One afternoon, early in the New Year of 2008, feeling completely knackered after a boozy lunchtime session in ’The Ship, I was lying in bed reading, when we had a visitation from Robbie and Jason. I was quite pleased to be interrupted, considering that the novel I was reading had just contained a lengthy and very graphic account of child-birth, complete with lurid descriptions of placenta and afterbirth. It made me feel like an old man I had once met when I was in my teens, and doing a holiday job helping out at some stables. “I was never there when my missus gave birth”, he had said “I think if I had seen all that I’d have most likely turned queer!” Nuff said, really.
The lads were full of gossip, mainly about the Christmas holidays.
“Xanthe’s getting worse”, said Robbie “She gets more irritating by the minute. She went on and on about how I should get a hair-cut, so on New Year’s Eve I did, and then she complained it had been cut too short! I had to stand there and count to ten I can tell you!”
“She’s not as irritating as Julie Sparrow”, said Jason.
(As , in my considered opinion, there is no one on God’s Earth more irritating than Julie Sparrow - not even a politician - I thought this was a simple case of pointing out the Bleeding Obvious).
“New Year’s Day, she had us round for supper at her flat”, said Jason “And just as we were getting onto the pudding course she decides to start laying into Katy Bradshaw”.
“Who’s Katy Bradshaw?” I said, wondering if there was a glimmer of romance on the horizon for Jason at long last (any kind of sexual encounter seems to have been remarkably absent from his life so far).
“A nice girl”, said Jason “She’s into crystals and all that”.
(Even more promising. After all, she’d have to be pretty unconventional to be up Jason’s street).
“Attractive too”, Robbie smiled and nodded in Jason’s direction. He seemed to have caught my unspoken drift.
“Got nice hair”, said Jason “Anyway, old Birdshit … sorry Sparrow starts laying into her, going on about how she can feel all these aggressive vibes coming off her, and how it’s no wonder she’s single and hasn’t got a boyfriend. Well of course that’s all bollocks, there’s no aggression about Katy at all, and she could have any boyfriend she wanted, she’s just choosy that’s all. Anyway, it’s old Birdshit who’s the aggressive one”.
(I was starting to wonder at this moment if I should chuck some cold water over Jason, considering how worked up he was getting He was starting to sound like Vicky Pollard on warp speed 10!).
“Between us”, said Robbie, knowingly “I think the alcohol was interfering with Sparrow’s medication!”
“Didn’t anyone say anything to her if she was being that rude?” said Misty.
“Yeah I did”, said Jason “I got up to leave, and I said she had ruined a perfectly good atmosphere with all this bollocks, and she said she didn’t want my negative vibes invading her home, and she sat there and put her hands together in a praying gesture. Then, just as I was getting me coat on to leave, she said she couldn’t get angry or bitter me with me, instead she pitied me. I told her what she could do with her pity!”
“Sounds a riot”, I said (sort of a Gunfight At The Green Party Headquarters).
I did feel a certain relief that it wasn’t me, for a change, who had set The Sparrow off. It does get rather wearying after a while. To try and distract Jason from his grievances, I asked him if he had heard any good true-life mysteries lately, and for the rest of the visit he contentedly told me all about a strange metal object washed up on a beach in The Outer Hebrides, and mysterious deaths and disappearances all over Britain. This at least seemed to soothe him somewhat.
I had trouble sleeping that night, but then again I was having trouble sleeping most nights. My brain was too pumped full of adrenalin, seething with ideas and problems. And all the while I was trying to stamp out the fear of what the hell I was going to do if Mr Beresford decided to chuck the towel in.
At around 2 in the morning I heard a car pull up in the lane outside. This was very unusual in itself. We have virtually no traffic down Beach Land after midnight. (Any night fishermen tend to park near the public loos next to the village green). Not only that but this one was sitting there for ages with its engine running. I kept trying to decide whether to get up and have a surreptitious look to see who it was, but the night was so perishingly bloody cold that not even curiosity could prod me out of bed.
Instead I kept hoping that Misty would snore a bit louder to drown the gas-guzzler out. When I heard a car door slam I definitely decided to go and have a look, but the car then drove off. Clearly they had been dropping someone off, but if so it was still bloody weird. I listened out for footsteps but heard none. In the end I wished whoever was out there pleasure in the blisteringly cold air, and tried once more to sleep.
