Back down at Shinglesea the next day, I left Misty to plumb in the washing-machine whilst I went up to the supermarket to pick up some supplies. This turned out to be easier said than done, as their credit card machines were on the blink, and so was the cash point machine. I managed to scrape enough cash together, but it left me with about 80p in filthy lucre by the time I had finished.
I bumped into Mrs Jackson in the street, who told me that she thought the new people living in the bungalow over the road from her were the drug-dealers the police had been on about recently (blimey, I’d forgotten all about that). She seemed to base this assumption solely on the fact that they spent a lot of time peeping out through the curtains. I can’t say I’ve ever thought of drug-dealers as curtain-twitchers before, but there you go. I didn’t want to get into any complicated speculation about this, as it all sounded pretty daft to me, so I said I had left something in the oven at home, and got away.
The plasterers began work very soon, and the noise was horrendous. It seemed to shake the entire neighbourhood. Misty said that it was a shame they couldn’t work all night as well, as it would stop me listening out for bloody helicopters all the time! The cheeky little bastard! Actually, the noise during the day only made me appreciate the quietness of the night even more. Particularly so now, as when the men had gone home, Misty and me were alone, (even if we were still spending most of our time in the campervan). With all our guests gone, Beach Lane seemed quieter than ever, and I loved it.
One night I woke up about 4 a.m (a consequence of overdoing the Jack Daniels earlier), and found I couldn’t get back to sleep again. I decided to step outside for a moment to have another look at the full moon (why should smokers have all the perks?). Quietly, I put my dressing-gown on and stepped out into the front garden. I caught a movement on the driveway of Henry’s old house (still surrounded by metal barriers, the workmen hadn’t done anything to it in weeks). To my astonishment, it appeared that somebody was crouching down on their hands and knees, and was actually scrubbing the pebbles on the patch of verge at the bottom of the drive!
I crept back into the campervan and woke Misty.
“It’s not Henry come back is it?” he said, crossly (and with some justification really!).
“I hope not!” I said “Come and have a look”.
He got out of his bunk, and joined me out in the garden.
There was nobody there.
“I’ll be glad when we can sleep back in the house!” Misty grumped.
Due to this disturbed night I was late waking up the following morning, and when I did it was to hear the men outside arguing about some tool they had set aside carefully the evening before, only to have it go mysteriously walkies overnight. They didn’t seem to be accusing either of us of nicking it though, so that was something at least.
Jason rang on my mobile to say they had had a sky watch last night, and it had been “phenomenal”. Going by his excitement you’d have thought they had finally made contact with little green men (no doubt urging us all to practice peace not war, and how they would annihilate the lot of us if we didn’t do this). As it was they had seen a bright light in the sky.
“The Moon?” I queried.
“No mate, it was moving”, said Jason, as though talking to an imbecile (some might say, well if the cap fits …).
“It could have been anything”, I said, with some ill-disguised exasperation “Most likely a satellite”.
He decided to ignore this.
“Julie Sparrow says she got the feeling that it was deliberately keeping us at bay”, he intoned.
As the bloody thing was way up in the cosmos, and they were all earth-bound, I should think it didn’t have any worries on that score! What a pissing load of nonsense! How the fuck can anybody take anything seriously a silly scarecrow like Julie Sparrow says!!! Far more interesting than her ramblings (she reminds me a bit of Tilda Swinton’s character in ’The Beach’), was the news that one of the guys on the sky watch had told Jason that he had heard of two people who had experienced Missing Time along the marsh road that leads up from Fobbington to Darklight Cove.
One was in June last year, when a journey that would normally take one witness only a few minutes took 1 hour and 40 minutes, and then again this Summer, somebody lost 3 hours whilst on a short walk along the cycle track which runs alongside the road. This was more interesting to me because it was along this stretch of road that I had encountered that strange couple when we had stayed overnight at the holiday camp there last year. The ones who had specifically stressed that they wanted to be somewhere where there was lots of people.
Even aside from our own experiences along that road, Missing Time is something that I can’t dismiss in my usual sneering manner. Some of it can be down to fits of amnesia I suppose, or blackouts. Some, sadly, might be down to things like the date rape drug. And the blackout scenario might explain the person on the cycle track. But it’s hard to see how somebody can black out whilst driving a car, and end up (whilst in this supposed trance) safely back at their own front door. There are an awful lot of these stories going around, and it does make even an old cynic like me wonder what’s going on.
