On New Year’s Day Magda came for a walk with me up on the sea-wall, and confided to me her fears about The Shell House (the bungalow up near Rattlebone Farm), and how she was becoming very afraid that they would never be able to sell it, and that their money would have been wasted. She said I was perfectly entitled to say I Told You So, if I wanted. Quite frankly though, I was more concerned about her being made so unhappy and worried by it to do that. I offered to come up there for another visit, in the insane hope that I might be able to find something positive to say about it. So, the next day, we trooped up there, accompanied by Misty and Aleck. This perhaps wasn’t one of my better ideas.
The bungalow was every bit as brooding and evil as I remembered it from previous visits. It was bone-scrapingly cold inside, and I had the feeling that it would take more than overhauling the heating system to make it better. Even the peacefulness of the place - which should be a major asset - only added to its unhealthy atmosphere. All the time we were there a dog kept up a relentless barking at the farm in the distance, and that (apart from the sea of course) was the only sound we could hear. This visit only seemed to make Magda even more desolate than ever, and I found myself seriously thinking that perhaps some sort of service of exorcism or a blessing might be in order, to cleanse the house.
When we got back to ’Barnacles’ Xanthe was waiting by the gate, wearing a grey knitted cardigan with the zip pulled up right under her chin. She told me that our phone had been ringing constantly whilst we were out. When it rang again a few minutes later I answered it, only to find it was our old friend the anonymous caller.
“Can you hear me?” it said in its strangely androgynous voice, whilst someone was smashing the scaffolding poles about again in the background.
I said I could, just about.
“Good”, said the voice, and rang off!!! I went through the pointless farce of 1471, but as usual, to no avail.
Something even more pointless came in the post a short while later. A single slip of paper in an envelope, bearing the typed words: “WHAT U R DOING IS BULLSHIT. STOP IT NOW. U R NOT IMPRESSING ANYONE. STOP IT NOW. GET A LIFE. U TIME-WASTER”. The postmark on the envelope said Fobbington, so I guessed it was from Tara Mitchell, who had probably had to resort to these old-fashioned methods since I put a block on her e-mails several months ago.
“What are you supposed to stop doing though?” said Misty, when he read it.
“Breathing probably!” I said.
And so the weirdness of our neighbourhood continued. One day we were shopping in Fobbington, and had the misfortune to bump into Henry in the High Street. He was starting to whinge about how his chest was playing him up, when Jeannette barked at him from a few feet away “I’m not stopping here for very long, Henry!” and swept majestically into Boots. Henry said he would have to go, and then fell backwards off the pavement, nearly landing under an oncoming car. I pulled him back onto the pavement, and said “for chrissake Henry, I wish you’d start looking after yourself properly!”
I raged about Henry’s total lack of self-respect all the way home. Misty said that he understood devotion, as he was devoted to me, and even if I treated him like a dog, and made him sleep out on the veranda, he would still be devoted to me. I said it was outrageous to suppose that I could ever treat him that way, and if he slept out on the veranda, he would probably be doing it himself out of one of his fits of pique! He then made the interesting comment that he didn’t know who was the bigger psychic vampire, Henry or Jeannette.
“No I think it’s Jeannette”, I said “Henry’s a masochist, but by slavishly letting her sap all his energy, he can still be a masochist but without having to put up with any physical pain”.
I was quite chuffed with this sudden flash of insight on my part. I made sausage , egg and chips for our supper, and we ate it whilst watching ’The Magnificent Seven’ on television.
More storms swept in and battered us. One night it was so bad that I invited all the caravan-dwellers in our front garden into the house. Even though, from the sound of all the whistling, groaning and rattling noises around ‘Barnacles’ they were probably safer outside! By some miracle, never before known, the power stayed on. This became a mixed blessing, as it meant there were arguments about what to watch on the t.v. Robbie wanted to watch ’Desperate Housewives’, Xanthe wanted to watch ’Celebrity Big Brother’, and in the end we watched ’Question Time’. I normally avoid this programme like the plague, as when I’ve watched it in the past I’ve usually ended up sending drunken e-mails, stuffed full or vitriolic abuse, to the panel-members! This edition reminded me irresistibly of the anarchic t.v studio scenes in ’Dawn Of The Dead’. The ones where you have various experts on, but you have the distinct impression that nobody knows, and most have rapidly given up, trying to find a solution to all the problems.
Al has been in a combative mood ever since Andy came on the scene, and this evening was no exception. This evening I really let rip at him though. One of the panel-members was Kelvin MacKenzie, who had the outrageous chutzpah to demand an apology from Tony Blair over the Iraqi war, even though it was the likes of him and his vile rag that had blindly supported the bloody debacle in the first place. I don’t think I will ever forget the torrent of extraordinary abuse levelled at those of us who were sceptical of it, even to the extent that there were calls for us to be locked up (and in some instances actually hanged) for treason.
“The media has to take the same blame as the politicians”, I said “You lot got so caught up in 1914-style hysteria it was frightening!”
“We believed the 45-minute claim”, said Al, pathetically.
“It was nonsense!” I said “You should have seen it was just hysterical, scare mongering nonsense! There was no way that Saddam had the ability to nuke us from Iraq! You all helped Blair to get away with this mess! And it’s because of it that we’ve had BLOODY SUICIDE BOMBERS ON THE STREETS OF LONDON!!!”
