Jason told me that he thought Al was behaving like “a complete twat”, and that he was very surprised at him. “I don’t think he’s homophobic though”, he said [could’ve fooled me] “It’s just that, from what Robbie’s told me in the past, he gets a bit hung-up about sex sometimes. I guess it’s ’cos he hasn’t had any in a long while. It’s like the old joke isn’t it? The person who’s on a strict diet who resents everyone else tucking in!”
Maybe. Even so I felt like giving Al a wide berth for a little while. As much as we could in the current circumstances anyway! Jason went on to tell me that he had seen a ghost. When you’ve known Jason a while you get used to him dropping electrifying comments like this into casual conversation, but I must admit that this one did take me back a bit.
“Yeah it was 2 nights ago actually”, he went on. At the moment he and Robbie were sleeping in the front bedroom of the bungalow, the one overlooking the sea. He said he had woken up at about 5 in the morning, just before it was about to get light, and said he had seen a white shape walk across the room and stare out of the window. At first he had thought it was Robbie, and wondered why he was getting up so early, but then he realised that Robbie was still curled up asleep on the camp-bed next to him.
“Did it scare you?” I asked.
“I was freaked out a bit”, said Jason “At the time I remembering thinking that I was glad I wasn’t sleeping alone in there, but now I’ve sort of accepted it, a bit like you when you had that intruder back home just before you left”.
“It’s amazing what you do come to accept”, I said.
I went for a stroll in the nearby vicinity that afternoon. Aleck was doing some re-plastering in the bungalow’s living-room, and looking more like he was trying to get big globs of lumpy porridge to stay on the walls. Misty had got into an annoying habit of going to watch him from the doorway so that he could have a snigger, and I had to send him back to the campervan with a flea in his ear, and strict instructions to put the kettle on or else.
As I walked past the bedroom window where Jason had seen the “ghost” peering out, I gave it a furtive look over my shoulder, all the while reminded of the scene in ’The Turn Of The Screw’, where the governess sees Peter Quint’s ghost looking in at her. At the back of the house I came across the old lady from the farm, leaning on the five-barred gate which connects the bungalow’s land to theirs. I had seen her once before, and knew that she wasn’t fully ‘compos mentis’ these days. Last time, she had seen me she had thought I was a bloke from the newspapers.
“Nice day isn’t it?” I said, making banal conversation.
“They must be funny people”, she said.
“Who?” I said, feeling like a clot, because there was no way I was going to get any rational conversation out of her. Magda had already told me that the poor old dear never knew a single moment’s lucidity anymore.
“Strange people”, she said “Funny habits”.
“Come in and have your tea, Molly!” her daughter-in-law shouted from further back up the path.
This woman intrigued me, the daughter-in-law that is. It was she who had been at the centre of the Rattlebone Farm UFO flap in the 1970s. She had been a young farmer’s wife then, mother of very small children. From everything I had read about this case I got the impression that she had inflated much of what had happened out of sheer boredom. It was surely no coincidence that the “sightings” had died down markedly when she got a part-time job in Fobbington! And yet, there was Something there, something real at the bottom of it all, she had simply embellished it that’s all. Which is often the way with all paranormal stuff. Sceptics naturally home in on all the hoaxes and “jazzing up” that goes on, and yet ignore the kernel of truth that is often lurking at the bottom of it all.
I would love to speak to her, find out what she feels about it all, these 30 years on. There wasn’t much chance of that though. She kept her distance, literally so, as she never came close to the bungalow. Magda had spoken to her, but only about business matters, and once when she had warned Magda that her mother-in-law was “completely gone these days”, and to not take any notice of her. She was a tough nut to crack, and no mistake.
O n a perfect late Summer’s evening, Misty and me ate outside the campervan, and Jason joined us in our repast of tinned ravioli and grated cheese. The radio was playing a tribute to Luciano Pavarotti, and strains of ’Nesum Dorma’ floated out as we counted a whole flotilla of hot-air balloons hovering over the countryside. For a while we talked about the latest twists and turns in the Madeleine McCann case, and Jason expressed fears that if the parents were charged, then the mood of everybody would turn very ugly indeed.
“They’ll be crucified”, he said “Not literally, but everybody will be in a lynch mob mood”.