I suggested to Misty that we go for a drive up the Missing Time road. This wasn’t out of any noble reasons for gaining knowledge, but to get away from home. Not only from the sight of our poor radiators languishing out in the front garden, but because Charmless Pillock the Builder had turned up to repair Kristy’ s flood-damaged patio. This looked like it might take some time, as Kristy was spending the whole time jabbering to him non-stop.
It was a damp, foggy day, more suited to November than October, although warm with it. Driving along in it you can’t help but think of ghost stories and horror films. We stopped for a while at Darklight Cove, which always recharges the batteries a bit, and watched the little steam train coming in, on one of its last week-day trips of the season.
When we got back to Shinglesea, it was to find that Charmless Pillock (and his grubby unmarked van) had vanished completely, leaving only his radio behind blaring out at full volume. (Hopes that HE might have been abducted by aliens I was pretty certain were going to be doomed to crushing disappointment). We stayed in our campervan, drinking tea and watching ‘Daleks: Invasion Earth’ on the portable t.v. It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly camp the Daleks are, particularly when they throw a petulant I’m-a-teapot-style fit when things don’t go entirely their way!
“Reminds me of you lately”, I said to Misty “Particularly that hissy fit you had late the other night before we left Rattlebone”.
He swivelled his head and glared at me with his little cartoon face. Suddenly he jumped onto my bunk and pummelled me. I pummelled him back and we must have sent the van rocking. We ended up undressed under the duvet.
“If Al comes round now he’ll have a seizure”, said Misty.
“That’s his problem”, I replied.
In spite of everything I was feeling content (a state that normally makes me feel quite nervous, as it usually means Fate is about to chuck a banana skin under my feet). Home was chaotic, but it was back to being Misty and mine’s house. The overwhelming feeling of contentment though came from the dawning realisation (I’m a bit slow on the uptake at times) that the Temples were no longer our neighbours. The only mad comparison I can draw is that I felt like somebody who had been steadily vampirised over a couple of years, (against his will), and was slowly recovering from it.
Of course there was always the niggling worry at the back of my head that they might come back. It was pretty much assumed that they were both dead (although no one is entirely sure how), but this irrational fear was there anyway. I had had a similar feeling for several months after my father died. A dreadful feeling that it could all be a mistake and that he was still around.
I think that’s why I had found the strange person scrubbing the pebbles so unnerving. Because it was the sort of barking thing that Henry would have done! I could imagine Jeannette ordering him to do this in the middle of the night as some sort of penance! Misty suggested we go for a walk at daybreak, just to see if this peculiar person might be hanging round again. I had just been listening to Benjamin Britten’s Sea Symphonies, which always makes me think of dawn at Shinglesea, so, although early morning is not my time of day, I agreed.
We both went for a short walk along the sea wall in the early morning gloaming. It was a cloudy morning, so visibility wasn’t brilliant. When we were returning we both thought we saw someone dash round the corner of the public conveniences by the village green. But this could have been anything quite frankly, particularly as it’s not unusual to see fishermen and dog walkers around at that hour.
Back at Beach Lane we went down and stood at the bottom of Henry’s drive. The collapsed house had that sad and slightly sinister air that it normally has, (it had that when it was intact though!), but otherwise there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. We returned to the campervan and enjoyed (for a short while anyway) the only sounds we could hear: that of the sea and the sheep out on the marshes.
One evening there was a meeting to discuss the floods, and where we could ask questions of various powers-that-be. What a complete waste of two sodding hours! The only ones who seemed remotely human (and who didn’t look as though they needed their batteries inserting) were two guys from the environment agency, and even they had to keep apologising that they had no power, and half the time couldn’t do anything. (Although the rainfall radar map of that day was interesting, just basically a big blot of electric white sitting over the south of England). The police (who had been conspicuous by their absence that whole day) couldn’t even be bothered to send along a spotty rookie. The water board sent two shifty-looking spivs in suits who wittered on (David Brent-style) about how “pro-active” they were in the community (I actually considered starting a bet with myself as to how often “pro-active” would get mentioned). Our local MP spent the evening sprawled in a chair, looking like some tramp who had wandered into a public library because he had nowhere else to go. When he got up to speak at the end, he made a couple of naff Tory jokes about Gordon Brown and the national postal strike, and then shut up again!
