The Sea Gate

by Jane Johnson

  ‘Have you seen any strangers?’ he asked, his voice curiously high and light for a man his size.

  She shook her head. ‘We haven’t seen anyone.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Just me and Rosemary Ogden, the housekeeper’s little girl.’ It came out as a rasping whisper. ‘Sorry – sore throat.’

  ‘Some nasty colds around the village,’ Sergeant Richards said sympathetically.

  ‘We believe the men headed this way last night, and it appears someone tried to break into the barn up the lane – that’s one of your outbuildings, isn’t it?’ the second man said.

  ‘It’s where my father keeps his car.’ Kept. The immensity of his death hit her anew. Her eyes began to burn.

  The sergeant looked pained. ‘Sorry, bird. I heard about your da.’ He turned to the other man. ‘Miss Kitto’s father was killed in action.’

  ‘I was aware of that. My condolences.’ He removed his trilby and she saw that underneath it he had a bald patch as wide as a monk’s tonsure. ‘They didn’t take the car?’

  ‘I keep the starting handle in the house.’

  ‘Very wise. It’s a nice car,’ Sergeant Richards said. ‘A Standard Flying 8, I believe?’

  She remembered passing him when running Mary into school one day and fervently hoping he would not stop her and ask to see a licence. She knew he knew she hadn’t got one, but driving tests had been suspended since the start of the war, so it wasn’t really her fault. Still, the guilt welled inside her. He gave her a little smile, then turned to the other man.

  ‘Might we not station one of the lads here to keep an eye out for the young ladies till the bastards – beg pardon, bird – till the escaped prisoners are caught?’

  ‘Oh, we’re fine,’ Olivia said, a little too quickly.

  ‘I’m not.’

  Mary appeared at her elbow, scrubbed and dressed in her school pinafore. On one foot her shoelaces trailed: she still hadn’t mastered the art of tying them, but trying and failing several times had clearly slowed her down.

  ‘I hardly slept at all for all the noise.’

  ‘She means the storm,’ Olivia explained, putting an arm around Mary’s shoulders.

  Mary tried to wriggle free. ‘I do not. There was a lot of noise. I was afraid.’

  Olivia’s grip tightened. ‘You were dreaming, dear.’

  ‘Wasn’t. I heard shouting.’

  Olivia felt sick. ‘The parrot,’ she said. ‘It got very upset by the thunder.’

  The men exchanged glances. ‘You have a parrot?’ asked the nameless man, replacing his trilby. He looked austere and sinister with it on, like the villain in a film.

  Olivia opened her mouth to answer but Mary said, ‘Yes. I don’t like it. Will you take it away?’

  Sergeant Richards smiled. ‘You want me to arrest the parrot, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘It’s rude.’

  ‘Do you mind if we take a look around?’ the other man asked. ‘We feel you may be in particular danger.’ He did not explain why.

  She could hardly say no. Olivia moved aside to let them in, then followed, holding Mary’s hand tightly. She opened the never-used smart sitting room for them, watched as they took in the bureau and bookcases, the formal chairs and the dust coating the ornaments and coffee table. They would have to look in the parlour next, it was unavoidable. Her heart skipped and thudded as she walked in ahead of them, standing carefully on the antimacassar so they could not kick it aside. Luckily, the parrot demanded attention at once, bobbing up and down on its perch, squawking and whistling.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sergeant Richards, walking up to the cage to regard the bird eye to eye, and it promptly gave him an ear-splitting wolf-whistle.

  The sergeant took a swift step back. ‘No call for that!’

  The trilby-wearer raised an eyebrow. ‘A very unmannerly creature,’ he observed. ‘I hope he didn’t learn it from you,’ he said to Mary, who looked deeply offended.

  ‘Ba-lack!’ the bird screeched.

  This was the word the Dark Man had uttered last night before bashing the airman’s head in with the log. Olivia was revisited by that apocalyptic moment, her terror, the feel of the heavy body, the smell of the blood, and felt faint.

  ‘Black?’ Sergeant Richards said, frowning. ‘Is that what he said?’

  The trilby man frowned. ‘It sounded to me rather like the Arabic word for “out of the way”.’

