Babbicam

by Rod Madocks

  Not that the critics have liked me much. They’ve spoken of an uneasy blend of the toxic and the beautiful in my work. One said of me “The poet is squatting in the shallow water, searching for something to give us, a breadcrumb trail out of that hostile desert back to the life that’s still waiting for us on the other side.” That’s been my only good review.

  I walked down into Torquay, the same track Lee used to take going to see Kate Farmer at Ellacombe. My breathing is easy in this town, I’m getting the feel of it. I’ve started nodding to the passers-by and saying, “Marnin’, marnin.’”

  Man, I’m going to do a lot of walking before I’m done here, I’m not confident on using the buses yet. There are so many cats, big fat ones that seem to sit at each front gate, guarding their territory. I went past the green and cream bulk of the Palace Hotel. I thought it must have originally been the mansion they called ‘Bishopstowe’. There was a bronze plaque by the hotel entrance and I stopped to read it. Yep, I was right:

  Bishopstowe, a great house in the Italianate manner built in 1841.

  Sampson Hanbury lived there in’84, a rich dude, Miss Keyse’s buddy and foreman of the inquest jury a.k.a. lynch mob. He made real sure the hanging rope fitted round Lee’s neck.

  I was looking for Torre Abbey, the oldest building in Torquay, a medieval monastery originally but now a museum. Lee had little reason to go there in his day but I had seen on the online catalogues that they held a piece of art work by Emma Ann Whitehead Keyse called “A View from my Window”. It couldn’t be anyone else, could it? I wonder if someone had snapped up the piece in that beachside auction of the Glen’s fittings held in the year after the crime. I was hoping that it would give me a further clue to her personality. I got a bit lost and asked the way of a big guy dressed entirely in motorcycle leathers. His bald head was circled by a striped necktie, worn like a headband, pirate-fashion. I must have been dumb to think of speaking to a nutcase like that but he courteously pointed out the way. An oblate does not choose his helpers, they find him.

  Torre Abbey was an impressive place, guarded by towering columns of yew. There was that name ‘torre’ again. It seemed to haunt me. I’d looked it up online. It meant ‘tower; as in the Spanish ‘Torre de Babylon’ or Tour de Muzot for that matter. It was also a Celtic loan word meaning a rocky outcrop. The place looked closed, there was only a gardener raking leaves, and a sign said that major repairs were taking place. I came to a big wooden door like the castle door in my old computer game—King’s Quest. I kept thinking of those lines: “Childe Roland to the dark tower came”. A cleaner appeared and told me the museum was being restored and everything was shut. I said I’d come all the way from the States to see something, was there anyone in charge to whom I could speak? Strange how being abroad made me more confident.

  I waited a long time. The cleaner said there was someone working in the art gallery but everyone else was gone. I first heard her feet clopping down the flagged stairs of a tower, coming closer and closer. Then she was standing in front of me, a pale face in the shadowed hall. She held her head slightly cocked to one side. I stuttered out some bullshit about coming from the University of Wisconsin, doing some research. I even waved my old student card. She listened, her green eyes seemed amused. She said the staff were not there, she was a visiting archivist assessing and cataloguing the art collection, and asked what piece of art I was interested in. She was quite tall, nearly my height; her voice was husky yet smooth. God knows why she gave time to a stuttering bum like me. I felt I could look into her eyes. She told me she did not immediately recall the Keyse piece but there were a lot of pictures in the collection. Nor had she heard of the Babbacombe murder. She moved to the reception desk with a graceful swaying motion and asked me to write down my name and number. She said she’d let me know although she had no authority over the collection.

  My hair is thinning, a definite widow’s peak is emerging. I’ve been looking at myself in the mirror of my moldy bathroom. A fluorescent tube runs across the top of the mirror, it blinks like an unsteady heartbeat. My older face in future years comes swimming out to me like some terrible fish. You’ve only got ten more years left, buddy; then you’ll be real ugly. I miss the sacraments of a lover.

  Cool girl today. Woman, I should say. There was something mature about her although she was younger than me, I think. I felt instantly at home talking to her. She made a face when I spoke of the Babbacombe murder, she obviously cares nothing for killing—maybe she’s a Buddhist or something. She told me her name was Hannah. I was flustered so I missed when she told me her other name. Too busy staring at her. Dumbass! What is my malfucktion?