“Yes”, I said, cynically “No doubt the same ones who have been drowning us in sanctimonious, sentimental bilge since the beginning of May! Why do people ALWAYS have to live down to expectations?!”
That was my only outburst that evening. I was actually making strenuous efforts to stay calm these days, although I often found that the only way I could achieve that was by not seeing anybody (except Misty). It occurred to me that Misty is the only person I have ever known who I have been able to stick with regularly on any long-term basis, without being driven completely round the bend. Some people might find that a sobering thought, but I guess I’ve simply come to terms with it.
The beautiful September weather continued, and I knuckled down to doing some work. I took Misty for regular jaunts up to Chantley Stones, as I thought I could get plenty of creative mileage out of its Atmosphere. Mr Beresford should be pleased, as pictures of the Stones always sold well in his shop, and even some bog-standard photographs of the Moon rising behind them had recently been selling for tidy sums. It helped me also that one day Misty pointed out that from some angles some of the Stones looked like people, and I felt I could do something pleasurably surreal with this idea.
Late that night, whilst Misty was dozing in his bunk, I watched Johnny Vegas presenting a programme about American evangelists. It was a lot more thoughtful than I was expecting, and at the end he said “I’ve met some really good people … but I don’t want to be like them”. And so in a nutshell he summed up one of my biggest problems with religion.
You see, for every ignorant nutcase like Henry Temple, you probably get about 10 people who are genuinely kind and sincere, and who get a lot of strength and comfort from their religion, and they only want to pass it onto others out of pure benevolence, but however much they may radiate peace and serenity and compassion, I don’t want to be like them. And I think, for me anyway, that’s because it all seems so shallow, (at worst, so naïve), sort of skimming along the surface of life. Let’s pretend that the whole world is one big happy bunny, and that God will always provide. Where’s the intensity? The feeling that you can’t get the highs without the lows? The reaping the whirlwind of emotion and passion? That you learn from the bad times, and by golly, they don’t half make you appreciate the good!
I don’t want to stand in a church and be forced to shake hands with strangers, and pretend I love them when I know absolutely nothing about them. I don’t want to turn the other cheek and love my enemy - simply because I want the shits of this world to be made to pay for their actions!!! I don’t believe that everybody can be Saved. People can only be saved if they actively WANT to be Saved. And there are some people who would rather self-destruct instead.
If all that sounds too cynical, well I guess that’s exactly why I’ll never make a good Christian.
Curiously, the day after this, we had had to go back down to ’Barnacles’ to check it over (look at the mail, empty the de-humidifier, that sort of thing). Whilst we were there I decided it was time I chucked out some of the mounds of old paperwork that had been left heaped on my desk when it was all hurriedly rescued from the floor. I came across some old scribbles of Henry’s. Mostly church stuff, but there was a plaintive cry amongst it of “THEY KILLED JESUS ’COS HE SPOKE THE TRUTH AND THEY DIDN’T LIKE IT, IT’S ALL IN THE BIBLE”. Oh Henry, why couldn’t you have just lightened up, feller?!
Back up at the bungalow, we were plagued all afternoon by a helicopter repeatedly flying around. This isn’t anything unusual. I think the armed forces like to practice round our way. The coastline and the railway line are all good training markers for them. Sometimes they’re so damn noisy though that I stick my fingers up at them! This one was flying so low I could almost see who was sitting inside it.
That night I was woken up by another of the bastards coming over again, and I seized my mobile, in preparation for ringing the cops, only to have Misty snatch it from me, and stuff it under his duvet.
“You’ve done that before”, he said, crossly “And all they do is deny they know anything about it, so what’s the point?”
He was still in a complete grot with me the next day, but I had to do some work, and left him to flounce around on his own. This he did with much relish, even opening a packet of cream cheese and chive-flavoured crisps, in spite of the fact that I had said previously that they tasted like unwashed feet. After a few mouthfuls he chucked them in the bin, and said they were the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted. I preserved a dignified silence.
When I went to look for him later I found he had taken his fold-up chair round the back of the van, and was sitting there in solitary splendour. He looked very tired, and I felt sorry for him. He had been herded about all over the place all Summer, and I strongly suspected that he was missing ’Barnacles’ more than he was letting on. There was also an icy nip in the air, which reminded me (as if I needed it) how the year was advancing on, and that living in a campervan on a windy cliff-top wouldn’t be the ideal situation come Winter.
