioned, according to this”.
“I deliberately didn’t mention them because I had no idea they existed!” said Al.
“What posh apartments?” said Misty “I’ve never heard of any there”.
“Exactly!” said Al “Not exactly well-advertised are they! They’re on the other side of the camp-side from where we stayed apparently. I’ve been sent some advertising junk about them. It costs an arm and leg to stay there”.
“They didn’t put us up in one of them did they”, said Misty “You’d think they would have if they wanted you to write about them”.
“What do you get for the arm and a leg?” I said.
“Towelling bath-robe”, said Al.
“A free dressing-gown?” said Misty, astonished “They give you a free dressing-gown for staying there?!”
“Not to keep, Misty”, I said “Just for the time you’re there. Some hotels do it”.
“A mini-bar”, Al continued “And a jar of jelly-beans”.
“That for the yuppy weekend junkies is it?!” I said “I think you’re going to have to do a follow-up article, Al, pointing out all the good things you missed the first time round. It’s either that or you’ll be run out of the area at this rate!”
“I did point out the good things!” said Al “I said it had a decent pool area, and the restaurant wasn’t bad … well not as bad as I was expecting anyway. And the caravan was clean. I thought they’d be dead chuffed with that one, considering all the complaints they’ve had this Summer from people finding other people’s pubic hair in the showers! What else can I say?”
“Well sort of …” I began, awkwardly “On one side of the camp you have the chavs and the pikeys, BUT on the other side you have rich corporate drones coming down from London, to try on their complimentary bath-robes and snort cocaine!”
“I think I’d rather have the chavs and the pikeys!” said Al.
The news of the posh holiday lets unfortunately gave some of the others Ideas, that me and Misty might like to book one of them for our honeymoon. I said I would see them all in Hell, before I spent my wedding night surrounded by spoilt coke-snorting yuppies! I said that ‘Barnacles’ would supply us with everything we needed for a perfectly satisfactory wedding night, and I had every intention of booting Paul and Henry out again, and firmly bolting and chaining the front and back doors, so that none of them could get in and disturb us.
Jason provided a welcome diversion from all this. He said he had been doing some reading-up on the Web, and had found what sounded like the American equivalent of Rattlebone Farm. The wonderfully-named Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. Apparently every paranormal phenomenon known to Mankind had been recorded there: ghosts, poltergeists, UFOs, cattle mutilations, even sightings of Bigfoot. The name Skinwalker came from some old Native American Indian legends about the place. (I think, although my knowledge is sketchy, that a Skinwalker is some sort of shaman or witch in Navajo folklore, somebody who can change from human to animal and back again, a bit like a werewolf I suppose). A few years ago some government-sponsored scientists had moved in to record phenomena at the place, and that seemed to have effectively killed stone dead any paranormal activity! Nothing had been recorded since.
“All very interesting”, I said “But I don’t see the connection with Rattlebone. After all, we don’t know what’s been going on at Rattlebone, apart from one of the daughters not liking the sight of the sea, which doesn’t tell us anything”.
“The UFO activity back in the Sixties”, said Jason, excitedly.
“Exactly”, I said “There was a short burst of excitement 40 years ago, and nothing’s been recorded since!”
“That we know of”, he said, darkly “Gray, I think there’s something about that entire area that’s not right. Remember how you felt when Magda showed you round the bungalow. Why don’t some of us take a bus journey round there?”
“What’s wrong with the van all of a sudden?” I said.
“Too conspicuous”, said Jason “Nobody will take any notice of us on a bus”.
“I have a feeling they’ll take notice of you everywhere, Jason!” I said.
Me, Misty, Jason and Robbie (I feel like I’m narrating a children’s book, but so be it) took a bus ride round the Rattlebone area on Michealemas Day. Of course the bus didn’t go up the single-track road towards the farm, but just trawled the roads in the general area. We all sat at the back of the bus. The only other people on board was a young lad reading a copy of the ’Big Issue’, and a noisy young family sitting near the driver’s seat. The weather had been fairly apocalyptic that morning, with torrential rain and thunder and lightning, and was only now beginning to clear up. Even so, that didn’t stop the usual fresh-air fiend that you always find on busses, opening up every fanlight and letting the wind whip through us we bowled along.
We stopped to pick up a young mother with two little girls in tow, both wearing matching pink anoraks and wellies. Soon after we had passed that dreary pub where me and Misty had decided against having lunch one day, the bus seemed to acquire a fit of the vapours, and was jerking about like a bucking bronco. The little girls in the pink wellies decided to try and encourage it by singing ’The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round’, which really, to be more accurate, should have been sung as ’The Wheels On The Bus Go In Fits And Starts’. The driver was liberally cursing his vehicle, and thumping his steering-wheel.
Jason had been saying something else to me about the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, and I was only really half listening. It was a few minutes before I became aware that I couldn’t really hear him anymore. I couldn’t hear the noise of the bus, I couldn’t hear the little girls singing, or even the noisy family sitting up near the front. We had slipped into another one of those vacuums of silence. This one didn’t end until we had reached the outskirts of Fobbington.
We were getting off in Fobbington, to go and have some lunch in ’The Fiddler’s Rest’. As we were getting off the bus, I made some joke-y remark to the driver about the bus playing up.
“It often happens round there”, he said, and got up to concentrate on changing the sign over at the front of the bus.