by Ann Cleeves
John’s leaving, the empty place at the table, was a statement that things were not right with them, but the statement having been made, those remaining began to speak of other things. They were snapped out of shock as if by a slap on the face.
Nick worked as assistant manager in a shop, one of a chain owned by Charlie’s family. Threatened by the silence, he began to talk compulsively about the holiday trade, the foibles of the tourists, the problems of their imported staff.
“But it’s been a good season,” he said. “ We’ve done very well.” Then with a studied lightness: “Perhaps you should ask your family to fund the boat project, Charlie. They should be able to afford it this year.”
“I thought of that,” said Charlie simply, “but it didn’t work. They don’t like me, you see.”
Jerry Packham was sitting next to Pam Marshall at the table and they had been talking quietly together. Pam was involved in the politics of conservation, was ambitious. She was efficient and enjoyed the power over the use of land. She was a Devon Conservation Trust Committee member and was discussing with him the purchase of a reedbed on the outskirts of Gillicombe, for a reserve. She was fighting to get the purchase approved. He was sure that eventually it would be.
“Perhaps you could persuade the Trust to buy the island,” he said.
She shrugged. She had not appeared particularly distressed about the sale of the island. There were other places to go. It would be inconvenient. Perhaps it would be in her interest to form a protest group to save it, but she was not emotionally involved. Perhaps it would be in her interest for the sale to go through.
“They couldn’t afford it,” she said. “ Besides, they’re very ambiguous about ringing.”
Jerry called across the table to Charlie. He still spoke quietly but they all heard him: “ I need to see you some time this weekend about work. When would be best for you?”
“Meet me early,” Charlie said. “I like to see the tide coming in. I’ll be in the seawatching hide. I might see something good.” He beamed at them, humouring them in their interest. “I’m writing a new story now. I’ll have it with me. I’ll bring some chocolate. We’ll have a picnic.”
It was like an invitation to a party and Jerry smiled his acceptance.
Elizabeth served coffee in the common room. Charlie had gone, but all the observatory residents were there. They were discussing Charlie, his state of mind, his finances, Gillibry and the observatory. They seemed almost to be enjoying the excitement, the pleasure of the gossip. Elizabeth did not join them. She had put the big kettle on the stove to heat the water for washing up and was sitting, waiting for it to boil, when Mark came into the kitchen. It was a large room, impossible to heat and difficult to clean, with a stone floor and dusty corners, but Elizabeth liked it. Mark was the only guest she allowed in, without making him feel an intruder.
“I’ve come to help.”
She smiled at him gratefully. What a thoughtful boy he was. She threw him a clean tea-towel.
“What are they all doing?” she asked.
“They’ve decided to postpone the committee meeting, since neither Charlie nor John has reappeared. I suppose that Charlie has forgotten all about it. Pamela says that she’s going for a walk, but she’s still in the common room now. Jerry didn’t offer to accompany her. I think she was a bit put out, but she could hardly change her mind then. The doctor is going through the accounts so that he can convince Charlie that it would be impossible for the Observatory Trust to buy a bag of nails, never mind an island. Jasmine is bringing the log up to date and Nick is staring at the fire and coming to terms with the fact that his world is about to come to an end.”
“Isn’t that rather melodramatic?”
“I don’t think so. Since his mum died it’s all he’s got.”
“He’s never mentioned his mother.”
“She died a couple of months ago. She wasn’t very old. She worked for the Todds too, as a sort of housekeeper in one of the hotels. His dad died not long before she did. Nick’s always had a chip on his shoulder, though. He was never popular at school. But he’s come out of himself a lot since he’s been on the observatory committee.”
“Is that why you keep coming here? Because you feel sorry for him?”
“It’s one of the reasons. He’s always been a good friend to me.”
They had finished washing up. Elizabeth wiped over the table top and hung up the cloth. She felt very tired. She wondered if she should look for John, but decided that she could not face his anger or his misery. She wanted to escape from thought of the island sale with an easy book or some music. But first she must bring in more wood for the common-room fire. She felt a sting of resentment. While John was being sentimental out in the dark she was left with responsibility for the practicalities. Mark helped her to collect logs from the generator shed, and she opened the doors while he carried them through the building to the common room. When she first opened the common-room door she thought that no one was there. Then she saw Jerry and Pamela standing by the window. They were not talking but it was clear that they had been arguing. Pamela was dressed in outside clothes—she had changed again into trousers—and she was very angry. Mark murmured something about finding Nick and going to catch some waders. Elizabeth followed him out and thankfully escaped to the flat.
John knew that he should have stayed and stuck it out with Elizabeth, but if he had he would have caused a scene, and she would hate that. He had wanted to shout at them as they sat around the table, their faces long and sallow because of the strange, lemon light of the tillies.
“What does it matter to you?” he had wanted to say. “It’s only a weekend retreat for you, a hobby, a game. It’s our home, our livelihood. It was going to be the home of my child.”
His anger was directed as much at the other guests as at Charlie.