  Big coaches arrive outside of the hotels along the front, unloading old timers. Some wear festive gear, paper hats, sprigs of foliage. I wandered round Babbacombe and Marychurch, poked about at All Saints Church which Miss Keyse so despised. Its brash spire still looks like an interloper over the rooftops. Nearby was Compton House where the half-sister lived. Plane trees formed a palisade around it, all pruned down to knob-ended stumps. High stone walls surrounded the gardens there. I thought of John Lee running along those streets looking for somewhere to throw his club stick. I looked at Chilcote’s memorial in daylight: in affectionate remembrance of a noble and unselfish life. You couldn’t say that about Lee, could ya? Up Fore Street to St Mary’s Church. Miss Keyse used to wander the beach at night listening for its midnight chimes. I searched all over the place. It took a long time to find. I eventually discovered some fragments of the memorial laid in concrete by a path.

  I had been looking for a big tomb as described by the newspapers of the day but then I remembered reading about how on 30th May 1943 a German FW190 fighter bomber came in just above sea level over Lyme Bay and strafed Babbacombe Down. It flew so low that empty bullet casings fell on the ornamental gardens outside where my hotel now stands. The plane then gained height a little and released two bombs. They landed right on St Mary’s the Virgin church, blowing the place apart and killing twenty one children and three teachers who were attending afternoon Sunday school inside. They repaired the church so you couldn’t see the damage but maybe Miss Keyse’s tomb got shattered on that day also and that’s why it’s in pieces and laid in the grass.

  Spent the early afternoon in Torquay library archive in the John Pike rooms. They even produce a leaflet on the local hero. There he is on the front cover, a circular portrait from about 1910 in his derby hat, his pale eyes glimmering under the brim. There’s that gardenia again. I don’t want to see that feral face no more once I’m done here. I flipped through more old newspapers. I felt bushed and took some guarana in the library restroom. Some old guys in flat caps were eyeing me. Look out! Long-haired pill popper in the john! Then I got a text from Hannah. “Hey, I’ve found your picture. Give me a call. Hannah.”

  We met at the Cat’s Whiskers, a coffee joint in Torre. She’d directed me there, so I asked her if she liked cats in particular. She said, no, she had no pets or anything. People are hard enough to deal with, she said and gave me a nice smile. Irony, that’s a Brit thing right? I get it but I have to work hard at it. Just like I have to work hard at being normal. It’s a fictive process and takes effort like everything else I do. I had a coffee but she went for roui bush, something exotic. It smelt like old socks. She told me she was an independent expert, she catalogued collections and assessed the condition of items. I asked if she usually met people in coffee shops. She said no. She thought I looked desperate but harmless and anyway the museum was closed. She had such a calm presence and a husky deep voice. Her coppery-red hair was cut short and spiky. Un coup de foudre. That’s the expression? Blam! I felt I could live forever in her green eyes. She was holding a cardboard tube and drew something out of it. She unrolled the paper with those cute fingers, pale fingers like grapes.

  “Here’s a copy,” she said.

  It looked as if it was taken from a sketch book. I pointed out how Miss Keyse spelled Babbacombe in the old Devon manner wit
h an ‘i’ instead of an ‘a’. How crowded with boats the bay was in her day. It was dated ’76, so she must have been sixty years old when she made it, yet the whole thing seemed somehow immature as if done by a much younger person. The view was looking north from the Glen towards the Oddicombe cliffs and Watcombe and Shaldon beyond though actually no window looked that way from the Glen. The place was tucked so far in you could not possibly see that view from Miss Keyse’s window. The thing was a fantasy. Those three-masted luggers also would never be so close inshore, it’s too shallow in the Bay and the Babbacombe seiners would have probably driven them off. At the top of the drawing it showed the thatch of the Glen peeking into the frame. That stuff would burn like hell on the night of the murder. I wondered if the glass panes in those iron-framed windows looked the same as the ones downstairs that Lee thrust his hands through. Sergeant Knott detached some of them to exhibit in the trial. I wondered aloud what other drawings by Miss Keyse survived. Maybe she sketched Lee at some time? The picture in front of us was drawn about two years before Lee came to the Glen, before the half-savage boy met the fantasist.