I sat on the grass at his feet, and he leaned forward, nuzzling his face into my shoulder. I felt his soft hair tickling my cheek. We both apologised to each other.
“There’s just never any privacy, wherever we go”, he said “Even when we lived in that muddy field in Oxfordshire we still had the Herberts right outside”.
(The ‘Herberts’ was his nickname for Jasmine the Rottweiler and Frank Spencer).
“Oh it’s bloody Al being such an uptight old sod”, I said “He gets in a grot so easily it’s ridiculous”.
“He’s in a grot at the moment because some 60-year-old grandmother has become the oldest woman to swim the Channel”, said Misty “Robbie says he’s in a real tizz about that!”
“Serves him right”, I said, unsympathetically “Nobody’s stopping him from having a go are they!”
“I don’t mind it up here”, he said, when I asked him if he was missing home “But it’s gonna get really cold soon. Magda’s suggested we could move into the bungalow if we wanted to, but it’s too damn creepy”.
“I’m not really sure what to make of Jason seeing his ‘ghost’”, I said “Normally I’d be sceptical, because he’s got such a vivid imagination at the best of times, but …”
“Not after what happened to us back in the Spring”, Misty concluded “After all, we’re still not sure what we saw in our room that night are we?”
“Well anyway the bungalow’s not a bad option, if the weather turns really cold before we get back down to ‘Barnacles’”, I said “And whatever happens I’ll protect you!”
I took him into the van to show him the progress on one of the pictures I had been doing of Chantley Stones. I had made the largest stone to resemble a monk in a hood leaning forward, because that’s how it struck me when I had seen the sun shining full on it recently. By contrast Misty said he had thought it had looked like a pig, which just goes to show how different people’s perceptions of an image can be!
We were woken early the following morning by Jason doing the rounds of everybody in a perfect orgasm of excitement. He had just heard on the news that something had landed in the wilds of Peru, possibly a meteor/fireball, and that the locals had all gone down with sickness because of it, being inflicted with nausea, runny noses, burning eyes, sore throats, etc. Animals had also been affected. The object had caused a large crater, and at the moment it was believed that it was pumping out poisonous gasses.
I could understand his excitement for once. This was like something out of an old Quatermass film. It also opened up all sorts of areas for speculation. Were we dealing with a modern Tungushka, or possibly another Roswell? (To go off on a tangent for a moment, the most fascinating thing I have ever heard about Roswell was that the entertainer Hughie Green had heard about it on the car radio whilst driving across the desert. When he got to the nearest town, he had bought up stacks of newspapers hoping to find out more, only to find that everybody was now denying any knowledge of it. I’m always surprised more isn’t made about this).
Thinking about the illnesses suffered by the Peruvians though, I couldn’t help thinking that some people who claim to have had close encounters with UFOs often claim to have suffered the same ailments. If it turns out a meteor can cause this, then perhaps it’s fair to say that that was all they had seen all along. Just a thought.
Magda was very keen that we should make use of the bungalow. I think she was hoping that if we were all to use it as our home, then it might lose some of its forbidding atmosphere. I think that was wishful thinking really. I was talking with her in the kitchen that afternoon, and even though the sun was out, that room was ridiculously dark, as was the passage which led to it. She confided in me that she often felt as though she was being watched when she was in here, and I must admit I had to curb an impulse to keep looking behind me whilst we were talking.
She took me into the largest bedroom, at a corner of the house, which she said Misty and I could have. It was nice and private, she said, as it had its own bathroom and Robbie and Jason were down the other end of the corridor. I felt sorry for her, so I tried to show some enthusiasm, but i t wasn’t easy. There were big windows in two sides of the room, but in spite of that it was dark in there, and bitterly cold. I don’t think, to be fair, this was entirely due to any spooky atmosphere, as the squally cliff-top winds were whistling round the house, and making the whole wooden structure creak like an old galleon at sea.
I tried not to commit myself to moving in, but I could see if we were away from ’Barnacles’ for much longer, we would have no choice.