Rant over (and not before time probably!).
That night I had an extraordinary kaleidoscope of a dream featuring mermaids, dancing Scotsman in kilts, Sir Anthony Hopkins, a tidal wave, and a wooden spiral staircase. All rather exhilarating, but I hate to think what the Freudian significance of it was! The next day I heard joyous news. Henry and Rowland had gone away for a few days, to some kind of happy-clappy evangelists’ get-together in Budleigh Salterton (snigger). Before going, the wretches had put a leaflet through the door, showing a picture of our beach looking glorious at sunset, and the words “IS THERE MORE TO LIFE THAN THIS?” underneath it, which made absolutely no bloody sense whatsoever! If you’re going to ask a question like that, show a tube train packed full of miserable, pinched-faced, stressed-out commuters at rush hour, not our beautiful beach looking particularly glorious. Henry cocks it up AGAIN!
Robbie had jokingly asked me if I could feel the waves of doom and gloom lifting from Beach Lane because of Henry’s absence. It wasn’t entirely a joke though. I genuinely did feel a lightening of the load. I could walk out of my house without having to face the possibility of his doleful face appearing, and spouting forth another load of pessimistic twaddle. Instead of slinking out of the house furtively, as though I was about to go off and rob a bank or something, I was striding out with a big grin on my face, a bit like Jerry Lewis sauntering down the street in ’The King Of Comedy’. Truly, over those few days, I did wonder if it was Henry who was the psychic vampire, and not Jeannette. She could be intensely annoying, of that there was no doubt, but most of the time it was her treatment of Henry that got up my nose. With him out of the equation, she barely registered on the graph. I remembered that almost-civilised conversation I had with her just before she ran off to Spain, and I wondered if perhaps she was alright really, that most of her faults was simply because she had had a rather strange life. I was bloody see-sawing again, not certain who to believe. It was a fact though that with Henry gone, it felt as though the tension was slowly easing out of my body. Even Magda said it felt as though some particularly gloomy ghost had been exorcised.
Why do we do it? Why do we let people dominate our lives to that extent? It makes no sense, particularly when we can’t stand the sight of them! The January weather was reminding me of this time last year, and the whole disturbing episode with Rufus Franklin. There were times when I fully expected to see his gaunt, black-coated figure standing out in the lane. He was haunting me. At the same time I almost became dizzy when I thought how far we had come in that intervening 12 months. Ours had been a quiet life then, some might say too quiet, but it had suited us, and I knew that Misty, as well as myself, would many times have liked a return to it. Life had become mad since then, irrational, and few people seemed to be as they appeared. Trying to suss out people’s motivations sometimes was bloody hard work. By contrast to now, the old life had seemed blissfully uncomplicated. Magda had said to me recently that she had felt “battle weary” at the end of 2006. Xanthe had said that she was fed up with all the retrospectives on television, “living through it once was enough, I don’t need to look at it again!” Has there been a time like this before? Or is it simply that this is what getting older is like? “Everyone’s crazy”, said Magda “Everyone! I’ve never known anything like it!”
There was a documentary on t.v a few years ago about a strange time in Wisconsin, when for a couple of years it seemed that everyone in a rural area there had acted completely bonkers. There was a much higher than usual number of suicides, murders, vandalism, illegitimate births, adultery, and incest. I can’t remember the title of it, but I often think of it, because it reminds me so much of the here and now. It is as if, for a time, everything goes slightly off-kilter, and the world has a mad face.
During a brief respite between storms, Misty asked me if I wanted to go for a walk in the park down by the station at Fobbington. I was desperate to get out of the house and stop listening to all the furore being caused by that porcine-faced slapper Jade Goody in the ’Big Brother’ house (I can quite happily call her porcine-faced because she’s so bloody stupid she won’t know what I’m talking about!) and her vicious bullying of the glamorous Shilpa Shetty. (Most of the time I think women are amateurs compared to men when it comes to bullying, bitching, jealousy and insecurity, but just occasionally I have my doubts!). But strewth, this year is shaping up to be every bit as bonkers as the last one. Jade Goody causing a major breach of international diplomacy. JADE GOODY (!!!!) causing effigies to be burnt in India! I mean, for crying out loud, what the hell else is going to happen? Homer Simpson gets elected President of the United States … no, on second thoughts, don’t answer that one!
Jade Goody personifies a type of person I despise with every fibre in my being. An aggressive, small-minded, foot-stamping bully who resorts to screaming and shouting when she can’t get her own way, (and when that fails we get the waterworks instead, that woman could bawl and blubber for England!). A stupid bigot who is utterly consumed with jealousy of any woman more sexually desirable than herself (Shilpa Shetty isn’t the first attractive woman she’s hounded, remember sweet Sophie from the first time round?). A ludicrous overgrown baby who has been given a ridiculous amount of attention for no damn good reason whatsoever as far as I can see. She is a perfect symbol of the ugly Brit that we see far too much of these days: a boorish, snarling cretin in a Burberry scarf, who thinks it’s quite acceptable to say what she wants to anybody as long as she says it to their face (oh that’s alright then). And don’t give me all that baloney about how she’s had a hard life (can you think of anybody who hasn’t had a hard life in their own way?) because it’s an insult to the rest of us.
