by Emlyn Rees
‘As it happens, you’re wrong,’ the dog-man replied, blocking her view. ‘I’m Ned Spencer and I am in charge.’
To her horror, Ellen felt her cheeks burning and her bravado plummeting like a rock into the pit of her stomach. She knew from Amanda’s notes that Ned Spencer was the one person she needed to get onside in order to make the documentary.
‘Oh, I get it,’ he continued, before she’d had the chance to say anything. ‘I suppose you’re here to make a complaint about that coat of yours. Haven’t you got anything better to do than to stalk me?’
Ellen narrowed her eyes at his arrogant jibe, forcing herself not to sink to his level. ‘My coat is a separate issue. For now, I’m here because I’m going to be shooting a documentary about Lost Soul’s Point. We’re planning to start right away, so if you’ll just let me have a look around and sort out where we need to set up –’
Ned Spencer snorted with laughter, before pushing his old-fashioned round glasses up his nose. There was something boyish about his face, like an overgrown Harry Potter. ‘Er … like that’s going to happen,’ he said, before taking a sip of tea, his eyes dancing with amusement, as he looked at her over the rim of the mug.
‘But surely my colleague, Amanda Pearson, spoke to you several months ago?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well, we’ve got permission coming from the American owner, who knows all about the project, if you’d care to check …’ Ellen said more desperately, riffling through the correspondence in her folder. ‘There,’ she said triumphantly, pulling out the letter Amanda had written. ‘It’s addressed to a Jonathan Arthur of Salem, Massachusetts … Your boss, I believe?’
Ned Spencer took the letter from her and quickly scanned it, before handing it back. ‘All this says is that you’re asking for permission.’
‘But there’ve been phone calls. My production secretary –’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ he interrupted. ‘Everything here happens through me. Until I see correct documentation and have officially approved the project, you won’t be filming anything.’
‘But you don’t understand –’ Ellen protested, but it was obvious that he did and, what’s more, he was enjoying this.
‘No. You don’t understand. You’re trespassing. I suggest you leave.’ And, with a smug smile, he waggled his fingertips at her, with all the sincerity of a department store Santa dismissing a particularly odious child, before going back inside and kicking the door shut behind him with the heel of one of his dirty boots.
That had been four days ago and thanks to Ned Bloody Spencer, as she now referred to him, Ellen hadn’t even started yet on the Lost Soul’s Point programme.
Instead, she’d ended up getting nothing done on Monday and had then had to spend Tuesday and Wednesday back in London. There, Joy had been increasingly unhelpful. One of the other programmes had problems and it was obvious that Shoresby was way down on her list of priorities. Ellen had been about to chase Jonathan Arthur herself, but Joy had already contacted him and had delivered a stern lecture to Ellen about professional boundaries and treading on toes.
Ellen probably wouldn’t have felt quite so helpless and frustrated if she hadn’t had to spend several long stints in the dingy Soho editing suite rescuing the Hadrian’s Wall footage. By yesterday she’d been crawling up the walls and desperate to get back to Shoresby. She didn’t want to be spending all her time improving other people’s work. She wanted to be making her own programme. It was only when she’d arrived back at the cottage last night that she’d started to feel more in control.
Now, as Ellen watched the woman in the dry cleaner’s painstakingly write out the note she would shortly present to Ned Bloody Spencer, she felt a small moment of triumph in her otherwise bleak week.
She was brought out of the opening act of yet another psychodrama, in which she was about to give Ned Bloody Spencer a rather large piece of her mind, by a blast of cold air, as the door behind her opened and a young boy came in. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and an anorak over the top, but even half covered Ellen could still see his cheeks were flushed from the wind.
‘All right, Toby, love,’ the woman in the dry cleaner’s said to the boy, smiling at him affectionately. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’m handing out leaflets for Clive. Will you put a few of these up in the window?’ asked the boy, digging deep into his pocket and handing over several small sheets of green paper.
‘’Course I will,’ she said, taking them.
‘Thanks, Beverly. See ya,’ he said, rushing back out of the shop.