  “Wow, you really know your subject,” said Hannah. I told her I’d lived with the Babbacombe case for a year but wanted to be free of it now.

  We got on so well. There was a spontaneous understanding between us. It felt right. She came from London and was staying for a week like me. We compared shitty rooms but I wasn’t paying full attention. Ovid’s slender arrows had entered me. I kept asking her stuff.—I’ve learned to ask questions of people, it makes me seem less strange. Most of my interactions are some kind of performance.

  I asked her about those old folks I had seen getting in and out of coaches on the sea front hotels. She told me they must be ‘turkey and tinsel’ trips.” She explained how they were a pre-Christmas experience for those who wanted to replay the festive season several times over. Jeez, I thought that was sad, to want to have a Christmas under your own terms because no one would give it to you the way you want. I said I didn’t much like Thanksgiving or Christmas. I said I hated anything formulaic but Hannah guessed the real reason. She said holiday times were lonely times for some folks. She looked as if she understood loneliness. I was going to tell her that loneliness in Latin was ‘infrequentia’. An unfrequented place, that’s my inner world. But I decided not to. It might scare her for me to go on about Latin. It seems like we spoke a long time, though it was only for the span of a coffee. She said she had to go, and I said kinda casual that as we were both on the loose she might like dinner tomorrow night? She looked surprised and said okay. Don’t know why I said tomorrow rather than tonight. Guess I need to prepare.

  November 13th

  Today I’m on the brink. Meeting Hannah makes me think that I’m really going to get a break. I felt so pent up I couldn’t write last night. I can’t wait all day ’til I see Hannah. Miraculosa die, the sharks have truly padlocked their jaws.

  I wandered around this morning, and went to the Torquay Museum. Walked round the exhibits, dull Neolithic pots, whole loads of fossils, and rooms where you dress up as a Tudor peasant. Nothing about Lee. There was a tourist shop. Back home we’d say it was for ‘tourons’—a combination of tourist and moron. A little ’Scansin joke. The shop sold chinaware, plastic swords and potpourri sachets of “Elizabethan” fragrances. ‘Grockle-bait’, John Lee would have called it. Just because I’m a Yank doesn’t mean I don’t know shit about the past. I thought of all those lost objects I’d really like to see in a John Lee museum: Miss Keyse’s diary, the Lee family photographs buried with his father, the note Lee gave to Pitkin before his execution, that presentation copy of ‘The Bear Hunters of the Rocky Mountains’.

  I asked the guy on the cash till about John Lee. He said that everyone knows about him but you’ll find no mention in the museum. He said that when Lee was let out of prison he was strolling on Torquay sea front and he tipped his hat to a man who seemed a bit familiar. That man was James Berry, the hangman who had tried to kill him. They both looked surprised to see each other but they shook hands. I said that I hadn’t heard that one. The clerk shrugged and said that he couldn’t guarantee that it was true. Later, I walked to Lower Warberry by where the Brownlows had lived, and found a niche in the sandstone wall where the water trough once stood—the one where Lee’s hammer had lain hidden all that time. It’s as if I’m always looking at a space where things used to be. Fallaces sunt rerum species: it’s the nature of things to be deceptive.

  I’ve been staring in the mirror again and know I look a mess. I asked a guy at the hotel what the swankiest restaurant in Torquay was. He said ‘The Passage to India’ on Torwood Street.

  I decided to get serious on my sartorial ass. After all, as Propertius noted, every lover wages war. I bought a suit at a place on Cary Promenade after looking at my balance at the ATM. The salesman told me it was a wool mix and was made in the most fashionable narrow cut. It sure was expensive. I could still wear it with my Redwing boots, it would be a funky combination. Next, I went to the “Wild Hair” salon next door. The girl asked, how did I want it cut?

  “Fashionable,” I replied.

  She suggested a short crop with a bit of a ‘jagged peak’, as she called it. I agreed. Maybe a new cut wouldn’t show up my receding hair line so much. She was a heavy girl with a peachy complexion, a bit like Kate Farmer must have looked. I watched her in the mirror as great clumps of my hair fell to her scissors. While I had been waiting my turn I had read in the local Herald Express paper about a Torquay man, Kieran Mogridge, 21, who had been charged with the stabbing and attempted murder of a man. The accused had been remanded to appear at Exeter Crown Court. There you go. Still the same deal going down in this little town. Everything changes, nothing perishes, according to Ovid.

