The Boat House

by Stephen Gallagher

  "There's someone to see you," the technical operator called through over the talkback system as she pushed her chair back to stand, gathering together her yellow bulletin flimsies with their handwritten amendments. The TO was only about three strides and two sheets of glass away from her, but the talkback gave his voice the quality of a long distance call.

  "Who?" she said, and she saw him shrug. Beyond him she could see the afternoon DJ in his studio, a couple more strides and another set of double glazing farther on, hunched over his microphone like a harassed co-pilot.

  The TO said, "He talked to you on the phone and you told him to come in. That's what he says. anyway. Amanda put him in the newsroom."

  Isobel stepped out into the corridor, quiet except for the ever present low murmur of the station's output as it played over unobtrusive speakers. Dave, the afternoon DJ, was talking over the intro of a record that he was saying had been a big hit in Europe. Dave talked right on and over the start of the lyric, and then made it worse by trying to pretend that his mistake was intentional.

  Isobel winced. Here on Sheep-shagger Radio, Dave was about as polished as they got.

  She passed the sales office and made the turn toward the newsroom. There was no one in the office, the entire sales team having discovered important appointments that gave them excuses to sneak off home and start the weekend early. There was only one person in the newsroom, and he quickly got to his feet as she entered.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I know we already spoke, but what was your name?"

  "Please, call me Pavel," he said.

  Pavel.

  She remembered the call, now; remembered it as soon as she heard his accent. Something about an emergency appeal to a missing person. The fact of it was, Amanda should never have brought him in here at all; she should have kept him in Reception, as per company policy. The man had all the markings of a weirdo. His clothes, dated and drab, appeared to have been slept in. He'd had a bad shave and his hair looked as if it was growing back after having been cut too short. And here were dark rings under his eyes, which burned as if with a fever.

  But he'd sounded sincere enough. And he seemed sincere enough now, his piece of paper held ready in his hands, and so with the safety of the newsdesk between them she reached across and took it.

  She read it through. She tried not to smile at the wording, and then she handed it back.

  "The name's all we'd need," she said. "We can handle the other part ourselves."

  "You do this kind of message?"

  "Sometimes, when we can fit it in. But we usually work it into the show format somewhere, rather than make it a part of the news. Did you try the BBC? They do emergencies on Radio Four, and it's national."

  He nodded. "Nothing came back," he said. "But this is more for young people. I may have more luck."

  "If she's in the area," Isobel said.

  And Pavel inclined his head, conceding the point.

  "So, who is it that's ill? Someone in the family?"

  "No. It's her."

  Isobel's eyes widened. Her antennae quivered. "Something contagious?"

  Pavel smiled, weary but still polite. "No," he said. "This is for her own safety, as much as anything else. But please don't say so on the air."

  "Of course," Isobel said, and scribbled a quick memo on the back of some out-of-date wire agency material while the name was still fresh in her mind. A schoolteacher from Eastern Europe, believed to be touring in the area. From what Pavel had said earlier he was working his way around the country, from station to station, leaving exactly the same message at each.

  "If anything turns up," she said, "I'll arrange for word to be left on the front desk. That's really all I can do."

  "Thank you," he said. "I'll call once every morning."

  He probably would, too. He probably had a list of numbers that he called every day, adding to it as he moved around. She wondered if he slept rough, or in his car; he looked as if he might.

  At the one way door that led back into the station's tiny foyer and reception area, she stepped aside for him and said, "I hope you find her."

  He smiled weakly.

  "So do I," he said.

  And after he'd gone, and Isobel had returned to the newsroom to file all the dead stories and check the agency printers for the next hour's updates ready to hand over to Jim, the late shift newsreader, it briefly crossed her mind that maybe, just maybe, a rising star of journalism with her eye on the national media might have asked a couple of more searching questions. Might have dug a little for the human interest; might even have probed around to see if there was any backstory worth the follow up.

  But the thought didn't stay with her for long.

  Instead, she was wondering what kind of remedy Kate Adie used whenever she got a head blocker, and whether she'd ever had to read over livestock prices to what was probably a total early morning audience of three men and a dog.

  Their brief talk slipped painlessly from her mind.

  While Pavel set out for the next town on his list.

  NINETEEN

  Diane's employer and his immediate circle arrived on the Friday evening.

  The circle consisted of Bob Ivie and Tony Marinello — the Old Indespensibles, as Dizzy Liston called them — and four examples of the species that Diane had quickly come to recognise as Dizzy's Women. These were well bred, impeccably turned out, and as dim and empty-headed as pumpkin lanterns. After one drink, their voices could be heard over half a mile away. Fortunately, Jed was going to be sleeping at Mrs Neary's that night; they couldn't have made more noise exploring the hall if they'd found it to be haunted.

  The preparations for the party were set to move into top gear on the Saturday morning; Diane would have little more to do than to stand aside and watch the professionals at work. The lights had already arrived that afternoon, the disco would be set up from ten o'clock tomorrow, and a small group of hostesses and security people would be due to arrive some time around three.