I was toying with various ideas as to what we should do if we decided to leave Shinglesea. The possibility of Croyde in North Devon seemed appealing. It was by the sea, which was a big plus, I had gone surfing there once, years ago, and had loved its huge, wide beaches. It wasn’t Shinglesea though, and I kept coming up against that problem time and time again. Nowhere else was Shinglesea. I went for long walks by myself along the sea-wall, and that thought nagged away at my mind.
It’s not Shinglesea. Nowhere else is Shinglesea, whether it be under water or not.
I was trying to reach a better place in my mind. A place of calmness, free of anger. I would never be able to accept the Christian mantra of “forgiveness is all”, that was beyond me, and always will be, but I could at least try and be more philosophical.
I thought I was getting somewhere with this when one day we had heavy rain, and I didn’t panic. I tried very hard to adopt a strategy of “If it happens again, then it happens again”, but it wasn’t easy. The outside world meanwhile was trying its damndest (as usual) to put the mockers on any calm equilibrium I might be attaining.
With Mr Beresford’s possible imminent retirement looming on the horizon, I had been trying to scout around for other work. I had had an e-mail from a publisher who wanted someone to do the artwork for a series of historical novels he was publishing in the Autumn. I responded with enthusiasm … and then didn’t hear another bloody word. The disappointment was that acute pit of the stomach disappointment you get, and at times it was very hard to deal with. The difference this time though was that I was determined not to let the bastards get me down. But it was starting to feel, depressingly, as though I couldn’t even get the simplest thing right.
The snail-mail bought two revolting missives. One was a photograph of Arthur, sent by my sister, presumably as a sort of sarcastic reminder to me of what he looked like. The airport strikes had been called off, so I was left with the very real fear that the little shit would turn up after all. A plan of action was seemingly beyond my capabilities, so I left it to Fate to help me, should that vile day dawn.
The other was an extremely long Round Robin letter from Henry’s Church. Several pages of closely-typed nonsense, with some near-illegible biro scrawl across the top saying “AS YOI WERE A FRIEND OF HENRY’S, WE THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN THIS”. I simply couldn’t get it through to them how much I had detested Henry! It was the God Squad once again in cloud cuckoo land, trying to pretend that we’re all one big, happy, clappy family.
The absolute nadir of the letter was their announcement that they would be planting two trees in memory of Henry and Jeannette, and were hoping to have a little ceremony to do this to coincide with their wedding anniversary in the Spring!!! “ONE TREE ON EACH SIDE OF THE PATH LEADING TO OUR CHURCH, SO THAT WE CAN ALL WALK BETWEEN THEM EVERYTIME WE COME IN”. I honestly couldn’t think of anything I could possibly say to this!”
The letter concluded with a mind-numbingly dull list of all their activities over the Christmas holidays, such as “MR TREE HAS BEEN STANDING OUSIDE OUR CHURCH ALL THE WHILE, ALL LIT-UP”. For several, highly-surreal, seconds I had actually thought that Mr Tree was a person!
If there is a god, and if he isn’t (as I do in fact strongly suspect at times) completely bonkers, then please give me the strength to cope with Your representatives on this Earth!
Annoyingly cryptic e-mail from Jason one day, containing the words “LOOK INTO UFOs IN THE MOLE VALLEY REGION”. All I know about Mole Valley is that it’s a part of Surrey, but I duly entered the words in Google, and it came up with some bog-standard UFO sighting in Mole Valley, Australia. Feeling that I had better things to do with my time, I asked him which Mole Valley he meant, as I couldn’t find anything at all to do with UFOs over OUR Mole Valley. Had no reply at all, and found myself getting extremely fed up with being ignored by all and sundry.
Sometimes I wondered why I bothered speaking at all, as no one ever took a blind bit of notice what I said! On a miserable, cold, wet day I got accosted outside by Kristy, who wanted to tell me about an all-girls dinner-party she had recently hosted. I had the distinct impression that if I had stood there and yelled “I’m not fucking interested!” straight into her face, she would have still prattled on regardless! Anyway, from what I could gather, this dinner-party had consisted entirely of “which bloke from the telly would you snog?” kind of talk, and jokes about parts of the male anatomy. For some unknown reason I was supposed to find this shocking.
“Do I look strait-laced or something?” I said to Misty, when I finally got back home.
“No, just they like to think they’re being naughty”, said Misty “Anyway, she should have heard you late last night. You went on and on about how you didn’t like men who hadn’t been circumcised”.
“Did I?” I said (have no recollection of this at all) “It must have been the Jack Daniels talking”.