Worst of the lot was the idiot from the local council, sporting a vile public school accent, who proceeded to lecture us in the most abominably patronising way about what we could do if it happened again … which basically was everything we had done that day over 2 months ago, (and astonishingly well, considering we hadn’t had any help from him!) If I had had some tomatoes handy I would have happily pelted him with them. To add insult to injury, our woefully inept chairman asked us, at the end of this farrago, to thank these good people for their time and give them a round of applause, and would we stay behind to put the chairs away. Many of us declined to do either.
Misty and me decanted to a Chinese takeaway afterwards and listened to everyone else grumbling about what a bloody waste of time the evening had been, and how nobody had told us anything we didn’t already know. I returned home feeling more like Lenin than ever.
A leaflet was delivered the next morning from a local estate agent, claiming that hordes of people were all clamouring to live in the Shinglesea Beach area, and that they would like a house just like ours. Strangely, I find that fairly hard to believe at the moment, I thought, as I rubbed some ointment on yet more mysterious red marks that had appeared overnight on my belly and feet. In the middle of this I had a phone call from Jason, all a twitter with excitement, because Misty had told him about our mysterious dark figure on the sea-wall, and how amazing it was that so much of this strange phenomena these days seemed to be happening by the sea. Afterwards I scolded Misty about this, and he got upset and said never, at any time, had I said that this information was Top Secret, and if I had he would never have said anything, but I hadn’t, so there. I soothed him by saying that Jason had made a good point, that so much of this stuff did seem to be happening at the coast.
I went to the doctor about my strange red marks, and she said that clearly I had become infected with bacteria somewhere, and that’s all it was. I came away with a weeks-worth of antibiotics (nowhere in the instructions did it say I was to avoid alcohol whilst taking them, so that was something at least!). I had left Misty to mind the house, and when I got back he said Magda had paid a flying visit. She had been taking some pictures of the area round the bungalow on her digital camera, and there was one in particular she thought I might be interested in. It was of a dense patch of bushes which stand on the edge of a nearby field. Standing amongst them was a luminous figure, blurred, but roughly human in outline. I doubt it would have convinced a sceptic, but then again I’ve long since come to the conclusion that practically nothing convinces a sceptic, so what’s the point of trying!
In the afternoon, to get Misty away from the chaos of home more than anything, I drove him out to the marshes again. I was very taken with the line of electricity pylon strung out across the fields, and thought this might make an offbeat sort of Spooky Picture for Mr Beresford. I stood outside the van, on the side of the road, in the drizzle, and made some rough sketches on a scrap of paper.
When we got home I read on the Teletext local news that the body of a man had been found in a remote part of the New Forest. What caught my eye about this was that this was the same area where Al thought Henry may have been killed crashing his car earlier in the Summer. Intriguing, to say the least.
On top of all this Jason had been bombarding me with information. There were numerous pictures of crop circles taken over the previous months. Looking at the impressive display of swirls, seashell shapes, even extravagant mock-ups of alien heads and the pyramid-and-eye design you get on the back of dollar bills, I couldn’t help thinking, purely from an artist’s point of view, that if they are all fake (and I have no opinion on this one way or the other) then whoever is doing them is very talented indeed.
Really though I was finding all this information very hard to get my head round. Everything seemed to be going into overdrive. I had foolishly expected that life might settle down at Shinglesea with the departure of the Temples, but obviously that wasn’t going to be the case. I had once read that sometimes when a haunted house is renovated then the spirits become even more active, because of the disruption. Well I couldn’t help thinking that if you apply the haunted house analogy to Shinglesea area as a whole, then the floods and their aftermath would have kicked everything into overdrive.
We went up to see the old gang up at the bungalow, and then wished we hadn’t. Xanthe greeted us with a face like thunder, and barked out “everything’s awful, we’re all exhausted, I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy!” The implication seemed to be that Misty and me had bottled out, and were having the life of Riley down at ‘Barnacles’. An assumption I wanted to correct immediately.
“You’d find it even harder down our place at the moment then”, I said “Everything’s total chaos, and there’s not much peace and quiet to be had”.