Late that night, I was reading in bed, whilst Misty dozed nearby, when I heard a strange noise outside. I knew Misty would get very brassed to bits if I started raising a late-night hullabaloo again, so I had to sit up discreetly and listen. There was a scuffling and grunting coming from outside the van, sounding like a pig scratching at the earth.
“What is that?” said Misty, drowsily.
“Oh good, you’ve heard it too”, I said (so he can’t accuse me of being attention-seeking or some such nonsense).
“It sounds like a pig”, he said.
“I suppose one of the animals could have escaped from the farm”, I said.
“They don’t keep pigs on the farm”, he said “It’s a dairy farm”.
“Well anyway, we’d better check just in case”, I said, reaching for a torch.
He swung his legs round and sat on the edge of his bunk.
“Be careful”, he said.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open, being hit almost immediately by a gust of cold wind. There was a scampering noise as of the animal scuttling away. I stepped outside, shining the torch around. It was a very dark night (it was just after the new moon), and I couldn’t see a damn thing. The lights were out in both Al and Xanthe’s wagons, and in the bungalow. I shone the torch on the ground, and could see that the earth was disturbed.
“Well whatever it was”, I said, when I had got back inside “It was more scared of us than we were of it”.
“I hope so!” said Misty.
Meanwhile, life went on its ever fun and enjoyable way. Al was really getting on my nerves. He now took to cold-shouldering me, whilst at the same time giving me reproachful looks. I had had a basinful of this kind of behaviour from Henry over the past couple of years, and I certainly wasn’t in the mood for it from him. I was disgusted that he was prepared to flush our good friendship down the pan, just because he had hang-ups and couldn’t accept that I am the person I am. I had always known that he could be a difficult old bastard sometimes, but I had never really credited him with such a vicious and narrow-minded attitude as this. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel hurt and badly let down.
Magda in the meantime kept harping on about us moving into the bungalow, and I kept procrastinating. Fortunately the weather was on my side, as in spite of the squally winds, it had turned warm again. What was really putting me off moving into the bungalow, far and above everything else, was the thought of using that long, dark corridor every time I wanted to go in and out of our room! It was sinister enough in the daytime, I dreaded to think what it would be like after dark, and there was the poignant reminder that the clocks would be changing in a month’s time, and it would be going dark at 5 o’clock in the afternoon!
I found myself turning more and more to the two nuttiest fruitcakes in our midst for uplifting conversation: Xanthe and Jason. To be sure, Xanthe - with her endless portents of doom - can be a sure trial sometimes, but at least you can’t accuse her of being narrow-minded (like Al), or living relentlessly in the real world all the time (Magda). She regaled me with tales of how the ghostly varnished monks had been sighted again down in the village, only wearing white this time. Nothing I could say could convince her that the more and more I heard about these “apparitions” the more certain I was it was a practical joke.
A few days after Equinox tornadoes swept across parts of England. I woke up at about 5 o’clock in the morning to hear the wind gusting at full volume across our exposed spot, and rain being hurled against the windows. By mid-morning it had all cleared to leave the sky polished clean. I was outside admiring the cloudscape, when Al’s van suddenly started up and he drove away down the lane across the field. Xanthe informed me a short time later that he was moving down to the camp-site on the edge of Shinglesea. It wouldn’t affect Jason and Robbie, as they were currently living in the bungalow, and Paul was staying with some friends in a flat at Fobbington.
“I don’t know what he wants to be THAT alone for”, said Xanthe, going back into her van.
“Because he can cope with things that way”, I said, quietly.
I was determined that I wasn’t going to let Al get to me. We were both grown men after all, and if he wanted to carry on this way then it was up to him. I’m too old for childish confrontations, and anyway there were more important things going on. I had some excess negative energy to work out of my system though, so I went for a trudge around the immediate countryside, and was diverted by seeing an enormous owl sitting on the roof of one of the farm outbuildings. I watched it for quite some time, before it flew off gracefully, its huge wings outstretched.
I had been having some weird dreams of late, including one rather unsettling one of Misty pushing me around everywhere in a wheelchair. One particularly daft one though involved a large cat taking up residence with us, which had an annoying habit of suddenly coming out with grand doom-laden speeches in a booming Satanic voice. At least until I shouted at it in exasperation “Oh do shut up!” At which it leapt out of the window, never to return! I woke up in fits of laughter, and decided that this might prove useful one day.