“You started comparing it to certain types of vegetables”, said Misty “Brussels sprouts I think”.
“Well uncut dicks do look bloody weird!” I said “Sort of messy somehow”.
“Good job I was done when I was born then”, he said, gruffly “When’s That Person supposed to be turning up?”
That Person is Arthur, whose possible imminent arrival I had kept putting to the back of my mind.
“Have no idea“, I said “Look, he won’t be able to cope with life in ‘Barnacles’, not if I know Arthur. This is someone who has been pampered all his life. He’ll be gone in 5 minutes”.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that”, said Misty, darkly.
Rain, rain, more sodding bloody rain. I saw rain, I heard rain, I dreamt about rain. The country was on 83 flood alerts (on an average day), and some people who were only halfway through getting their houses righted again after the previous July’s efforts, were flooded out again. Sometimes I wondered what the collective mental strain on everybody would be because of all this.
I’m sure you can appreciate (well unless you’re one of those insufferable high-minded souls who expect saintly levels of tolerance from people who are already on the ropes of life), that in the midst of all this, I was in no mood for a visitation from Arthur.
As it was he turned up late one night, after we had gone to bed, banging on the door to be let in. To add insult to injury he had no money on him, and a taxi-driver had to paid off. I had been hoping, from a remote part of my heart (that had not been flooded out by pure cynicism), that I would be proved wrong about Arthur. That perhaps I had demonised him too much, that he wasn’t really such a bad lad after all.
He was worse.
He didn’t want to sleep on the sofa. I pointed out that there was nowhere else, unless he wanted to sleep in the campervan anyway. He then wanted to sit up half the night and prattle on about his girlfriends, one of whom was some snooty piece of goods living in Chelsea.
The next day he said he couldn’t understand why people chose to live in areas that were likely to flood. I pointed out that Shinglesea Beach hadn’t flooded since the sea-wall had been built, many decades before. That last July had been caused by the River Fobb bursting its banks, and blocked drains overflowing. This was an event which nobody had anticipated, certainly not our useless local council whose job it should have been to keep the ditches and drains cleared.
I packed him off for a walk around the village before I lost my marbles completely. He returned saying that all the young people he had seen round here looked like “total losers”, and that he was thinking of going to university in California during his gap year (and the sooner the bloody better if you ask me!).
After a few drinks he got tearful and self-pitying.
“My Mum’s never wanted to spend any time with me”, he wailed.
I know this was my cue to be sympathetic to the little snivelled, but as someone who had lost his mother to a painful and agonising death from cancer when he was 8, I find it hard to feel compassion for an overgrown brat of 19, moaning that his Mum’s been too busy working or having a good time to hold his hand morning, noon and night.
Misty, all this time, had adopted the wholly admirable policy of ignoring him completely. I found out later that he had been chatting to all the other players in the chat-rooms on one of the gamesters’ websites I frequent.
“Aren’t they all a nice bunch of people”, he said, pointedly “There don’t seem to be any trolls there at all”.
“Well playing cards has such a civilised effect on people”, I said.
Although somehow I doubted it would work on Arthur, who would just want to beat everybody all the time.
Read somewhere that there is an old Italian belief that when the wind howls, it is really the souls of the dead communicating from Purgatory. Well if that’s the case they’ve been extremely vociferous of late. I leave doom-laden prognostications about the end of the world to the God Squad, but there are times when it would be all too easy to believe!
Round our way the wind was howling so fiercely that people were walking round bent-double against the onslaught. ’Barnacles’ rattled and groaned under the strain, and the lights flickered. I was in the middle of watching some mildly hysterical news broadcast about the world economy going into freefall, when Xanthe came to the door.
I asked her to come in. She said she couldn’t possibly do that as she was on her way somewhere (somewhere unspecified), so instead she kept me standing on the verandah whilst she proceeded to witter on for the next 20 minutes about how depressed she was.
“This dreadful weather”, she wailed “It never comes to an end. It just goes on and on [yes I was getting a good feel of that at the moment, I thought]. It’s dreadful. It never ends!”
And so it went on in this vein. The very last thing I need is to be reminded that ’Barnacles’ could flood again/blow away/both. In the midst of these gloomy forebodings she told me that Kristy was seeing another married man (other than Charmless Pillock I presume), and that he was threatening to leave his wife and move in with her.