  The best place for Jed during all of this, she'd decided, would be with his minder; she'd worked out a special weekend rate with Mrs Neary some time ago and had been working on her conscience ever since. It felt too much as if she was shunting him off for her own convenience, even though she knew that it was the only sane and sensible thing to do. She'd explained that he'd be staying away for the two nights, which he'd never done before; she only hoped she'd explained it well enough. Just before seven she left Jed to pick out some toys and books to be taking with him — and it's got to be a portable amount, she warned — and went to check that she wouldn't be needed for a while.

  Liston and company were out on the lawn behind the house, where an old fashioned wrought iron table and some matching chairs had been set for them in the evening sunlight. There were the long shadows of wine bottles and glasses across the table, some of the bottles already empty.

  "Mineral water for the invalid," she heard someone say as they handed Dizzy a glass, and she saw Dizzy give a wry smile.

  "I suppose that's me," he said.

  He was in his late thirties, and he had the look of a well worn schoolboy. His face was young, but the mileage showing on it was high. Nevertheless, for all that he'd been around there was definitely something that was attractive and appealing about him; only his eyes gave him away, because they could turn cold and introspective while those around him were whooping it up. Dizzy knew the exact value of the people he kept, which was why he'd given the estate management job to Diane and not to one of his regular hangers on.

  "Your lawn's a bit overgrown, Dizzy," one of Dizzy's Women said, looking critically at the grass around her feet.

  "You can cut it for me after the party," he told her, which everybody took to be a big joke.

  Summer in the country, was the toast echoing in Diane's ears as she went back inside; and she shuddered, and wondered if she could think up something really cutting to say the first time one of them tried to treat her like a servant.

  Je
d had made his selection; three toys stood out on their own in the middle of the floor, these being the ones that he reckoned he could do without.

  Diane settled down, and started patiently to negotiate.

  In the end she got him down to his Micronauts, his plastic airport, and a bag of Dinky cars. For books he had two by Maurice Sendak, the Skeleton one, and a well worn Pinocchio using pictures from the film. She put everything into a carrier and took this out to the car with his overnight case, and then she came back to get him into his shoes and his coat. And then, because she didn't want to be saying goodbye to him any sooner than she had to, she took him for a wander through the main part of the hall to see how the preparations were going.

  The lights had been rigged but not yet tested, and cabling still lay everywhere. Signs for the cloakrooms and toilets were already in place, and two posts and a rope had been set at the top of the stairs to keep visitors out of the private apartments.

  It all seemed kind of strange to Diane. The way she'd always known it, when you decided to throw a party, you threw a party; you pushed back the furniture, you got all the food together yourself, you invited close friends who knew each other and for a while you let them invade your most private and personal space. And then when it was all over, you threw open the windows and you vacuumed, and as likely as not while you were doing this you'd find someone left asleep behind the sofa. Not like this, people hired in to do everything. Dizzy might be well-off, but Diane knew from the estate accounts that he wasn't rolling-in-it rich. The estate and the house might both be high value assets, but the conditions of his inheritance forced him to keep both intact and he got little currency out of them beyond the woodland leases and the shooting rights.

  No, the fact of it was, Diane and her employer might easily have been two different species for the way that they looked at the world. This wasn't going to be a party. It was to be a local public relations exercise, bought and paid for — nothing more.

  In the middle of the hall Diane said, "Well, Jed, what do you think?" And Jed took another look around and made a face that suggested mild indifference lying over mild disapproval.

  Diane knew exactly what he meant.

  "Yeah," she said. "I'll be glad when it's all over, too."

  And then together they walked out to the Toyota.

  TWENTY

  That night, after Alina had gone out, Pete decided to find out exactly where she went.

  She couldn't have gone too far. She'd been out ten minutes, fifteen at the most. And wherever she might wander, she always set out in the same direction.

  The path down to the lake shore was steep and difficult, and several times he almost fell. Roots tripped him and rocks made him slip, and in places the path was so soft-edged that it simply dropped away from under him in the darkness. And yet this was a descent that she made barefoot. Pete could only guess that she must move with the grace of a gazelle.

  A breeze was coming in from the water, stirring the branches overhead and sending a low, unearthly moan through the woodland.

  And as Pete emerged by the rocky edge of the water, he saw her.

  She was fairly easy to make out against the glitter on the lake. She looked almost as if she was standing on the surface itself, although Pete knew that there were rocks and shallows and that the effect was no more than illusion. Her head was bowed, she was leaning forward.

  And, as he could now hear, she was singing softly to the water.

  It was strange music, full of strange sounds that he knew he couldn't hope to understand. She was keeping her voice low, much as one might while singing a lullaby to the one wakeful soul in a house full of sleeping children. He felt his skin tingle, he felt the fine hair all along his spine react as if a low current had been run through him.