If I thought that might change anything I was mistaken. Her face just became more set in concrete than ever. She was clearly determined to be in a viper-ish mood, and I didn’t feel any obligation to try and jolly her out of it. The last thing I need at the moment is some old harridan biting my head off just because I have the temerity to exist! I knew she was dropping enormous hints that she wanted to come back down to us, but it wasn’t just that I wasn’t that enthusiastic about the idea, it was there simply wasn’t room for her. The front garden was clogged up with a skip, various bags of rubbish, the builders’ vans, (plus our own of course), and a bright orange wind-break which had been pegged around to protect what was left of any plants which had been hardy enough to with-stand everything else that’s been chucked at them of late.
I left Misty to talk to her, as he always seems to have a calming effect on her. I went into the bungalow to talk to Robbie and Jason. I was almost relieved to find Jason working on his ‘Entrances To Hell’ website, as (bizarrely I know) it seemed to be a symbol of ongoing normality in an otherwise bonkers world!
“We’re going fishing tonight, mate”, said Robbie “Care to join us?”
“No I’ll pass, thanks”, I said “I’ve never understood what the appeal of night-fishing is”.
“Can we park near your house whilst we’re down there?” he asked.
“If you can find a space in the lane, you’re welcome to it”, I said “What’s the matter with Xanthe? She seems worse than ever at the moment. What’s all this ‘we’re all exhausted’ stuff all about?”
“Aleck got her to help in a bit of decorating”, said Jason “She slapped a bit of paint on the walls, then nearly had a screaming fit, and has been in recovery ever since!”
“To be fair”, said Robbie “She’s not sleeping very well at the moment. She keeps claiming she can hear somebody creeping around her caravan at night”.
“She’s had us out there a couple of times, looking for intruders”, said Jason.
“It’s all your fault”, said Robbie, jokingly, to me “When you kept hearing things up here”.
“I didn’t KEEP hearing things”, I said (makes me sound like a right nutter!) “I heard an animal scuffling about, once, and I saw a bloke from the farm prowling round the night before we left. I know it’s a bit unnerving, but if she’s that worried, perhaps she should move in here”.
“We’ve suggested that”, said Robbie “But she says the bungalow’s scarier than being out there!”
She might have a point there.
When we got back down to Shinglesea I found Kristy standing in the back garden, talking to a thin old woman with long, straggly grey hair. It took me some while to realise that this was one of her friends, a woman called Judy, who I haven’t seen for a couple of years. Judy’s harmless enough, but she’s even more daft where men are concerned than Kristy is, and I know that takes some believing!
“You don’t recognise me do you?” she said.
“Of course I do”, I said (cough splutter) “It just took me a while that’s all”.
“I bet it’s nice for you round here at the moment”, she said.
(Come again?)
“Having all these fit men around”, she said.
I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to be in our camper-van, playing cards on the Internet, whilst listening to Fats Waller on my headphones, and Misty lying on his bunk reading a graphic novel. Fit men indeed! The day I start regarding the likes of Charmless Pillock as “fit” is the day I’ll know I’ve finally lost my marbles completely!!
It was cold that night, and Misty snuggled up with me in my bunk. Both of us were by now ardently looking forward to getting back into our own bedroom. It was about half-after-midnight when we heard Jason and Robbie returning from the beach. I was surprised at this, as I would have expected them to be gone for another 3 hours at least. To my even bigger surprise they banged on the door of our campervan.
“What’s up?” I asked, fearing that somebody had had an accident.
“Oh God”, said Jason, shoving past me “Can’t you put a light on round here?”
“Yeah alright”, I said, rattled “We weren’t exactly expecting visitors at this time of night you know!”
“That’s better”, said Jason, when I had put the overhead light on. He flopped down on Misty’s bunk “Christ, this place gets freakier everyday”.
“What’s happened now?” I said.
“We only went and saw your dark figure didn’t we”, said Jason.
“Up on the sea-wall”, said Robbie “It was standing there, facing us”.
“Did you get much of a look at it?” I said.
“Not in that light”, said Jason “But it seemed to be crying, you know, sort of snivelling”.
“Hang on a minute”, I said “It might be somebody in trouble”.
“Certainly sounded like it”, said Jason, completely ignoring my hint that they should have gone over and asked it what was wrong “It kept rubbing its arms”.
“Yeah”, said Robbie, excitedly “And then it did this”.
He mimed putting a gun to his head.
“It shot itself?!” I exclaimed.
“No, it MIMED shooting itself”, said Robbie.