“Oh great”, I said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
“But he’s very good to her”, said Xanthe, who overdoses on foolish romantic sentiment at the best of times “They’re very happy together”.
Quite frankly, I said would reserve any kind feelings I have for his wife. At which she looked at me totally bewildered, and gave a nervous chuckle.
“Have you heard of rainbow portals?” she asked.
“No I haven’t”, I sighed (and I cant’ say I want to).
“There are only a handful of them in the world”, she said “And Jason thinks Beach Lane, most particularly Henry’s old house, might be one. They are portals to The Other Side”.
I was relieved when she finally remembered she had somewhere (unspecified) to go to, and left my little rainbow portal.
I was walking along to Tesco’s, minding my own business, one day towards the end of the month, when I slowly became aware that a car was inching along very slowly behind me, like a kerb-crawler trying to pick me up. I got the fright of my life when I realised that it was Rowland Richards. He leaned across and spoke to me out of the passenger window. I hadn’t seen him since he had tried to gas himself last Spring … in this very car as a matter of fact. (I was longing to ask if it had taken him a long time to get rid of the smell!).
“Would you come to my house with me for a moment?” he asked, in his trainspotter’s voice.
“No!” I said, in total horror at the very idea.
“Well get into the car with me then”, he said “I must speak to you”.
“Rowland”, I said “I’m not sitting in your car with you in the middle of Shinglesea. I dread to think what people would think!”
He wasn’t to be shaken off that easily though. He stopped the engine and got out of the car. I was shocked by how frail he looked. He had always been a bit of a beanpole, but now he looked emaciated, and he seemed to have aged about 10 years.
“You’re the only person I can say this to”, he said “I don’t believe Henry is dead”.
If ever there was a remark to strike terror into a man’s heart, this was it. And yet, I immediately had a feeling, deep in my bones, that he was right.
“The last I heard”, I said “Was that he’d been involved in some car-accident in The New Forest”.
“There are some very dark things going on in The New Forest”, he said.
“There are everywhere”, I said.
“But particularly there”, he mumbled “And here”.
(I thought, if he starts spouting on about rainbow portals as well, I’m outa here. Instead, I decided to deliberately commit the ultimate social faux pas).
“Why did you try to kill yourself, Rowland?”
“They said I was lucky I hadn’t given myself brain damage”, he said.
“That didn’t answer my question”, I said.
“I-I couldn’t cope”, he said “I heard things. I felt like a priest in a confessional who has heard something terrible, but can’t tell it to anyone”.
“What was it?” I said.
“I can’t tell you”, he said, which was extremely irritating “I just wanted to tell you that I think Henry may still be alive”.
“Your Church seems pretty convinced he’s dead”, I said.
“They’re good people”, he said “But hopelessly naïve. They want everyone to be happy, and they don’t like to look at things that don’t fit into that scenario. There are dark forces at work in this country, Gray. The Queen once said it to Mr Burrell, and she was absolutely right. Dark forces”.
When I got back to ’Barnacles’ Misty greeted me with the news that my sister Stella had rung on the landline, and that I was to ring her back. I was faced with the prospect of listening to Stella ear-bashing me about Arthur. No doubt yet again telling me that I simply didn’t appreciate his finer quality (they don’t exist that’s why).
“Have you been using my gamester ID again?” I snapped, looking across at the computer screen.
“Playing pontoon is really improving my maths no end”, he said.
“Perhaps they should put it on the national curriculum then!” I said, dragging myself over to the sofa.
“She sounded a bit weird”, he said.
“Probably panic-stricken at finding herself having to speak to you!” I said.
Misty has an unsettling habit, one a bit like a cat or a dog, of suddenly stopping and staring intently at you, as though he’s developed psychic abilities. He did it now.
“You look strange“, he said “Did something happen out there?”
“I bumped into Rowland Richards”, I said “It was like seeing a ghost”.
“Good grief“, said Misty.
Stella’s voice broke into my ear, and she instantly began telling me how good it was of me to put up Arthur like that. I was utterly gob smacked by this. I honestly can’t remember the last time Stella spoke to me like a human being. Normally, as Queen Victoria once famously said of Mr Gladstone, she talks to me as if she’s addressing a public meeting.
“He’s not the easiest of boys to get on with at times”, she continued “He can be very demanding”.
I thought I would need picking up off the floor if this conversation went for much longer. Never, at any time in the past 19 years, has Stella once deviated from her cast-iron belief that Arthur is absolute perfection in human form. This was earth-shattering stuff.