  “Bootiful,” said my lady barber when I tipped her a ridiculous amount.

  Hannah looked shocked when we met.

  “Is that you?” She said, “I can hardly recognize you.”

  “Even a poet needs to get cleaned up once in a while,” I said.

  “Poet?” she said. She looked worried. I could see she was regretting agreeing to meet me. I tried to pull back from being too much of a jerk and things got better after that shaky start. I got her to explain all those dishes to me. The Brits are crazy about curry. I can’t remember any of the courses that she told me about except ‘bhindi’, that’s ‘lady’s fingers’. It has a silent ‘h’ apparently. I said we called it ‘okra’. It’s what trailer trash ate. I told her the only food things we knew about in Wisconsin were types of cheese and beer. We knew a lot about those. I didn’t much like the curry. The spices made my head feel itchy—or maybe that was the razor cut. Everything chilled between us; I said I hoped I hadn’t scared her.

  “Thought you might be a bit batty,” she said as the evening progressed.

  “What’s that?”

  “A bit crazy,” she said.

  “Uh, crazy—I might be, but batty, definitely not,” I replied and she laughed. She laughed a lot at my dumb jokes. I took that as a good sign. She asked me if I was writing poems in Torquay. No, it’s a prose trip, I said. I told her I was looking for the truth about a killer, and described John Lee and my discovery of the wire recorder. She thought it must be great to be writing and researching. On the contrary, I said. It was hard work, a lot of grind. In fact it was often torture, like putting sand in your eyes and grinding it in slow. She said I must be a patient sort of guy.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Flash is a good dog but Holdfast is better.”

  Hannah didn’t much like dwelling on crime, she preferred gentler things. I was happy to agree with anything she said. I tossed back more and more wine. I had told the waiter to order the best. I think I got louder and more animated, I guess it didn’t mix too good with all that full strength guarana. I told Hannah about how I had tried to save a boy from drowning. How I gave him CPR but it was too late.

  “How awful,” she said. I enjoyed stimulating her compass
ion. I wanted her to feel something about me and indeed we did seem to have a connection. I asked her birth date and found she was a Gemini. Mutable is what they say about them, quicksilver and charming. She said she thought of herself as being a bit dull. I told her I was a Sagittarian, a teacher and explorer. I said how we got on well with Geminis. Fire and Air combined. She said she found it hard believe in astrology.

  “It’s not necessary for you to believe,” I said, “It works out true whether you believe or not.”

  I paid the check. It seemed really cheap but I got in a tangle about how much it was in dollars. For me, words and languages and it’s all gravy, but math—no. I waved my American Express card although I was not sure if there was anything left in the account.

  I felt giddy during the cab ride. Was this being in love? I didn’t really need to bluff and lie so much with Hannah. She had been put there to save me, that’s what I was thinking. I told Hannah I was so grateful for her dragging my ass out of solipsism. I began to murmur, “Hannah, would you…?” and tried to kiss her, but she put her hand to my cheek in a tender stalling gesture. She told me she was sorry but she should have said before: she lived with someone in Kennington. Where the crap was Kennington? She said she lived with a woman. Did I understand? I flinched and felt like I couldn’t breathe for a while. We rode in silence. Hannah’s hotel was near Ellacombe. She held my hand in the cab and asked me to walk her to her hotel door, and slipped her arm through mine in a consoling gesture. Her hotel glowed with shimmering blue festive lights. She drew me to her and embraced me.

  “Friends?” she said.

  What a frickin’ asshole I have been but she was sweet to me. I somehow couldn’t feel angry with her. I paid off the cab with the last of my money and walked home through the spooky streets, my feet echoing like I was in a cave. “Let us live, Lesbia, let us love”. It was laughable really to be passing along those English indifferent streets clenched up in my tight new suit. My head is so cold and literal. I’m always trying to dig up stones with a pry bar but the world is much too fluid for that. I so much fear not being real, not being lovable. It all seems like a sort of test. I thought I could hear Lee laughing.