  Olivia’s mind worked furiously. ‘I bought him from a sailor,’ she said. ‘I expect he’s widely travelled.’

  The man gave her a long, appraising look. She did not like his eyes: they were large and dark but strangely dull, like the eyes of a blue shark she’d seen brought up on the quay. She held his gaze, and at last he turned away and began to walk around the room. He sniffed the air like a dog. Olivia wondered if he could smell the blood, if he were some sort of special investigator brought in for his peculiar skills. Then he walked over to the couch with its hastily rearranged cushions, and dropped to one knee to look underneath it. Olivia’s heart stopped.

  He pulled at the rolled-up rug, tapped it, then unrolled the nearest corner. Olivia’s stomach turned over. She took a deep breath to keep the rising bile down and forced out a laugh. ‘Did you think there was a body stashed in there? I rolled it up to save it from the parrot. When he gets out he can make rather a mess.’

  ‘He’s disgusting,’ Mary added firmly. ‘And he smells.’

  ‘Cark!’ the parrot yelled as if in agreement. He made the sound of a log hitting a skull, though perhaps only Olivia recognized it as such.

  ‘I really must make Mary some breakfast before she goes to school,’ Olivia said, hoping this would hurry them along, but they seemed in no great rush.

  ‘May we go upstairs?’ the trilby-man asked, abandoning the rug and pushing himself to his feet. ‘Just to make sure no one got in while you were asleep.’

  ‘Yes, please do.’

  ‘Is there an attic, miss?’

  Olivia explained the dangerous tendencies of the attic ladder to them, then towed Mary into the kitchen and made porridge, adding to Mary’s a spoonful of cream and precious jam. As she did so her hand shook, so that the teaspoon jittered against the glass of the jar. She added hot water into the teapot onto yesterday’s leaves and poured out the pallid results and sat quietly as Mary scraped and swallowed and the floorboards upstairs creaked under the men’s feet.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Mary asked, once the bowl was empty.

  ‘Searching for some people who escaped from the farm.’

  ‘Marjorie and Beryl?’ Mary asked, her eyes brightening with interest.

  Olivia choked on the vile tea. ‘No.’ She did not elaborate.

  The policemen reappeared. ‘All clear,’ Sergeant Richards declared cheerily.

  Olivia got to her feet. ‘I really must get Mary off to school.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be going out with that cold. We’ll be driving back down into the village in a mo – we can drop her off if you like.’ The sergeant beamed, and Mary looked at him, suddenly very alert.

  ‘Won’t people think I’m a crinimel if they see me in your car?’

  Sergeant Richards smiled indulgently. ‘You can tell them you’ve been helping us with a very serious case.’

  Delighted, Mary ran to fetch her satchel.

  As they followed her out into the hall, the man in the trilby stopped suddenly, and laid his hand on the cellar door’s handle, tried it and seemed annoyed when it did not open. ‘What’s in here?’

  Olivia was tempted to say it was just a broom cupboard, but she knew Mary would correct her. ‘Oh, just the cellar. We never use it.’

  ‘I’d like to check it anyway,’ he said.

  Olivia laughed. ‘No one could get in that way.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘Rather safe than sorry, eh?’ Sergeant Richards said. ‘Let’s just have a quick peep.’

  The other man rattled the handle harder as if t
he doorknob itself were resisting him. ‘Do you have a key?’

  ‘Maybe there’s one in the kitchen,’ Olivia said faintly. She turned her back on him. The key was on the lintel, but she would have to buy some time. In the kitchen drawer there was a collection of strange old keys: she brought them all back and tried them noisily in the lock. Then, ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I just remembered. Daddy used to keep it up there, out of reach.’ She indicated the lintel. ‘I wonder if it’s still there.’ Actually, what she wondered was whether the Dark Man had heard all their noise. She couldn’t risk knocking, and anyway, what if he’d passed out, or fallen asleep? They would find him and then the bludgeoned airman, and how was she going to explain that? She would go to prison for obstructing justice and lying and murder. She would be put away for life…

  The trilby-wearer retrieved the key and opened the door. ‘Is there a light?’ he asked.