“And then what happened?” asked Misty, who was still in bed.
“Well we’re not sure”, said Robbie “Me and Jason sort of turned to look at each other, just for a moment, and then when we looked back again it had disappeared”.
“I tell you”, said Jason “We didn’t feel like hanging round after that. You know I’ve heard about this sort of thing happening in portal areas, strange figures seen and disappearing again”.
“Al had an experience like this down in Clag Heath”, said Robbie.
“We’ve had experiences like that round here!” I pointed out.
“So much strange shit going on in this world”, said Jason “Look at the Madeleine McCann case, that gets weirder by the day!”
“I know”, I said “If things carry on like this I’m going to end up believing in David Icke’s blood-sucking lizards at this rate!”
“Don’t joke”, said Jason “The amount of comments I’ve heard from people who keep speculating if there are secret sects involved in all this”.
“Even if there were”, said Misty “Why would they take a little girl though?”
“Don’t go down that road, Misty”, I said.
After a cup of tea, I dropped a heavy hint that it was time they went home. Unfortunately, they showed every sign that they wanted to stay with us. Not only was this completely undesirable, but completely impractical (the campervan’s like a sardine tin at the best of times). They said they could stay in the house, so in a fit of pique I went and showed them its current condition. One look at the exposed walls, builder’s cauldrons, dusty floor, and wires hanging from the walls, (even the builders’ kettle and mugs sitting miserably on the bare floor) at least proved to them the sheer nonsense of this idea.
Some commonsense reigned … for a very brief while I strongly suspect.
Misty was in a foul mood the next morning. I was going through some sketches, and he was supposed to be doing the washing-up. This consisted of him chucking handfuls of cutlery into the sink and onto the draining-board in a deafening fashion. I told him that if he kept this up they would be an incident of domestic violence. He calmed down, and I offered to take him to ’The Ship’ for lunch.
This turned out to be quite a success, as the landlord had a new dog, a delightful little white Westie, and Misty was happily enthralled with it. When we got back to ’Barnacles’ one of the workman was sitting in the front of his van, eating a sandwich.
“Someone called for you whilst you was out”, he said, through a mouthful of sandwich.
“Any idea who it was?” I said, as no further information seemed to be forthcoming (not without prompting anyway).
“Dunno”, he said “Looked a bit official to me, two fellers in dark suits. They just asked if you was in, we said no, and they went away again. Didn’t say anything else”.
I was reminded of the two blokes in suits who Xanthe had spoken to some time ago, when once again they had called whilst we were out. Strangely this time though I felt more irritated than unnerved. If these people (whoever they were) never had the decency to show themselves when we were around, there wasn’t much that could be done!
My peculiar rash was showing no sign of clearing up, and the itchiness of it made sleep uncomfortable. When I did manage to sleep I was having some weird dreams. These weren’t always unpleasant by any means. Some were just very odd, like the one in which I was trying to thrust a brass door-knob into a lady’s handbag (I don’t want to even think about the Freudian significance of that one!!!). But some were an absolute delight, such as the one in which a whole crowd of us were walking along an endless leafy lane, and nobody seemed in any hurry to get anywhere. I enjoyed that one, and didn’t really want to wake up from it in a hurry.
Jason continued to send me details of odd things that were going on around the world. These ranged from “inexplicable” power-cuts across the south of England recently (just for a change, we hadn’t been affected this time) to the ongoing inquest into the death of Princess Diana. He made a big fuss about one witness claiming that a mysterious dark car had been seen entering the tunnel at the same time as the fateful Mercedes, as well as a blinding white flash. I was having trouble, personally, reading too much into this. The simple fact was that out of the 4 people in that car the only one who had survived had been the one wearing a seat-belt. For me that was pretty much case closed. But we can all live and learn I guess.
Meanwhile though, hidden away in a very obscure remote part of Teletext, was the disturbing information that Dr David Kelly’s fingerprints were NOT found on the penknife with which he was supposed to have killed himself. For me, this was far more food for thought than what may (or may not) have happened to a princess.
Our first wedding anniversary rolled round. I think it goes without saying that I would have preferred better circumstances for Misty at this time! I would like to have done something really special for him. In a perfect world I would have taken him off to a log cabin in the middle of a forest (preferably with a lake nearby), but that tedious old bastard Money put the mockers on this idea. Bless his heart, Misty said he would be happy just to walk along the sea-wall to the ’Waterwitch’ for a drink.