I never thought I would say this, as I’m fairly patriotic on the quiet, but she makes me ashamed to be English. I don’t want to belong to the same country that can spawn a creature like Jade Goody.
And that was my rant from the pulpit for today.
Anyway, there we were, enjoying the January sunshine, when we saw Tara Mitchell in the far distance. She had lost so much weight that she seemed more like a shadow than a person. She was also dressed wildly inappropriately in a pair of flip-flops, thin cotton trousers and a crop-top. I know the temperatures were mild for the time of year, but not THAT mild! When she saw us she turned and hobbled away. I think, if it had been physically possible for her to do so, she would have ran. But then, I suppose, if I’d been sending someone vicious notes through the post, I wouldn’t exactly want to face them either! At one of the side gates to the park, she turned and shouted “I don’t care! Do you hear me, I don‘t care!” at us, which made about as much sense as anything else she’s said or done since we’ve known her.
It was a relief to get home, and we listened to a reading of ‘The Pit And The Pendulum’ on the radio.
That night I had one of the most disturbing dreams I have ever had (and I’ve had some absolute corkers in my time). For some reason (in the dream this is) me, Misty and Magda were having a séance in the living-room, all three of us sat in a row on the sofa. We had made contact with a spirit, who we could only hear faintly in the distance. The noise it was making was a bit reminiscent of some of Jason’s EVP recordings. We were all three holding hands, I’m not sure if this was part of the séance ritual, or for comfort. Suddenly I realised that somebody else was holding my hand too (shades of Eleanor in ‘The Haunting Of Hill House’), and I looked down and there was an arm coming through the back of the sofa and grabbing mine. I was terrified. I called out to the spirit and thought I would ask it a sensible question for a change (people never seem to ask sensible questions at séances, much less get sensible answers), and so I went for the biggie: “Is there life after death?” (On reflection, this was in fact a ridiculous question, like the old knock once for yes, twice for no bit. Think about it). For a response I got an androgynous gabbling noise in the distance, which clearly had been inspired by some of those weird anonymous phone calls we’ve been getting.
I know it doesn’t sound much from the way I’ve described it there, but I woke up absolutely paralysed with fear. It was a little like that sleep paralysis I had a short time ago, only not as severe. It took me a few minutes to pull myself together, and when I did all I could think was that I was glad I wasn’t alone in the house at that moment. Whatever spirit it was we had contact with at the dream séance felt so very real. I’m aware that all of this makes me sound like a big girl’s blouse, but this dream was very frightening indeed.
Soon after we had the worst storm for 17 years. The whole country was battered. Roofs were torn off, trees uprooted, walls torn down, lorries pushed over, and several people were killed. This time we did lose our electricity, (which was horribly reminiscent of the weird darkness from last January), and we had frighteningly high tides. By some miracle though, ’Barnacles’ endured, as it had done for 70 years. The same couldn’t be said of ’The Hedges’. It collapsed like a house of cards. It was as if a giant hand had simply shoved at it from the side, and it had lurched over drunkenly. Henry was still away, but Jeannette came home (it happened in the afternoon, when the wind was emitting an earsplitting high-pitched whistle) and stood looking at it with a very inscrutable expression on her face.
“So it’s all over”, she said.
Xanthe offered to put up in the spare bunk in her caravan, she said that it would be nice to have the company. Whilst Misty made the bunk up with bedding from our house, I took Jeannette indoors, and poured her a stiff drink whilst we waited for the hot water to heat up on a camping gas stove (it takes a bloody long time on that thing).
“Is there any way you can get in touch with Henry?” I asked.
“Might as well wait until he comes home”, she said, indifferently “He won’t be much use”.
(This was so obviously true that I didn’t see any point in pursuing that line of enquiry!).
“The fire brigade will be able to salvage some of your things”, I said.
She shrugged.
“I expect you’ve noticed”, she said “That you’re getting a lot like me in this neighbourhood now”.
“What do you mean, by a lot like you?” I said.
“People who are … cold, have no positive emotions”, she said, cryptically “You’ll notice them more and more. We need to feed off you”.
“Quite frankly, it doesn’t look as if it’s doing you much good!” I said, looking at her frail, sparse figure.
“You would do wise to take us seriously as a threat”, she said, in a non-threatening way.
“Do you honestly think we can’t protect ourselves?” I said “It’s you lot who are suffering, not us”.
(I was clearly fired up by all the We Won’t Tolerate Bullies speeches flying around at the moment, thanks to Ms Goody and her antics).
Misty came back in at that point, and she clammed up.
The storm passed through, and the following day it was as if it hadn’t happened (apart from the damage of course). The air was almost Spring-like. We still had no electricity at home at the weekend, and I was heartily sick of sitting in that dismal chilly, grey atmosphere, and offered to take Misty up to ’The Ship’ for a drink. He said he’d heard that it was closed, because of the power-cut, but that the ‘Waterwitch’ had had theirs restored, so we went there instead.
Jeannette’s words were proving to be only too true. They had a new barmaid there, a young but very hatchet-faced girl, who was unspeakably rude and sullen to everybody who came in. So much so that I think I would have quite cheerfully slapped her if I could’ve got away with it! It wasn’t just a case of Someone With An Unfortunate Manner. Her eyes were dead. Dead and cruel. She terrified the life out of one young family. The father was pathetically trying to get on the right side of her, referring to her as “this nice lady who will lay our table for us”, and the nice lady showed her true colours by slamming the food down in front of his small children, and barking at them for not being quick enough to say thank you to her.