Beverly watched the boy go. ‘He’s pals with my youngest,’ she explained.
The woman – Beverly – didn’t look old enough to have children, let alone a ‘youngest’ of at least ten. Now Ellen felt guilty for privately patronising her for writing so slowly. It couldn’t be that easy working all day and looking after kids as well.
She smiled and Beverly turned the flyer round so that Ellen could see it, too. ‘They’re doing a memorial concert for that boy, Ryan.’
‘Oh?’ said Ellen, her curiosity aroused.
‘He was only a teenager,’ Beverly said, as Ellen read about the auditions for the planned concert. ‘Broke his poor parents’ hearts.’
‘What happened?’
‘He drove himself off Lost Soul’s Point in a stolen car last year. They say he was on drugs …’
It was getting dark by the time Ellen stepped back on to the High Street, the implications of a recent suicide rushing round her head. It seemed the more she knew about Lost Soul’s Point, the more there was to find out. There’d been no mention in Amanda’s notes about this local boy killing himself. All the suicide victims Amanda had come up with were from out of town. But using this story was a much more unified and poignant approach, Ellen thought. If she started with this boy Ryan’s suicide and then maybe filmed the memorial concert …
Her phone rang and she cursed. Why did she always get interrupted? She groped in the bottom of her bag for the mobile, hoping it wasn’t Joy on the other end. But then she saw the international number on the display panel, took an excited breath and turned away into a doorway out of the wind. It must be Jason. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked, not knowing whether to be angry with him, or relieved that he’d finally got in touch.
‘I told you it would be difficult to call. Don’t be upset, darling. I’ve got to be quick.’
‘Where are you?’ Ellen asked, pressing her finger into her other ear, in order to hear better, but the echo down the line meant that she got Jason’s question first.
‘How’s it going in Shoreton?’
‘Shoresby,’ she corrected.
‘I’m in Bogotá,’ Jason said, replying to her question. ‘Hang on …’
The line went muffled and Ellen hunched down into the doorway, desperate to hear more. Nothing happened for almost a minute and Ellen was on the verge of giving up when Jason came back on the line. His voice was clear and the echo had gone.
‘What were you saying?’ Jason asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Ellen with a smile, happy to hear his voice again. ‘Tell me about your trip. How’s it going? Have you started shooting?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Jason moaned. ‘We’ve been stuck here all week waiting for some papers.’
‘Snap! You wouldn’t believe this guy I’ve had to deal with up at the Appleforth Estate, Jase. You’d loathe him. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted just because of him.’
And as Ellen unloaded all her anger and frustration about Joy, Appleforth House and Ned Bloody Spencer, she started to feel better.
‘Do you want me to have a man-to-man chat with him?’ Jason offered, as the line crackled once again.
Ellen laughed, appalled. ‘I think I can handle him.’
‘Oh shit! It looks like I’m going to have to go,’ Jason said, and Ellen could hear an engine starting in the background.
‘No!’ she exclaimed, horrified that she’d
wasted this precious phone call talking about that bloody dog-man. ‘Don’t go. You haven’t told me anything –’
‘I’ll call you again when I can. Love you,’ Jason said and then the line went dead before she had a chance to reply.
Ellen switched off her phone, hating these all too familiar emotions. She’d been looking forward to hearing from Jason so much, but now that she had, she felt more dissatisfied than ever. She couldn’t shake a mental image of him laughing and swinging into the back of an open-topped jeep and heading off to the jungle, without a care in the world.
It wasn’t fair, she thought. He probably didn’t feel a bit like she did. And even if she did tell him how rankled and disappointed she felt, he still wouldn’t get it. She could even play out their argument in her head. He’d rung when he could, hadn’t he? And he’d told her that he loved her. What more did she want, for God’s sake? She was the one who’d wasted the phone call by talking about her problems. She was the selfish one, not Jason. Then a guilt trip would inevitably follow about Ellen not understanding how important his career was. He was fulfilling his life’s dream, etc. etc. And he was right. Of course he was right. And she loved him.