He said that we had been together for so long by now that celebrating one year of marriage seemed a bit silly somehow. I said it was more that I wanted to show him that I didn’t really take him for granted, and he said he knew that. For both of us it was more a case of that we wanted to stay together and carry on enjoying each other’s company for as long as we could. I think all gay men (even the ones that aren’t actively promiscuous) never take longevity for granted. It’s more a case of let’s enjoy the show while it lasts. All that Planning For The Long-Term Future stuff is really best left to Breeders … who seem to make a bit of a religion out of it really.
When we got back from the pub I found that Jason had called round briefly and left an A4-sized envelope on one of the windowsills in ’Barnacles’. It contained some prints of yet more photographs that Magda and Xanthe had taken round the bungalow. I was particularly to pay attention - he said in the accompanying note - to the dark blotches in the sky above the fields. OK I did. Although I was completely nonplussed as to why! Doubtless he would enlighten me when I next saw him.
The workmen didn’t usually turn up at the weekend, so I didn’t notice a note stuck through the front door of ’Barnacles’ until I was doing my usual tour of inspection at around twilight on the Saturday evening. This one quite took my breath away far more effectively than any photographs of dark blotches in the sky could have done! It was from that sanctimonious bunch of farts known to me as Henry’s Church, and was an invitation to a little do next Wednesday afternoon.
This was all to do with the current rumoured death of Our Henry, and in the absence of a proper funeral for him (why there was to be no proper funeral for him wasn’t made clear, as I would have been quite happy to turn up for that … armed with the appropriate stake and garlic of course), and was to be (and I quote) “a celebration of Henry’s life”.
Pause for much-needed reflection at this point.
Intermission:
THERE IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE ABOUT HENRY’S LIFE. IT WAS A ONE LONG BLOODY LITANY OF DOOM, GLOOM AND DESPAIR FROM BEGINNING TO END!!!
“Where’s he being buried?” asked Misty.
“Preferably on a landfill site somewhere”, I said “In a lead-lined coffin”.
“No Gray, seriously, where?” he said.
“I don’t know!” I said “They don’t say. Presumably back in Essex, where his mother lives I think. She might be organising that”.
“It feels odd”, said Misty “Not REALLY knowing whether he’s alive or dead. We’ve only got hearsay that that bloke in the car accident in the New Forest was him”.
“I know, that is a bit unsettling”, I said (not half!).
“Are you going to this thing?” he said.
“You must be joking!” I said “The thought of wanting to celebrate Henry’s life makes me want to vomit blood! And I haven’t forgotten the similar stunt with his birthday back in March”.
“It gives them something to do I suppose”, he said, glumly.
I was so bloody irritated by this latest development that I decided to go round to ’The Ship’ and buy us some cans of cider. I was in there some time, waiting to be served, because a coach-party of Swedish tourists seemed more interested in milling about, getting in everyone’s way, and taking photos of each other than concentrating on getting their meals and drinks ordered. This went on for an absolute age, and by the time I was able to leave I managed a few choice words to the hopeless British guide who was “supposed” to be in charge of them. As he looked exactly like a second-rate geography teacher on a school field-trip I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised at how inept at leadership he was!
When I finally emerged into the car-park there was a strange hazy light hanging over the fields opposite. I stopped to look at it for a moment. Strange light anomalies aren’t uncommon round our way. On the day of the flood for instance the whole area was swamped in a peculiar yellowy-beigy light. This one was more of a pale blue-ish type. As I turned to walk back home though a man suddenly came galloping across the car-park towards me. As his car had been standing there with the door open, I assumed he had been watching it too. He was quite breathless by the time he got to me, and my first thought was that this guy was seriously out of shape if he got breathless skipping across a small car-park!
“You didn’t see anything did you?” he asked, which certainly wasn’t what I had been expecting.
“What do you mean?” I said. I was already in a snotty mood, thanks to the geography teacher-clone, so I wasn’t in the mood for abrupt questioning by a complete stranger. If he had asked HAD I seen anything, that would have been a different matter. But what bloody business was it of his what I had seen?!
“You didn’t see anything did you?” he said again, and he seemed to be implying that I had seen something I had had no right to see.
“I was looking out at the light over the marshes”, I said “Minding my own business!”