  She reached down and, for a moment, Pete was half expecting some response; a stag, perhaps, breaking the surface of the lake and climbing out to her, water streaming from its flanks as it came to her hand. She stood there like a dark messiah with some unseen flock before her, and Pete couldn't help but begin to assemble shapes out of the grainy darkness and to give them solidity and movement.

  But nothing moved, and nothing save the breeze disturbed the calm of the water. And then she straightened, and the illusion faded.

  She spoke.

  "Don't ever follow me again, Peter," she said, totally unexpectedly; she hadn't even looked his way, and he felt as if he'd been caught in a searchlight's beam in the middle of some guilty act. Everything that he'd had in mind to say to her was suddenly gone from his head, his mind as blank as a new wall and his belly full of sudden, inexplicable dread.

  She turned to him now. She was a silhouette against the moonlight that sparkled on the lake.

  "It's not an easy path," she said. "You could fall."

  There were a hundred things that he knew he ought to say.

  But he simply said, "I know."

  "Go back, now, Peter. Please."

  He wanted to ask her what she thought she was doing.

  But instead he turned, and slowly started to make his way back up toward the house.

  PART FOUR

  The Revels

  “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die”

  Isaiah 22.13

  TWENTY-ONE

  Ted was having trouble picking out a shirt; his sister had given him a couple of new ones last Christmas, but this was the first time that he'd really had to study them with regard to presentability. The one with the fine stripes looked slightly flashier, but he'd made a better ironing job of the plain one. In the end he decided on the stripes — after half an hour of wear, the ironing job wasn't going to matter anyway. Now he'd have to pick out a tie. He had two of those, as well… Ted reckoned that, like Pete McCarthy, he simply wasn't one of nature's tie wearers. He certainly hadn't done anything like this in ages. He'd once thought of asking one of the Venetz sisters out, but they were pretty well inseparable; a turndown didn't worry him so much as the prospect of being accepted by one and so giving offence to the other. And where would he have taken her? You could hardly take a woman to her own restaurant, but because of his limited social life he knew of nowhere better. And somehow, he couldn't imagine either of them coming around to the house for some beers and a pizza and a John Wayne movie on the video.

  A problem.

  So he'd let it go.

  Besides, there was still the shadow of Nerys. He knew that it was a stupid notion and that she, of all people, wouldn't have wanted him to think this way, but he couldn't help it. Even though she'd been dead for so long it could sometimes seem that she was still with him, a presence in the next room, someone on the other side of a door who waited and listened but who never stepped through, except when he dreamed. He'd known her since they were both thirteen years old. All right, so he'd never feel that he was betraying her memory. But sometimes, her memory could be all that he needed.

  He could hear the van outside. Wayne was home, and the two dogs were barking and scrambling to greet him. Ted stood there waiting with the shirt over his arm, waiting to hear the inevitable sequence completed before he went on; slam the van door, up the outside stairs to the flat over the workshop, another door to slam, and then LOUD MUSIC. Ted still couldn't work out how Wayne was able to cover the distance from the door to the CD player so fast. The glass in the windows was shaking even before the dust on the stairs had begun to settle.

  Wayne wasn't Ted's only son. He had another, older boy, Shaun, but Shaun had taken himself to Australia at the age of eighteen and hadn't been home since. Ted got occasional letters, written in a rush and saying almost nothing. He had one photograph, from Shaun's wedding, and the photograph's arrival had been the first that he'd known about any of it. Shaun's last years at school had been difficult — he'd even taken a swing at a teacher at one point — and he'd earned a reputation for the motherless Hammond boys that Wayne had found himself sharing even though he'd done nothing to earn it.

  Perhaps he'd come
back, one day, at least for a visit. But he was making a life out there, and probably felt that there was no place here for him anymore. Ted would sometimes wonder if he hadn't made Pete into a kind of surrogate son to fill the hole that Shaun had left… it was impossible to say for sure, and nothing to be ashamed of anyway.

  He hung his chosen shirt on the front of the wardrobe, and slid back the mirror door behind it to put the other away. He was planning on a shave and a slow, hot bath; he might even throw in some of that stuff that Wayne had bought him for his birthday, that came in a dubious looking novelty bottle shaped like a tiger's head. It was nearly two hours yet to the start of the party, he'd have plenty of time.

  He had his son, he had his dogs, he had his friends. He had his memories.

  He could hardly call himself lonely, could he?

  Wayne had his own hot water supply, direct from the gas-fired geyser that also supplied the workshop below. When it was running, the geyser roared so loudly that the place felt like a rocket in the middle of a takeoff. He turned the music up a little louder, to cover it.

  Barely more than half an hour before, he'd driven into the village on an errand for the Venetz sisters and although he saw almost no one along the way, he'd been able to sense a tension in the air; it was a faint background buzz like that of power lines in the rain. Even at this hour, bedroom curtains were drawn and lights were burning inside. Party night was big news, and people were starting early.