When we left I made a silent vow that we wouldn’t be returning to that place until that abominable woman was long gone from there.
“What are they then?” said Misty, on the way home “Aliens? Vampires? Both?”
“Your guess is as good as mine!” I said.
When we got back to ‘Barnacles’ we found that the power had come back on, and Robbie and Jason were sitting on our sofa, watching Jade Goody, in full sackcloth-and-ashes mode, bawling her head off in an interview with Dermot O’Leary.
“Somebody must have a limitless supply of onions in that studio!” said Jason.
I was relieved when she was handed a packet of tissues before we got snot coming out as well!
“Jeannette says she’ll be leaving us soon”, said Robbie.
“Is she going back to wherever she and Henry came from?” I said “I can’t remember if they managed to sell their house in the end or not”.
“She didn’t say”, said Robbie “Just said she was going to be leaving us”.
Much as I had got used to Jeannette behaving oddly, her manner of leaving us was still totally unexpected. I was lying in bed early the next morning, (watching Jade Goody single-handedly boosting Kleenex’s profits yet again), when Xanthe came bursting in, saying that Jeannette had vanished. She must have left the caravan sometime in the night.
“And I’m normally such a light sleeper!” Xanthe wailed “I didn’t notice her going at all!”
Jeannette’s car was still parked in the drive outside ’The Hedges’ (Henry had gone to Devon in Rowland’s car) so I reasoned that she couldn’t be far.
“Last time she went off in a taxi!” Xanthe continued to wail.
We really were at a loss as to what to do. Al said that the police wouldn’t be interested in a missing adult this early on, but I said that we could argue Jeannette hadn’t been in her right mind (whatever that was!), that she had been behaving oddly before she went, and that the house being damaged so badly in the storm might have been the last straw. I contacted the police, who said they would keep an eye out for her, but that people disappeared all the time, and often turned up again a short while later, alive and well. Yadda yadda yadda.
To give ourselves something to do to fill the time, we drive around the countryside looking for her. Magda got some idea in her head that she might be up near Rattlebone Farm, even though, to the best of our knowledge, Jeannette had never been up there. No sign of her. When we got back to ’Barnacles’ I suggested that we now wait until Henry came home, as he might have some better idea of where she had gone.
Henry and Rowland came home at the utterly ridiculous hour of 2 o’clock in the morning. It was a bone-scrapingly cold night to boot, with ice everywhere, and I was fed up that he had kept us all waiting so long for him to return. Xanthe alerted us when she heard Rowland’s car drive down the lane, and I had to throw on some clothes and venture out into the cold dark to alert him that (a) his house had blown down and (b) his wife had disappeared. Henry took all this news in typically Henry-ish fashion. He simply stared at me blankly and said “I’ve had a very odd life”.
I really couldn’t think of anything to say to that remark! I left him to go and spend what was left of the night at Rowland’s house, and went back to bed myself. I had a disturbing dream about a nuclear attack laying waste to the countryside, (must surely have been influenced by the storm?) and Misty and me taking refuge in the basement of a large bombed-out building. Disturbing, but strangely not as disturbing as the séance dream had been.
Jeannette became Missing Woman, an all-too-familiar figure on our local news Teletext (rather like Missing Man). She was described as having been suffering from depression, which as I felt Jeannette had suffered from her own personal form of depression all her life, was reasonably accurate. In the meantime life went on. Magda drove up to The Shell House, to see if it had been storm-damaged in any way, and came away (one suspects rather disappointed) that it was all in one piece still. She told me that it was colder than ever up there, and the only sound to be heard (apart from the sea of course) was the wind wailing round the four corners of the house.
“I hate it more every time I see it”, she said “I don’t see how anybody would ever have a hope of being happy there”.
I told her she had to try and put it out of her mind, but I knew that this was a ridiculous thing to say really, when you consider the amount of money they had laid out on it. We both popped in to see Al in his flowery dell (wagon), and he immediately started raging that “the whole world is heading for destruction, and all people can talk about is ‘Celebrity Big Brother’!”
“I can talk about The Shell House if you like”, said Magda “I’m sure you’d love to hear all about it again!”
“I’m thinking of hiring a boat for a day”, said Al “Drive round the coastline hereabouts”.
“Oh not to practise for your swim then?” I said.
“That will happen”, he glowered at me “I’ve been asked to do another promo piece for our local tourist industry, and I thought I’d rave about the beautiful coastline. What better way to see it?”
I thought this was an excellent idea, but it didn’t sound terribly appealing in these bitingly cold winds.
“No perhaps not”, said Al, soberly “Something to look forward to when the weather warms up a bit”. Misty was in a strange mood. He said he had seen a “funny little old man”, when he was coming back from the mini-mart. I asked him what was particularly funny about him, and he said that he seemed to be wet, as though he had just got out of the sea, but he was fully dressed, so he can’t have been swimming, not unless he was walking close to the edge and a wave swept over him, but it was low tide at the moment, so it couldn’t be that. I remembered the strange person I had seen in the distance before Christmas, who also seemed to be drenched from head to foot.
“Where was this person?” I said.