  Olivia shook her head. ‘There are candles somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘No matter.’ He took a small flashlight out of his coat pocket and dread rose in a cold tide up through Olivia’s chest. He shone it down the stairs. Dust motes danced as he took a step down and swung the torch beam around. Cobwebs, hundreds of them. It was like entering an undisturbed tomb.

  ‘I do so dislike spiders,’ the man said, drawing back.

  ‘Let me,’ said Sergeant Richards. ‘Bleddy ol’ lobs don’t frighten me.’

  Down he went, the flashlight picking out small circles of detail. Olivia closed her eyes. Let him not see the blood, the drag-marks. She saw again the clumsy tumbling of the body, the flailing arms and legs, the graceless fall to the dusty floor…

  Standing at the top of the steps she forced herself to stasis, though she was poised for flight. If they found the Dark Man, she thought, she would shove the trilby-wearer down the stairs, lock the door behind him, grab the starting handle for the Flying 8 and make a run for it. She would need money, and whatever petrol she could carry in the car. Frantically, she calculated—

  ‘Nothing down there,’ Sergeant Richards announced, reappearing. ‘Though it appears you have mice, Miss Kitto, or maybe worse.’ He cast a glance at Mary.

  ‘Rats,’ Olivia less delicately supplied. ‘Yes, I know. They eat the labels off the tins. Sometimes you open one thinking it’s corned beef and it’s condensed milk!’

  They laughed, except for the man in the trilby. ‘I do hope you’re not hoarding food down there.’

  Olivia tried to look shocked. ‘Of course not. It’s just the emergency rations Daddy put down there in case the Germans invaded.’

  The two men exchanged a glance, then the official cocked his head towards the front door.

  The sergeant took Mary’s hand. ‘Off to school, young lady. Shall we leave Miss Kitto in peace, Mr White?’

  Olivia had the clear impression this was not the trilby-wearer’s real name. She wondered who he was.

  By way of an answer, Mr White took a notebook from his pocket and scribbled down a number on it. He tore the page out and handed it to Olivia. ‘I notice you have a telephone. Call me if you’re ever concerned,’ he said.

  *

  Olivia saw them out, feeling exhausted. Then she went into the kitchen and made a pot of tea with new leaves (though there was no milk), cut two slices of bread off yesterday’s loaf and piled a tray with plate, knife, mug, butter, sugar, teaspoon and honey, along with a candle in a wonky pottery holder she had made at school at the age of eight, and carried it down to the cellar.

  She rapped three times on the tunnel door. For a long time nothing happened and she heard no movement. Then there was the grating of the key in the lock on the other side and very slowly the door opened and the Dark Man peered around cautiously. Seeing Olivia standing there with the tray, illuminated by the candle flame, his face relaxed and he slipped around the door and closed it on the darkness beyond.

  ‘What’s your name and how did you come to be a prisoner of war?’ Olivia asked as they sat on upturned paint pots and she watched him add three teaspoonfuls of sugar to his tea. She had found her French again and suggested that for the time being it was better he stay down here, in case the police returned. ‘My name is Olivia. Olivia Kitto, and this is the house where I was born.’

  He held out a bandaged hand for her to shake: very formal. ‘My name is Hamid. Let me tell you my story. I am known as something of a storyteller where I come from. Even there, where people know that tales take their own time to be told and go at their own pace, just as donkeys move slowly down the old tracks on their way to market, I have sometimes to beg patience of my listeners.’ He spoke slowly and carefully, and cast a brief smile at her before gazing down into his teacup as if to retrieve something. His eyelashes cast deep shadows on his cheek. Then with a single swift action he drained his cup and replaced it on the tray. ‘So I apologize now for starting at a beginning that seems distant from the question you asked, and hope you will forgive me.’