She thrust her phone in her bag and turned away from the doorway. Jason was thousands of miles away. There was no point in beating herself up about international phone calls which, as she knew from plenty of past experience, were invariably a disaster. She must focus on what was important. After all, she had a career too.
‘Come on, woman,’ she said to herself aloud. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’
Michael Francis was an ex-university professor who’d written a booklet that Ellen had found in the local library entitled The Legends of Shoresby. Despite the author’s clear penchant for the supernatural, it was very well written and Ellen wanted to use the text about Alexander and Caroline Walpole’s suicides as source material for the voice-overs she had planned for the documentary. All she had to do was check out the authenticity of the author’s claims and, of course, get his permission to quote.
Having consulted Cheryl at the Grand, who was fast becoming her personal oracle, Ellen had found out that Michael Francis ran a shop called Equinox in Southcliffe Street, which was where she headed now.
Apart from Jason, Ellen was the least superstitious person she knew. Admittedly, she wasn’t quite on the same level as Jason, who sneeringly dismissed everything from horoscopes to hypnosis, believing more in the law of animals and survival of the fittest. But having lived with him for so many years, Ellen had to admit that some of his scepticism had definitely rubbed off on her. However, as she stood alone in the pool of yellow light cast by the creaking hurricane lamp outside Equinox with the wind whistling past her down the dark cobbled alley and the grey-brown clouds fast-forwarding across the black sky, she couldn’t help shivering with something more than the cold.
In front of her, the window was crammed with every sort of occult and supernatural paraphernalia. Voodoo masks, ouija boards and an inflatable fluorescent alien jostled for space next to a large cauldron decorated with tarot cards. Telling herself that it was all a load of hocus-pocus, Ellen pushed open the door and, accompanied by a loud clatter of bamboo wind chimes, made her way inside.
She was met by soft, ambient music and an overwhelming smell of patchouli oil mixed with the curling wisps of smoke from two Byronesque candles, which cast flickering shadows up the wall of books. Glancing over the tickertape labels on the wooden shelves, Ellen could see past The Celestine Prophesies and X Files books to whole rows of esoteric texts on crop circles and Wicca. Above her the low ceiling was completely covered with a meticulously painted bare-breasted Amazon riding on the neck of a fire-breathing dragon.
At the back of the shop, directly below the forked tongue of the huge beast, Michael Francis sat on a high stool behind a desk, wearing a green Aran jumper with a paisley cravat. Aged around fifty, he was peering intently through the half-moon spectacles on the end of his nose as he painted a miniature Dungeons and Dragons figurine in the light of an anglepoise lamp.
‘I’ll be with you in a second,’ he said, not looking up as he finished a detail with the tip of his brush.
Ellen stood beside the heater, holding her hand in the warmth from the tangerine bars, and looked at the large Arthurian map on the wall.
Michael Francis sighed with satisfaction as he put down the figurine next to an army of goblins on the newspaper-strewn desk and looked up at Ellen. ‘You’ve come to ask me about The Legends of Shoresby,’ he said, scratching the side of his curly grey beard.
‘Don’t tell me you’re psychic?’ Ellen asked, with an incredulous laugh.
Michael Francis smiled, wiping his hands on a cloth. ‘Mary, my wife, works at the library and she always tips me off when anyone buys one of my pamphlets. It’s pretty rare.’
‘More people should,’ Ellen replied, smiling back at him. ‘I thought it was very good. Fascinating, in fact.’
‘Shoresby’s a fascinating place. Did you know that this shop marks the exact convergence of ley lines from all over the area? Where you’re standing, in fact.’
Startled, Ellen looked down at the floor, noticing she was standing in the middle of an elaborately painted pentagram. ‘What’s going to happen now? Am I going to go up in a puff of green smoke?’ she asked.
‘I doubt it. But you should expect the unexpected. Odd things happen to people here.’
‘Really?’ Ellen said. ‘So … what’s happened to you?’
‘It depends how long you’ve got.’