“Up on the sea-wall”, said Misty “I saw him in the distance. The light’s not very good at the moment, so I might have been mistaken, but certainly his clothes and his hair appeared to be all wet. Very odd. Perhaps the sea does hold the answer to it all, all these riddles”.
“Possibly”, I said “Let’s remind Al of his boat-trip when the weather calms down a bit”.
After the storms, snow. I like snow (as long as I don’t have to drive in it), it brightens the place up. I spent the morning catching up with e-mails, and working on the website. I had another barely coherent letter from the Australian extraterrestrial, which I won’t drive you mad by reprinting. Mostly he was complaining that I hadn’t replied to his e-mails (probably because I haven’t received any, not since the two before Christmas anyway, which I did reply to (as best I could!)), and I haven’t said anything about his comments about Port Arthur. The last time I heard Port Arthur mentioned in fact was in a history lesson in school, more years ago than I care to remember, and truly have no idea what the hell he’s talking about!
I turned from him to a guy who wanted to advertise his boat for sale on the website. I was trying to think of a tactful way of saying that perhaps showing a photo of his naked girlfriend sitting in the rather squalid little bath-tub wasn’t the best way of advertising its charms! Particularly as the girl looked wretchedly miserable and rather pasty. But you have to be so careful, some people can be so damn tetchy! It was a relief when the power went off again, and I could turn away from the computer.
“It must be the snow that’s done it this time”, said Misty, who was practising his putting skills nearby “Not the wind”.
“Sometimes I think this whole country’s held together by a giant bloody rubber-band!” I said, digging out the camping-stove again.
“I expect they’re working on it”, he sighed.
There was a loud rumbling noise overhead, which sounded like the old days of Concorde passing over.
“Tony Blair must be going off to bomb somebody”, I said.
The phone rang.
“Bound to be somebody we don’t want to talk to”, said Misty, resignedly.
It was Henry.
“What do we do about a funeral?” he twittered, with that annoying habit some people have of launching straight into the middle of a topic, and expecting you to know what they’re on about “If the police don’t find a body I mean? Do we have a funeral with an empty coffin or …?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“For fuck’s sake Henry, she’s only been missing for 5 minutes!” I said “And anyway, it’s about 7 years, might even be 10, before a missing person is counted as officially dead. I think you’re being a bit premature talking about a funeral at this stage!”
I hung up on him, and reached for my jacket.
“Keep an eye on the little stove, Misty”, I said “I’m just stepping outside to get a gulp of fresh air”.
I stepped out onto the veranda. Henry often has that effect on me, after even the briefest of altercations with him I feel like I want to scour myself mentally. It was very quiet outside. The snow seemed to be muffling all sound. Apart from the sea, I could just about hear a bell tolling forbiddingly from Fobbington church in the distance. They must have a funeral on today, I thought, which brought me right back to Henry trying to prematurely put Jeannette in her grave. Bloody, bloody Henry! He had conned us all for so long that he was the victim in that bizarre marriage. How could a man who claimed to be a Christian, and who could come across as so forgiving and generous, be such a callous scumbag???
That night the strange dreams continued. This time Jeannette was in it. The beginning of the dream was so jumbled that I can’t remember much of it, except that I seemed to be trying to get out of some overly-cluttered house. When I got to the doorway Jeannette was there, but not in any kind of threatening way. Instead she opened her arms and pulled me to her, burying my face in her chest. Her breasts were soft and springy, and yes, she had both of them. She was radiating comfort and kindness. I had a very strong feeling then that Jeannette was dead, and if that was truly the case then I hoped the dream was telling me that she had found peace of mind and contentment at long last.
As was only to be expected really, the day that followed this dream had a very strange feel to it. The snow had cleared, and everything went back to being cold, grey and dismal again. It was a limbo-ish day. I read a weird short story about some mummified corpses in Mexico, which probably wasn’t the most sensible thing I could have done! Misty suggested we watch a Carry On film to cheer ourselves up, and I was about get one out when Al showed up, to read us what he’d written of his article so far. This at least proved to be good for a laugh.
“’Fobbington is an historic Medieval town‘”, I read from his lap-top “’Its quaint narrow streets never fail to spring surprises’ … perhaps you should reassure people that occasionally you get a nice one!”
“Very funny”, said Al “I’ve had a couple of places want me to do write-ups on them. ’The Black Anchor’ is doing a St Valentine’s special for instance”.
“Rose petals scattered in your room?” I read, dubiously “Complimentary half-bottle of champagne. Half-bottle? The stingy gits! Roll-top bath and separate shower unit, both big enough for two people”.
“That sounds more like it!” said Misty.
“There’s also a new café opened down by the station”, said Al “It wants to promote the town’s bohemian side”.
“How?” I said, sharply.
“It says, and I quote”, said Al “’The Blue Parakeet ….’”
“’The Blue Parakeet‘?!” Misty whooped with laughter.
“Yes, it does sound a bit like an old ladies’ tea-shop!” I said.
“’The Blue Parakeet’”, Al continued, doggedly “’Is a place which celebrates Fobbington’s wide and varied contribution to culture …’”
“What would that be then?” I said (joke!).
“’It is a cosmopolitan place’”, said Al “’Where you can meet a wide range of people. You could just as easily see a man in overalls as a woman in a ball-gown …’”
“Why, are they having trouble with the drains or something?” I said.