“He said he enjoyed it anyway”, she concluded.
I felt like replying that in that case he’s a lying little bastard as well, but I didn’t want to spoil this new mood of amicable accord.
It was only after I had put the phone down, that the unsettling thought crossed my mind that she may have been angling for me to put up with him again. Life can make you very cynical sometimes.
The weirdness continued. The next morning I was surprised to find a large round of Stilton cheese wrapped in aluminium foil left on the verandah, accompanied by a note from Kristy saying that she had bought too much. Kristy isn’t the sort to go around leaving unexpected gifts for people, so this was surprising too.
“I don’t like this new man of hers”, Mrs Jackson told me, when I met her in the lane later “I think he could be cruel”.
“Cruel?” I exclaimed (oh God, don’t tell me that she’s getting into S&M now, I don’t think my nerves could stand it!).
“Saw you talking to Rowland Richards yesterday”, Mrs J went on, clearly abandoning the subject of Kristy’s sex life for even stranger topics “He’s an odd one. He keeps a photo of his dead mother in his house”.
“Well that’s not odd”, I said “People often do that”.
“No I mean his DEAD mother”, she said.
“Yes, so you just said”, I said, thinking she had gone barmy as well.
“No, she’s dead in the picture”, said Mrs J “It was taken of her in her coffin!”
Misty gave a squeak. There was worse to come.
“She was embalmed by his father”, said Mrs J “He ran the undertakers, J H Richards, along Gull Street in town, until it was taken over by the Co-Op”.
“She hasn’t got pennies on her eyes has she?” I asked, somewhat facetiously.
“They don’t do that anymore!” Mrs J snapped “Rowland wasn’t allowed to work in the family business”.
The thought of Rowland Richards working closely with corpses left images in my head too revolting to be tolerated, and I terminated the conversation rather sharp-ish.
On the last day of the month a particularly nasty gale force wind was blowing. The kind of weather that makes you feel you want to scream if you have to endure anymore of it.
Xanthe appeared in great distress. Her van was at the garage on the road to Fobbington, having its annual M.O.T, and she had got the bus out to see us. She had walked down from Main Street, and said that somebody had leaped out of some bushes on the edge of the scrubland and violently pushed her over. She was in a terrible state. Her tights were torn, and her legs and hands were bloody and caked with mud. She almost had hysterics when I suggested calling the police.
“But you’ve just been assaulted!” I said “They need to know about it. Did you get a good look at his jerk at all?”
“No, it all happened so quickly”, she said, tearfully “They just jumped out at me. The next thing I knew I was on the ground. All I saw was this dark shape, and there was that AWFUL smell, like rotten eggs”.
“They didn’t take anything?” said Misty, looking at her handbag.
“No”, she said “Oh please don’t call the police. I couldn’t bear them looking at me. I knew what they’ll think, that I’m just some batty old woman who fell over and who’s got an over-active imagination!”
I felt like saying it didn’t matter two flying fucks what the police thought, but I knew that if I suggested it again she’d probably scream the place down. Instead I ran her a bath, so that she could clean herself up.
“I’ve weed myself”, she said, pathetically “I’m having terrible trouble with my bladder at the moment”.
“I’ll put your things in the washing-machine”, I said “If the garage rings I’ll ask them if they can hold your van until tomorrow. I don’t think you’re in any fit state to drive today”.
“And if you stay here, you can have a drink”, said Misty.
I might have known that that would clinch the deal!
We had barely got her wrapped in Misty’s dressing-gown (mine would have swamped her) when the phone rang. I went to answer it. It was Robbie, and he sounded very subdued.
“I’ve got some horrible news”, he said “Al was found dead this morning”.
“What?” I said “But how?”
“No one knows yet”, said Robbie “All I’ve been told is that Mrs Jackson went to take him his eggs this morning, but she couldn’t get any answer out of him. One of the neighbours said they hadn’t seen him for days. They called the police, and they broke into his caravan, and found him dead. And that’s all they’re saying about it for the time being. Even I haven’t been told anymore than that, and I’m family. It’s all very weird”.
“God, I’m sorry”, I said “I haven’t seen him to speak to in months. We got a very cryptic Christmas card from him, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it”.
“He’s been acting strangely for years”, said Robbie “He was never the same after that bizarre Clag Heath trip. That really seemed to knock him off-kilter in some way, and he never really got back on track again. Look, I can’t talk much at the moment, but I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anymore”.