In the end, it took about forty-five minutes for Michael Francis to tell Ellen some of his background and his interest in Shoresby. As she listened, sipping a glass of his home-made ginger beer, she found herself liking him more and more, especially when she found out that his research relating to Caroline Walpole’s suicide at Lost Soul’s Point and the subsequent burning of Appleforth House came from a first-hand account.
On the night Caroline’s father, Alexander Walpole, had burnt himself and Appleforth House to the ground in remorse, he’d sent all the staff away to the town. Michael Francis’s great-uncle had been a young kitchen boy at the house.
This was great, Ellen thought. Her source material was accurate and all that reading she’d done on the train to London and back had been worthwhile.
Michael smiled at her pleasantly. ‘If you do have any other questions please feel free to drop in any time.’
‘Well, actually,’ Ellen began, ‘there is something I was wondering about …’
Ellen thought about how to phrase her question. Of course she wanted information but she realised, now that she had come to ask it, that the aspect of Caroline’s story which most intrigued her was not the tragedy surrounding her death, but rather the ill-fated romance with Leon Jacobson, her father’s Jewish secretary, that had led up to it. There was something wonderfully Shakespearean about a beautiful, intelligent young girl meeting her lover in the dead of night to elope, knowing that she was giving up everything, including her family, for love. And it was this all-or-nothing certainty at the heart of Caroline’s story that fascinated Ellen. Her love for Leon had been so pure and so intense that she’d been willing to give up her life for it in the blink of an eye.
Ellen knew she was being romantic, but she was fascinated by that level of emotion. After all, what were the chances that anyone she knew had ever felt anything near that level of passion for a lover, even as teenagers? She certainly hadn’t.
Even now, she knew that she loved Jason, but it was an altogether different type of love from Caroline’s heroic love. It was the type that happened in a modern world dominated by deadlines, commitments and compromises. It was love in the grey area, while Caroline’s love was steadfastly black and white, and Ellen couldn’t help wondering what that must feel like. ‘So what happened to Caroline’s lover, Leon Jacobson?’ she asked, after she’d expressed some of these thoughts.
‘No one knows. Alexander Walpole paid him
off just before he was about to elope with Caroline. Then he disappeared into thin air and no one ever heard of him again. I don’t know if he even knew that the poor girl had killed herself when she found out he’d deserted her.’
‘How tragic.’ Ellen sighed. ‘It’s so sad. How could she have got it so wrong? Surely it takes two to feel that passionately? It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘Love very often doesn’t make sense,’ Michael said wisely and Ellen smiled at him.
They chatted for a while longer and Ellen finished the ginger beer. Then, after he’d agreed to let her use his research, she shrugged on her coat. ‘You watch it up there, mind,’ he warned, helping her into it. ‘I’ve seen Leon Jacobson’s ghost myself and that’s not all …’
‘Oh?’
‘There’s UFOs. Luminous green ones. Up in the sky at night.’
Ellen smiled, noticing, as he scrunched up the newspaper, that beneath the glass top of the desk was a large display of bongs and marijuana pipes. ‘I’ll take care to watch out for them,’ she said.
The next morning, despite the fact that there was an ominous mass of charcoal-grey storm clouds over the headland, Ellen felt better than she’d done all week. She was in Scott’s good books, having lugged down a duvet and a blow-up double mattress from her flat, and in return he’d scrubbed the cottage from top to bottom. Lying in her bed, she felt cosy as she listened to the chink of boat masts in the harbour.
She found Scott downstairs curled up under the duvet on the sofa, engrossed in a DVD on his laptop. ‘This is a great movie,’ he said, pausing it and removing one of his earpieces. ‘Jimmy, that boy we met, works at the video store and recommended it. He’s a bit of a film buff himself. And he’s bright, too. I was thinking … if we haven’t got the budget for a decent-sized crew, then the least we could do is make our lives a little easier and give this kid a break into the bargain.’
‘Well, you could be on to something. Your Jimmy might be able to help us. Have you seen this flyer about the memorial concert?’ Ellen handed over one of the green sheets she’d taken from Beverly.