“Oh well if you’re just going to be plain daft!” said Al “I thought you’d be particularly interested in that place”.
“Why, because I’m gay?” I said “The last time I went in a place which prided itself on its ‘bohemian atmosphere’ there were leaflets all about George Galloway’s Respect party on every table, and some plumby-voiced idiot sat the bar going on about how he had a great urgent passion for eggs. I think I’d rather go to ‘The Ship’ … when it’s open”.
“Give it a chance”, said Al “At least somebody’s trying to do something a bit more classy in that area. There are some right old dives down that part of the town, like that tatty burger bar where your friend Andy works”.
“Oh I thought Your Friend Andy might get a mention at some point!” I said.
“Have you seen him since Christmas?” said Al.
“Nope”, I said “I keep wondering whether I should contact him, but I don’t want him to feel pressured in any way”.
“I heard a noise outside”, said Misty “It sounded like a thump”.
“Don’t tell me the phantom egg-thrower’s back!” I said.
I managed to uncoil myself from the sofa, and from under Al’s lap-top. When I opened the front door I found a bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the veranda, with a post-it note sticking to it saying ‘I’LL CALL AND SEE YOU LATER, LOVE HENRY‘.
“Now what’s the twit up to?” said Al.
“He always does this”, I said, bringing the JD in from the cold “He gets some kind of sixth-sense that he’s completely brassed you off, and so you get this hand-licking bit. Always so he can keep the dreary merry-go-round keep turning. I wonder if I can get away with pretending not to hear him when he comes round again!”
“What do you thinks happened to Jeannette?” Al asked.
“I think she’s gone”, I said “Gone completely I mean. Died”.
“Strange”, said Al “It’s what Robbie thinks as well. How weird isn’t it? When something awful like this happens, how everyone just calmly accepts it? I remember it was like this the day of the July 7 bombings”.
“But what else can we do?” I said “When the chopper falls, it falls, you can’t change the situation. You can’t put it back as it was”.
“Do you think she did herself in?” said Al.
“It wouldn’t surprise me”, I said “The big question is, where is she? Where did she go? She was plainly determined to do it, that’s why she went off without telling anyone”.
“What’s Henry going to do now?” said Al.
“Carry on being as shallow and stupid as he’s always been I expect!” I said “The goddess may be dead, but her devoted acolyte will simply float over the surface, as usual, and get worked up about total trivia instead!”
The front door creaked open, and Xanthe stood there, wearing a couple of huge curlers in her hair.
“Did I see Henry coming up the garden path with a bottle in his hands?” she said.
“You don’t miss much on the quiet do you!” I said.
Sunday afternoon. Misty had gone out to Xanthe’s wagon to play cards, and I read a joyless debate (if you can call it that) on the Internet, about how awful some of us were being to Poor Jade. “Low-life scum” and “self-righteous bullies” were some of the names we were called, interspersed with hysterical things like “our Sandra’s nearly in tears about it all”, and an American demanding to know how we could turn against one of our own. Quite easily mate. She’s a gobby, nasty, spiteful bully, who decided to make another woman’s life hell simply because she was jealous of her. I don’t see that the fact that she’s One Of Our Own has got anything to do with it. We Brits have a long and proud tradition of supporting the underdog, and in this case the underdog wasn’t One Of Our Own but Shilpa, a guest in our country who has been treated with outrageous rudeness and intolerance. Top marks for being a total cretinous chav must go to the moron though who said that “I know Jade’s loud and obnoxious, but you’re all just jealous of her” … you what? By your own admission she’s obnoxious, so why I should I be jealous of her?! And no I don’t want “blood”, I want her to disappear back into oblivion, and take her bloody awful feral mother with her.
On second thoughts, award the highest points to the racist idiot who said (in all seriousness) that (and I quote) “Martin Luther’s got a lot to answer for”. Can’t quite see what the father of Protestantism, famous for nailing his thoughts to a church door 500 years ago, has got to do with all this really??? One final word on this sorry subject (I hope!): having followed all this for the past couple of weeks, I come to the conclusion that the Jade apologists are as gobby, obnoxious and intolerant as their heroine. And like her, they bawl and scream and blub “unfair!“ when they’re challenged. This whole sorry debacle may well eventually be judged as a storm in a teacup, but it proved one thing once and for all, that there is no earthly reason why we should tolerate bullies.
To clear my head after all this, I went out for a walk. For a change, I didn’t head up to the sea-wall, but went round the village. I went up round the green, past the dilapidated little house where the old man (still missing) went after seeing his dog being murdered. Outside the amusement arcade on the main road, a bunch of teenagers were sitting on the bench there. Most were smoking, one (who looked ridiculously young) had her boob out and was suckling her baby, all looked thoroughly miserable. They stood and watched me sullenly as I went past them, and then past the caravan site and up to the sea-wall.