“I’ve created this place,” he had wanted to say. “ I ring more birds here than the rest of you put together. It’s my sea-watching that’s made Gillibry famous. I don’t mind if you take the credit for that, but don’t pretend that you care more about the place than I do.”
Without thinking he began the walk that he made at least twice a day around the trapping area. It was dark, but he did not need a torch. The path was so familiar that the street lamps on the mainland provided all the light he needed. He walked quickly past the dining-room windows. No one saw him. They had finished eating. He did not notice Charlie’s distinctive white hair, and wondered if he had returned to the Wendy House. Poor Charlie, he thought, as he always did when he contemplated the older man’s awkwardness and loneliness. The instinctive reaction, such inappropriate sympathy, surprised then amused him, and his anger began to dissipate. He felt happier away from the claustrophobic tension of the dining room. The observatory and outbuildings were surrounded by a high whitewashed wall. He walked through the painted gates and he was out on the island. He followed the track to the stile over the drystone wall where the stonechats called in spring, and climbed into the paddock. Mushrooms grew there, skylark and meadow pipit bred there. He had seen his first long-eared owl in the paddock, and still remembered the bright orange eyes, the fine mottled plumage. There was no need to check the trap. It had been shut at dusk. But he walked through the big wire-netting cage as he did when he was trying to flush birds into the glass trapping box, and returned to the paddock through a netting door at the funnel end of the trap. The next heligoland had been built over a gully cut into a rock by a stream taking the shortest cut to sea level. He had caught an aquatic warbler in the gully trap. He had not known what it was until he had taken it from the box. Birdwatchers had come from all over the county to see that. The ground was boggy and the grass was long and coarse. In spring there were orchids. He stepped across the stream and climbed the steep bank on the other side. He was on the high area of the island which they called the Beacon. Further west, down the slope towards the sea, there was bramble and buckthorn, two more traps and a lot more memories. Here t
here was only dying bracken and a small cairn to mark the highest point on Gillibry.
“Perhaps we should keep some sheep,” he thought, “to keep the vegetation under control.”
Then he remembered again and his anger returned.
He looked down over Gillibry, his island. To the west and north was darkness, the open sea, the wind that brought storm petrels and shearwaters. The island spread beneath him to the south, and beyond the island were the estuary and the mainland lights. A torch light pulled his attention from the horizon to the track only twenty yards below him. He could hear footsteps on the gravel track and the rustle of a waterproof kagoul, and there was a faint perfume. He knew at once who was walking there. He stood very still. He had always been attracted to Pam, but he had never liked her. She was the last person he would have wanted to see now.
Perhaps she’s going to see Charlie to seduce him into changing his mind, he thought.
He had been intending to follow his usual path round the traps: across the track, through the trees in the Wendy House garden and back along the east cliffs. Now, to avoid meeting Pam Marshall he walked along the ridge of the Beacon, sat under the halfway wall and looked out to sea, letting the flashes of the Lundy lighthouse and the Hartland lighthouse relax him and empty his mind.
Mark found Nick in the bird room. He was mending a mist net, and sat in a tangle of fine nylon line. The bird room was small but well equipped. A worktop ran along one wall. There were bird bags in a pile, a set of scales, strings of rings hanging on hooks to the wall, ringing pliers. The school groups used the room as a laboratory.
When Nick saw Mark he rolled the net up into a rough ball and stuffed it back into its canvas bag.
“Where are Jasmine and the doctor?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know. Aren’t they in the common room? Perhaps they’re making wild, passionate love in kestrel hollow.”
“It’s a big tide. Do you want to try that wader roost at the north end?”
Nick looked at him suspiciously, like a toddler being jollied out of a sulky mood. “ Since when have you been so interested in ringing waders?”
“I’m not, but I can’t face hanging around here, listening to people beefing about Charlie all evening.”
“All right. We can’t use this net, though. One of the guys is missing. I wish that people would put the nets away properly. This one’s in an awful mess. I don’t know why we can’t keep the guys separate from the nets like everyone else. It would make life much easier.”
His self-righteousness was cheering him. He loaded Mark with poles and nets and took a handful of bird bags, and they went out.
From her bedroom Jasmine Carson watched them go. They were laughing over some infantile joke. She was tempted for an instant to shout down to them, to ask if she could join them. Her fingers were too stiff for ringing now, but she could help to put up the nets. But she had already changed her clothes and her arthritis was so tiresome that the thought of changing back exhausted her. If the boys had looked up to her window, they would have seen that she was crying.
One of the corners of the common room had been made into a library. High shelves separated it from the living part of the room. Paul Derbyshire was sitting there, turning the accounts into a precise statement of the financial position of the observatory, into an account so simple, he told himself, that even that blockhead Charles Todd will understand it. At first the raised voices in the common room merely irritated him. His powers of concentration were intense and he was able to continue with his work. Occasionally the deep, personal anxiety which haunted him like a recurring nightmare intruded, and then he was miserable, momentarily distracted, but he was not aware of the argument beyond the bookcase. When he had finished the accounts, however, he found that he was in an embarrassing position. He wanted to go to see Charlie. That was immensely important. He was quite sure that he would make Charlie see sense. About everything. Although he had not been listening to the argument outside he had heard enough to realize that Pam Marshall and Jerry Packham were discussing a matter of extreme delicacy. He wished that he had been aware of the nature of the conversation earlier, so that he could have taken more notice of what was being said. If he emerged from the library now, they would wonder why he had not made his presence known before. Now he could only wait for the row to end and the protagonists to leave. This he did with some impatience.