A couple of hours later Magda returned from a shopping-trip, and told me that a strange power-cut had afflicted Shinglesea and Fobbington overnight, and nobody knew why. Which all felt a bit old hat to be honest, as mysterious power-cuts are nothing new in our vicinity! (A high wind in Shinglesea recently anybody?!) As it happened, me and Misty had decided to pay another routine call on ’Barnacles’ that day. The power had been restored by the time we got there in the afternoon, but it did little to alleviate the gloom of the place (not helped by black storm clouds which had gathered overheard).
After doing all the necessary things at the house, we went for a walk up on the sea-wall, to try and cheer ourselves up. In spite of the damp, chilly atmosphere, we walked further than we had intended and before we knew where we were it was starting to get dark. When we got to the concrete steps at our part of the wall, I turned to look behind me, and saw a figure walking along the path towards us, from some distance away. It was too far away for me to make out anything about it, but what unnerved me was that it stopped when I stared at it, and refused to move. It just stood there, stock still. Which was rather strange.
In spite of this rather (it must be said) unnerving incident, we both felt a great reluctance to return to Rattlebone Farm. In a rather mellow fashion, we had enjoyed being at ’Barnacles’ on our own, even in its current sad and sorry condition. So it was with some joy that we finally heard that the plasterers were ready to start work there. This couldn’t have come at a better time. It meant that Misty and me could finally have our house back to ourselves (apart from the workmen of course, and we would be living in the campervan whilst it was going on). Al had done his Lord Lucan act (and I certainly wasn‘t in any mood to go looking for him), Robbie and Jason were well settled in the bungalow (along with the ghosts), and I persuaded Xanthe that she would find it far too stressful to move back to ’Barnacles’ at the moment. (She had been banging on for days about how it was all going to get far worse before it got better, so I managed to use this torrent of doom to my own advantage for a change!).
The timing was particularly propitious as, according to Jason, the incredibly silly Julie Sparrow wanted to organise a sky-watch up on the cliff-top, after one of her nutty paranormal circle claimed he had been abducted by aliens whilst walking home late at night from his girlfriend’s house recently. I know there is a lot of weird shit going on in our neighbourhood, and for all I know it may be everything to do with aliens, but I really wasn’t in the mood for this. Partly because, to be honest with you, abductee’s stories are usually so monotonous, whether you believe them or not. It’s always the same old spiel: victim is airlifted onto a metallic spaceship, meets some strange looking coves (who are either very tall or very short), who either obligingly show him/her around the place, or carry out some obscure medical examination. Victim then wakes up back home, with several hours missing, and sometimes no idea how he/she has got there. (I think it was Whitley Streiber who did at least try and spice his up a bit by claiming a ravishing lady alien led him out of the spaceship by his cock!). The proof of this tedium is that nobody, in my opinion, has EVER been able to make an even remotely riveting film about alien abduction.
That’s because it’s boring.
On our last evening up at the bungalow Robbie came to see us just before heading down to ‘The Ship’ with Jason. He apologised again for Al’s behaviour, and reiterated that in his opinion Al had a hang-up about ALL sex, and it was high time, at his vast age, that he got over it. I couldn’t agree more! After they had gone we had supper with Xanthe in the gloomy kitchen of the bungalow, but when it had gone completely dark we decanted back to our respective caravans.
Late that night I stepped outside to have a look up at the full moon, and noticed somebody standing by the corner of the bungalow. It appeared to be a bloke about my age, standing there in jeans and a white t-shirt. It was too tall to be Robbie, and too stocky to be Jason. I called out to him. He glanced briefly in my direction, and I noticed that he seem to be rather pasty-faced and sickly-looking. Then, ignoring me, he strolled around the side of the house, disappearing out of view.
“Now wait a minute!” I shouted, pretty certain that we had an intruder in our midst.
I ran after him, and noticed him striding purposefully across the field in the direction of the farm. I didn’t recognise him as one of the people who lived there, but for all I knew he could be a visitor or a relative. His offhand behaviour would certainly fit in with that lot, who aren’t exactly the most sociable people you’re ever likely to meet! At the moment all I could do was to warn the others that he had been hanging around.