When I got home I found that Henry, The Masked Intruder, had paid another flying visit, this time sticking a small package through the letterbox, with the words “FOR YOU” scrawled on the envelope in black marker pen. When I opened it I found a small wodge of old newspaper cuttings, all dating back to the 1950s, and chronicling the bizarre poltergeist outbreak that had affected Jeannette’ s home village of Foxley. There were numerous shots of saucepans, tea-cups, pillows and alarm clocks all flying through the air, seemingly of their own accord. Jeannette appeared as a solemn-eyed dark-haired little girl, usually wearing pyjamas, as much of the phenomena (curiously) seemed to occur after she had gone to bed. In all the pictures she looked very scared and unhappy, and I didn’t see how she could be doing it for the attention, as the sceptics at the time had said … unless of course it was a cry for help, which leads us down some very disturbing alleyways. The articles didn’t really tell me anything more than I had already learnt from Robbie and Jason’s research into the case. In one ’The Daily Express’ referred to her as The Foxley Ghost Girl, and somehow that seemed to just about sum Jeannette up. She seems to have virtually been a ghost all her life.
“Why’s Henry given us all this?” said Misty.
“Probably just having a clear-out”, I said.
He looked at me hurtfully, as if I was taking the piss out of him.
“No Misty, that’s probably exactly what he’s doing”, I said “We’ve spent months trying to understand Henry’s motivations on everything, and the simple fact is that he doesn’t have any! He’s the shallowest person I have ever met! Nothing impinges on Henry, he skims along on the surface all the time. There is probably no other significance to this than that he’s having a clear-out!”
“Jason thinks we should go there”, said Misty “To Foxley I mean. Robbie’s not keen. He said he hated it when he went there with Duncan”.
“I can’t say I’m thrilled about it either”, I said, getting up to make a cup of tea “A gloomy village in East Anglia in the depths of Winter, oh boy, that does sound fun!”
Misty giggled and said he was going to the bathroom. Whilst I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I had another look through some of the grainy black-and-white newspaper pictures. I had a nasty jolt when I was looking at one of Jeannette in her bedroom. The point of the photograph (taken by some amateur paranormal investigators who were staying at the house for the night) seemed to be to capture a shot of a pillow flying through the air. Jeannette had clearly just jumped out of bed, and was standing by it, looking round-eyed with horror. The bedclothes were all rumpled, and so at first I hadn’t seen the strange creature that seemed to have burrowed itself into the corner of her bed. At first I thought it was a kiddies’ toy, a stuffed animal of some kind. And it might still be that, except it had a grotesque face, like that of a demonic old man.
It looked exactly like that weird creature I had seen hanging out of Kristy’s living-room window, the morning of the big thunderstorm back in October.
On the last day of January I went up to the mini-mart to do some shopping. The supermarket they were building on the site of the old bowling-alley was nearly completed, and people were hanging about watching the finishing touches being put to the upper storey. It was all bad news for the mini-mart, but even so there was quite a buzz of excitement about it, helped by the spring like weather we were experiencing, for a change.
I went into the mini-mart and stood looking at the newspaper rack. It appeared that even Jade Gobby’s psychiatrist at The Priory had had enough of her! To me it was beginning to feel like the entire country had a neurotic, screaming wife, who was holding it to ransom with her emotional blackmail and her tantrums. I couldn’t put on the television these days without seeing her or one of her henchwomen bawling about the unfairness of it all. With a sigh I turned to the local papers, and was instantly appalled by the headline ’MAN ATTACKED IN BURGER BAR’. I knew immediately that it was referring to Andy.
I bought the paper and went outside to read it. Andy had been working alone there last Friday afternoon, in the slack hour between the end of lunchtime and the kids swarming in after school, when 3 men had burst in and attacked him with a baseball bat, kicking and punching him to the ground. The words “completely unprovoked attack”, and “police are appealing for witnesses” (which always has a somewhat plaintive ring to it) concluded the article. I whipped out my mobile and rang his home, not fully expecting him to be there, holed up in hospital instead, but he was.
“It looks worse than it is”, he said, his fey little voice sounding even weaker than ever “It’s just cuts and bruises really. I don’t think they meant to cause me harm, not REAL harm I mean, I took it as more of a warning”.
“Did you know them then?” I said.
“Not at all”, said Andy “I’ve never seen them before. But they must have been watching me for a while, they knew exactly what time to come in. We don’t get many slack times, when they can be certain of very few witnesses, so they must have done their homework”.
“Did they say anything to you?” I said.
“Not really”, said Andy “I remember not liking the look of them from the start, they sort of swaggered in, as though they’d been watching too many gangster films. And then I saw that they had parked too close to the main entrance, and I said they’d have to move their car if they were staying, as nobody would be able to get in the door, and one of them said ’that’s the idea’, and he pulled the baseball bat out from under his coat. The rest of it was a bit of a blur. The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling!”
“Good God, that’s appalling!” I said.
“The police are trying to make out it was a homophobic attack”, he gave a pained chuckle “I suppose if I was black or Asian they’d say it was racial instead! But you can’t blame them really. These sort of attacks that just come out of the blue must madden them, as they’ve got not motive to go on”.
“For Christ’s sake”, I said, angrily “There’s enough of it about these days. The idea that every assault has some clear-cut motive behind it is absurd!”
“I know I know”, he sighed “The psychologists would have all sorts of smart names for crimes like this, it’s not Berserker is it? That’s more somebody like Michael Ryan who suddenly snaps and goes on the rampage …”
I interrupted his ramblings.
“Andy, do you want us to come over and see you?”
“That would be very nice”, he said, softly “I’ll be in anytime. I’m off work and I don’t feel like going very far at the moment”.