Little of interest was being said. Pamela was hurling abuse and recrimination, and Jerry was fending it off. At last the argument reached a crescendo. Pamela shouted: “You’re so bloody spineless, Jerry. If you haven’t got the nerve to do it, I have,” and he heard the sound of footsteps and the slam of the door. Soon after Jerry left too, and the doctor heard the door shut gently behind him. Paul Derbyshire gathered together his papers, unwilling now to face the task ahead of him, then he sighed and went to find his coat.
Charlie Todd sat in his rocking chair in the tidy, doll’s-house living room. He was feeling pleased with himself. His visitors that evening had made him feel important. He supposed that eventually he would have to think about what had been said. He had promised, after all, to think about it. He did not want to be unkind. He remembered the hostile faces around the supper table. He was genuinely surprised by the reaction to his news, but he was determined to have his own way. He would be sorry to leave this house, but his room on the boat would be very similar to this room. He lay back in his chair and fell asleep.
John did not know how long he had been sitting, looking out over the sea, when Elizabeth found him. In her torch light she looked untamed, distraught. Her long hair was tangled. There was mud and sand on her shoes and her jeans. How different she looked, he thought, from that day when we first met. She’s like the lady who joined the raggle-taggle gypsies. Will she leave me, he thought, if I cannot find her somewhere wild and dramatic to live? If I have to get a real job, and a house on an estate and a mortgage, will she still love me?
“I’ve been looking for you on the shore,” she said. “Nick and Mark have put up a net at the north end and I thought that you might be with them.”
“Nick did say that he wanted to go ringing. I’d forgotten.”
“I’ve just come up through the Wendy House garden,” she said.
“Oh?” He was still watching the Lundy light. He counted the space between flashes. He seemed overcome by an overwhelming apathy.
“I almost went in to see Charlie. The light was still on. I thought that I might tell him that I’m pregnant. I thought it might make him change his mind.”
“But you didn’t?” He hardly seemed interested.
“No. I decided that it was better not to. If we leave him alone perhaps nothing will come of it. He’s always getting these enthusiasms, but they never last long, and he doesn’t usually follow them through. He only bought the island because Doctor Derbyshire organized it for him. All Charlie had to do was sign his name. But if we bully him, he might get stubborn.”
“You seem calm.” For the first time he turned his attention from the light on the horizon. “You were upset when he told us. You’d been crying.”
“That was surprise, I suppose. Shock. And my hormones.”
“What are they all doing? Did they have the AGM?”
“They couldn’t really, without you, and Charlie went home straight after supper. I don’t think that anyone felt that they could concentrate. Mark helped me to wash up, then he and Nick put up a net.”
“Have they caught anything?”
“Yes, but nothing special.”
“What about the others?”
“Earlier Pam and Jerry were having a row in the common room. I suppose that the doctor and Jasmine had discreetly made themselves scarce. I don’t know where they all are now.”
“Were they offended that I left in the middle of the meal?”
“I don’t think that they noticed. Everyone was absorbed in his own worry. They all pretended that nothing had happened.”
She turn
ed to him and kissed his forehead. She had a sweet, dark smell, like flowers in a summer night. He wanted to lean against her, to lose himself again in the darkness, but she despised weakness.
“Come on,” she said. “Do you want to help Mark and Nick take down the net, or shall we go home?”
“Home.”
She went first, sure-footed, down the slope to the track, and she saw the fire first, and began to run. He heard her shouting, but he was still dazed after his dreaming on the hill in the darkness. It took him a while to realize what was wrong, then he was running too, and he found that he, too, was shouting.
The light behind the trees in the Wendy House garden was too bright; it moved and threw dark shadows. There was a smell of smoke.
They found the fire extinguisher just inside the unlocked door. It must have come with the Wendy House. Charlie would never have thought to buy one. Unbelievably, in the wood-panelled sitting room he was still asleep. He was leaning back on the cushion of his rocking chair, his mouth open, snoring. He was a notoriously heavy sleeper and he did not wake until Elizabeth shouted at him. Inside the fire was not as frightening as it had seemed from outside. One of the curtains was alight, and because the window was open the flames, sparks and smoke billowed outside. Next to the curtain, on a small table under the window, a tilly was lying on its side. But without the extinguisher they would not have put out the fire. Charlie made no attempt to help them, but watched with a kind of sleepy excitement as John used the extinguisher and Elizabeth tried to beat out the flames with an orange, woven rug.
It was all over even before the window frame was alight, although the varnish on the frame and the panelling around the window were charred and blistered, and there was an unpleasant smell. John put the extinguisher on the floor and Elizabeth folded the rug. Only then did Charlie stand up. It was as if he were standing to applaud the end of an outstanding play.