It was then that I noticed he was wearing a suit and tie. This is certainly an unusual sight in Shinglesea on a Saturday evening, and I wondered if he had been one of “the suits” the builder had said had been looking for me recently.
“Did you want something?” I said.
“I just wanted to know if you had seen anything”, he said, and left me abruptly to go back to his car.
“Were you after me for any reason?” I shouted after him.
He gave me a very nervous glance and got hurriedly into his car. I suppose you couldn’t blame him really. I might as well have asked “Do you fancy me?”!
We had a troubled night afterwards. Misty woke up crippled with stomach pains and was afflicted with several severe bouts of diarrhoea (if anyone says that pompous phrase “that‘s more information than I needed to know” at this point I will come round to you and personally insert a garden gnome up you somewhere sensitive, Basil Fawlty-style). The thought of Misty getting anything wrong with him scares me far more than anything happening to me. In between bouts of visits to the toy loo we have in our campervan, he lay with his head in my lap, whilst I stroked his hair and tried to soothe him. I had a brief nap in the morning, and eventually woke up out of a trouble sleep making silly groans of pain and anguish.
Meanwhile, I had been suffering, for several weeks past, from pains in my left arm and hand, which (together with the osteopath) we had worked out to be a consequence of me carrying piles of sodden bits of carpet around back in the Summer. I had another visit to him, and he wrenched it about so much, as if he was trying to crank up an old vintage car, that I was left with bruises all down that arm. At least this time I knew what had caused them!
Hopefully you can understand, with all this going on, why I wasn’t overly-concerned with what was happening at Rattlebone Farm. I was getting phone calls at this time from Xanthe, who was pouring out a constant litany of woe about what was going on up there. Things were going missing (they were round our way too), dark shadows were seen in the house (it’s a very dark house when all is said and done), and they were all suffering from fits of depression. I wasn’t unsympathetic to any of this, but I also knew Xanthe to be the kind of person who tends to overly-dramatise life, and with my ongoing worries about both Misty and ’Barnacles’ at the moment I could do without that. I also knew that if I headed up there, she would start banging on about how I must go and see Al, and I was in no mood for that at all.
The simple fact of the matter was that I didn’t miss Al. I missed the old Al, the one I had originally known, who had lived in a caravan in my front garden. The intelligent,, funny Al (although even in those days he had annoyed me quite a bit sometimes). But I didn’t miss the current Al, the moody, homophobic, surly Al, with his endless hang-ups about sex. Life would be much harder to deal with having him around at the moment.
I don’t have any great profound, philosophical thoughts about friendship (I tend to leave that to Hollywood movies, particularly the sort where everybody cries at the end and Comes To An Understanding) all I know is that some people it is very hard to live without, and others … well you find you get on surprisingly well without them. Harsh, but true. I was even starting to blame him for some bad dreams I was having! One was like a grotesque parody of an erotic fantasy. In it I was at some gay gang-bang. So far so good, you might say, except that most of the men there were old and rather seedy. For a brief moment, on waking, I did wonder if Al had infiltrated my nocturnal subconscious, to try and turn me straight!
With Misty having been ill I was hoping to give him a break from some of the more weirder stuff that goes on around us, but if anything he seemed to have a positive thirst for the paranormal at the moment. He wanted to go on the Fobbington Halloween Ghost Walk, and I had to resign myself to hearing all the hoary old legends about smugglers, murderers and distraught, lamenting women all over again.
On top of this we had to watch the ‘Most Haunted’ 5-night Halloween special. Most of this seemed to involve a bunch of up-their-own-bums obnoxious idiots wandering around in infra-red light, yelling insults like “twat” or “coward!” at any poor, unsuspecting ghost who might be harmlessly lurking in the vicinity. I did come to the conclusion that most of it must be genuine, if only for the simple reason that if it was all fabricated they’d have come up with something that was a damn sight more exciting than a bit of rather unremarkable table-turning, and somebody (quite understandably) trying to knock out Yvette Fielding by flinging stones at her!
Still, at least it was all in the spirit of Halloween, and we had to make do with that, considering there was to be no dancing naked round the candles this year (bit hard to do that in a campervan). That night the gloomy spectre of Al was temporarily banished when I had a nice erotic dream for a change (the details of which I am keeping to myself), all done to the tune of Cole Porter’s ’Night And Day’.