Whilst we were getting ready to leave back at ‘Barnacles’ Al appeared. I knew that he knew if we were going to Andy’s he ‘d try and wrangle an invite, so I hedged about where we were going. I didn’t think Andy would be able to face one of Al’s journalistic interrogations at the moment. Andy was wearing a large bandage round his forehead when he met us at his front door, and had an impressive thick lip.
“I was just so relieved they didn’t knock any of my teeth out”, he said “I have a bit of a horror of losing my front teeth”.
He made us coffee and offered to show us his room, so that we could see for ourselves where the night intruder had been appearing. It was an austere little room, a bit like a monk’s cell, containing not much more than a single bed and an old computer shoved into the corner with its plug lying across the keyboard. The large, mysterious burn mark was very visible on the carpet.
“How can you carry on living here with that Thing getting in at night?” said Misty.
“I like it here”, said Andy “And it’s comforting to know that there are people only on the other side of the wall, that I can knock and get help if necessary. They don’t know about the night intruder, but they’ve often joked about the possibility of this place being haunted. Occasionally they said they’ve heard strange noises when they know neither of us are in. People are very matter-of-fact about ghosts and hauntings round here aren’t they?”
“Well Fobbington prides itself on its ghost tours!” I said.
We went back down to the yellow living-room. It was looking a bit more cheerful today, with the early Spring sunshine coming through the window, than it had just before Christmas when we had had those thick freezing fogs. I had a good look at the all the doorways, and could see no sign of any kind of forced entry at all.
“Andy”, I said, putting my cup down on the mantelpiece and pacing about the room restlessly. Misty watched me from the depths of an armchair like an owl. “Andy, I don’t think all this stuff started when you and your friends raised that demon, I really don’t think that was what instigated all this”.
“But Terry”, Andy protested “He died!”
“Weak heart perhaps”, I said “It might have been genetic, that’s why his parents died suddenly too. I once worked with a guy who had to follow a strict macrobiotic diet, even though he was as thin as a rail, because heart disease ran rampant in his family. On that evening you 3 must have worked yourselves up into quite a state beforehand. If Terry had a weak heart it might have simply all got too much for him. I’m not denying that SOMETHING happened. You were ill for years because of it, Tara’s still not right now, if anything, from what I’ve seen, she’s deteriorating even more! If ever a woman looked like she was being pursued by a demon, it’s her!”
“So when did it all start then?” he said, in his gentle, wispy little voice.
“Decades ago”, I said “Perhaps centuries, who knows? We need to do some research on the history of this area, get below all the usual smugglers’ tales and ghost stories that are endlessly recycled for the tourists. Get to the more offbeat stuff that’s not more commonly known, try and see if we can forge any links”.
“I can help do that”, he said “It would be fascinating, but I can assure you that something did happen that night at Terry’s house. I don’t know what, but it wasn’t all in our minds …”
“I know”, I said, sitting down opposite him “You simply tapped into something, like those students did when they used the ouija board at Rufus Franklin’s old house. You did an Icarus, flew too close to the sun. Jason calls this a portal area, and he’s right. Foxley in East Anglia, where Jeannette Temple grew up, is also a portal area”.
“Is that why she came here perhaps?” he asked.
“Something drew her here”, I said “Jeannette herself believed she wasn’t normal, perhaps wasn’t human. She made some strange comment to me, just before she disappeared, about how more and more of her kind were going to come here. Perhaps they need these areas, perhaps there’s some kind of energy here that they feed upon”.
“When we looked at those photographs”, said Misty “The ones Henry gave us, you said to me afterwards that she looked like a changeling in them”.
“She did, a changeling child”, I said.
“Like the old legends of The Little People substituting a fairy child for a human one?” said Andy.
I got the packet of old newspaper cuttings out of my coat and handed them to him.
“You might find those interesting”, I said.
“Are you going to Foxley?” he asked.
“I was resisting the idea”, I said “But unfortunately I think it’s becoming necessary … although whether we’ll uncover anything useful is doubtful”.
“But more to the point”, said Misty “In the meantime Andy’s being attacked!”
“Was it aliens who attacked me?” said Andy “Demons? Demonic aliens?! And if they really think I’m becoming a threat, why didn’t they just kill me, or abduct me?”
“Perhaps that way would generate too much publicity”, I said “You’ve said yourself that the police could just put this down to a homophobic crime. Shit happens, no one’s going to take too much notice. But if they’d marched in there and killed you … that would have been a different thing entirely”.
“They could make me disappear though”, said Andy, with a tremble in his voice “No one would take much notice then. People disappear every day. No one’s taken much notice of Jeannette disappearing have they? A woman with a long history of depression, who’s been through cancer, they just assume she’s either killed herself, or wanted to disappear, so not much effort is being made to trace her as far as I can see. It would be the same with me. An institutionalised fruitcake, a loner”.
“I think you should come and stay at ‘Barnacles’ for a while”, I said “You’ll be safer there”.
“Will I?” he said, sceptically “Xanthe told me at Christmas that you’ve had strange visitors there, and it’s very generous of you, but you can’t watch me all the time”.
“Well the offer stands at any time”, I said “And don’t let Al put you off. He’s alright really. It’s just that strange things happened to him in Cornwall, and he’s never come to terms with it. He’s a sceptic at heart, and all this stuff is playing havoc with his belief system!”