  19

  Hamid

  ‘I WAS BORN IN A VILLAGE IN NORTH-WEST ALGERIA IN the foothills of the Atlas udraren. My people are an ancient race known as the Imazighen, or the Free Ones; the French refer to us as Berbères, after the Egyptians who called us “outlanders”. We have lived in North Africa for thousands of years, before the Romans, before the Arabs, before the Andalusi or the Turks. But it was the French who tried to change us. My father’s family are from across the border in Morocco; my mother, she is of mountain stock. She has tattoos here and here.’ He touched his chin and forehead. ‘The eye of the partridge, for beauty; the nuqat, or ddar, for safety and home. My first language is Tamazight; after that Darija, our local dialect of Arabic; then French. I think English is very hard to learn. There is,’ he frowned, ‘no logic to it at all.

  ‘When I was a boy I thought I would do as my father had done all his life – herd our goats and sheep in the mountain pastures, moving them down the valley in times of drought, up into the peaks in the wet season, so they could feast on the best grass. I thought I would lie back in the embrace of an old tree, breathing in the scent of thyme and lavender and watch our animals spreading across the ground like a living cloud, the kids and lambs play-fighting and butting heads and jumping from rock to rock, the females calling them to move along. But there were years when no rain fell, and no grass grew and the animals got as thin as sticks and we had to sell them for their hides and meat before they died and had no value. I hated that, for I had come to know them all by name.

  ‘From the age of nine I spent weeks at a time in the hills. Then I would come home and my older brothers Ibrahim and Nazir would take over from me, and Omar and I would go to school in their place from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon. My parents were never keen for me to go – after all, the school was several valleys away from our home, and worse, the teacher was French – but if they stopped me I moped around the house and did my chores so badly that my mother would end up throwing spoons and slippers at me, and my father said I might as well go and fill my head with something other than air.

  ‘I loved school. I loved the long walk with nothing to do but take in the rocks and plants and clouds; I loved to sit in the classroom among books and pencils. All those things to learn – it was as if the teacher were rolling a magic carpet out as he told us about the world. I did not know there was anywhere beyond Oujda, Aurès or Oran, and I had never visited any of them – they marked the boundaries of the real world for me; though the imagined world ran as far as the tales in the Qur’an and One Thousand and One Nights, from whales in the bottom of the ocean to the harems of sultans. Our teacher came from Nantes, and oh, how he spoke, with a beautiful accent: it sounded like music to me, who was used to the sound of Tamazight, the growls and the spitting noises of it; to the bellowing of rams and the howls of jackals. It demonstrated to me that there were other ways to live. He did not wear a frayed djellaba or go barefoot like me and my brothers. Even though he lived in the school house in no better surroundings than we did, h
e always wore a white shirt and a tie, and pleated trousers held up by a shining leather belt, and proper shoes, and a woollen coat in the winter. I wanted to be like him, with his gleaming hair and his clean-shaven chin and clipped, precise vowels. It became my dream, my aim.

  ‘And so when I heard from a travelling medicine-salesman that the French administration in the city of Oran were hiring young men to act as translators and passe-partouts and said that I should try my luck there, I went to my father and told him I would like to go. I thought he would be angry. He is a fierce-looking man, his dark skin stitched and seamed by wind and sun, his eyes like flints, his thick beard as black as night. When I said my piece to him he did not shout at me. We sat together and he gave me the first tea from the pot, pouring it from a great height…’ He mimed with Olivia’s little brown teapot, holding it aloft and tilting it so that she feared its lid would shoot off and break on the hard floor. ‘Poured in this way the tea wears a crown of pale bubbles that we call its turban, or shesh.’ His teeth shone white in the gloom. ‘Then he poured a glass for himself, and sat down cross-legged and drank it, all this without uttering a word. Then at last he said, “When some eaglets fledge they never stray far from the eyrie and pickings are made hard for the whole brood. When the stronger ones take flight for more distant hunting grounds, everyone prospers.”

  ‘“I will send all the money I make back to you,” I promised. My father was a virile man: my youngest sister had been born only three months before.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’ asked Olivia, with the wonder of an only child.

  Hamid grinned, his eyes gleaming in the flickering light. ‘Ten,’ he said and she whistled, which was not very ladylike. Her father had taught her to whistle: her mother had disapproved. He reeled off their names, a cascade of foreign sounds. ‘So I set off for Oran. “Just go downhill,” my father told me, “and keep going until you reach the sea.”