He did not like to look directly upon it, for he detested its repugnant presence, its barrel a cruel pointer to his darker intentions. He pocketed it swiftly. The feel of it pressing against him gave him a modicum of perverse reassurance. The enticing, agonising possibility of release.
He stowed the trunk away. He needed to think things through, take a walk. It was madness. All was madness.
Spikes of cold rain pin-pricked his face as he took the path up the cliff towards the ruined monastery and the wood. The distance-muffled sounds of people on the beach hardly registered in the ferment of his mind. A number of men and women passed him, on their way down to the cove from their temporary cliff-top home in order to offer themselves up for the possibility of work. One or two voiced a greeting but he stared fixedly ahead, hardly noticing their presence. And all the while the gentle thump of the gun, in time to his urgent stride, reminded him, goaded him.
He walked till he was breathless, the wood with its near-empty shanty town far behind him. Ahead only the bleak rolling cliff top, the lonely path a gnarled thread running through murky green velvet. He looked over the edge of the cliff, the height dizzying, boulders appearing as pebbles, waves as ripples. He seated himself on a rock close to the edge. The gun now rested heavy in his hand, a dull uncompromising light streaking across it as he turned it over, giving it life, of sorts.
One true shot to the heart, to the head. A single squeeze on the trigger.
In the distance he saw someone walking towards him, the shadowy wood at his back. A steady, gentle amble. As he came closer he noticed the man wore a Derby, at a rakish slant, hands deep in trouser pockets, a folded newspaper tucked under his arm. He was whistling to himself; the crude melody of a music hall song. He put the gun safely away.
“Good morning, sir,” he greeted brightly as he eventually came up to Wilkinson.
“Good morning,” Wilkinson returned dully.
He removed his Derby, wiped a spotted handkerchief over his forehead. He plonked the hat back on, tapping it firmly on its crown to seat it properly on his head. He took a cigar from out of his pocket. “I used to dislike the rain and the wind but I find I tolerate it better now than in my youth. Can I offer you a cigar, sir? I have a surfeit of them – gifts you might say, for services rendered.”
“No, thank you,” he said.
The man in the Derby lit up his cigar, puffing and sucking noisily to get it going. “I’m sorry,” he said, shooting out his hand. “I’m Benjamin Croker. Pleased to make your good acquaintance.”
His lined forehead was emphasised by his deep suntan, obviously a man recently returned from sunnier climes. He had a strong nose and pond-green eyes flecked with brown, a fair beard run through with streaks of grey at the corners of his mouth. It was a plain, ordinary face that would not stick in the memory for being one thing or another. His clothing was altogether different, for he was smartly turned out, a crisp white collar and necktie at his throat, a neat broad-checked jacket, dark blue waistcoat and shining watch chain, all looking new and of reasonably expensive quality. Wilkinson could not accurately place his accent but detected an underlying bedrock of vulgar East End London, above which sat many layers, evidence of a life spent in varied places or of one seeking to submerge roots.
Resignedly Wilkinson shook the man’s proffered hand. “Terrance Wilkinson,” he returned.
“Oh, I know who you are,” he said chirpily.
Wilkinson raised a brow. ”Do I know you, Mr Croker?”
“I very much doubt that, Mr Wilkinson. But sure I know you. You are quite the famous artist. I says to myself as I came across you sitting here, is that the Mr Wilkinson, all alone and looking out to sea? Why, I says, yes it is! Now isn’t that a curious thing! And I thought, this is just the opportunity for me to introduce myself. And so here I am and here you are.”
Wilkinson got to his feet, brushing dirt from his trousers. “I don’t think we have ever met before.” A sense of unease began to stew in the pit of his stomach. “What is your business in Porthgarrow?”
“I am a correspondent by trade, sir, currently compiling an article for my paper on the lives of the poor noble fishermen. Livelihoods under threat, the demise of an industry - tragedy, romance, starvation, drownings. I take what I observe and I Crokerise it – a term you’ll struggle to find in any dictionary, for I boldly coined it myself – whose meaning I loosely translate as transforming the ordinary and unpleasant into the pretty and thrilling. You know how readers like their facts served up. Why, now I deign to look upon it, we are so much birds of a feather, you and I, for is that not the same as you do with your paintings?”
His nervousness increased. “It has been a pleasure, Mr Croker,” he said flatly, “but I’d like to continue my walk now. Another time, perhaps?”
“Well, isn’t it my very good fortune that I am headed the very same way? Come let us walk together!”
For some reason this Croker reminded Wilkinson of the gendarme back in Pont Aven. Words saying one thing but hiding another. Was he really who he said he was? Why had he not seen the man before? There were few strangers in this place, and none so strikingly dressed.
“How long have you been here in Porthgarrow, Mr Croker?”
Croker spat on the ground, shoved his cigar tight into the corner of his mouth. “Around the same time you arrived. This is the funny thing,” he said, taking out his cigar and waving it at Wilkinson, “I covered an exhibition of yours in London for my paper, oh, quite a while ago now. You wouldn’t remember me. I was just one humble speck of a newspaper hack amongst many amid that crowd of well to do folk raining down praise on your good work. We are ignored as a profession, generally, carry little weight in society. Take Mr Hendra here as a case in point. Does he jump at my request to meet with him so I can take down his thoughts for my article? No, he does not even reply. Whereas you, respected artist and gentleman – which indeed you are, sir – are no sooner lodged in Porthgarrow than you are sat around his very fine table. Yet look upon this, here we are, you and I, veritable strangers washed upon the same beach like so much flotsam. The artist and the journalist, flung together once again. A funny thing, eh?”
Breakers boiled at the base of Baccan’s Rock. It appeared to absorb and hold onto the light, being so dark and featureless. Even the gulls seemed keen to avoid it. Not a single bird, nor blade of grass, marked its sombre black surface. Beyond it the sea and sky melted into a grey mist. The rain began to fall a little harder but Wilkinson was not aware of his wet coat or damp hair. The rock to his right. The man with the Derby to his left. He felt ever more hemmed in, panic beginning to seize him.
“I do miss the sunshine though,” Croker continued. “Last year, you see, I was covering the war against the darkies in Africa. The Zulu. We gave them a sound thrashing at Kambula. I was fortunate enough visit the site of the battle very soon afterwards and speak with the officers and men for my paper. What a fine sight to see all those heathens laid low by our brave boys! Two thousand of them killed, and not near enough by half in my opinion. Their corpses smelled to high heaven, but in truth they smell as bad whether alive or dead, take it from a man of experience.”
Wilkinson stopped. “I’m sure it is very interesting,” he said, “but…”
“That’s the thing with primitives, is it not, Mr Wilkinson? The smell. Take the people down there. Fish. Always the smell of fish. I says to myself, imagine having to kiss a woman who smelled constantly of haddock. That’s if you could find one agreeable enough to kiss in the first instance!”
He held up a hand to cut him short. “Mr Croker,” he said bluntly, “I wish to continue my walk alone. Your thoughts are best kept to yourself, and I would like the space to have a few of my own.”
“But of course! Of course! I intrude on your privacy. And such a place as Porthgarrow, isolated, forgotten by the greater world you might say, is the perfect location to enjoy such privacy, is it not, Mr Wilkinson? Away from the uncertainties and meanness of the city.
” He whipped the newspaper out from beneath his arm. “Take this as a case in point.” He opened it up, flicked energetically through the large pages, folded it back on itself. Wilkinson watched with mounting nervousness. “See here, the tale of a poor young woman, found dead in an alley, throat cut like a pig’s. What is the world coming to, eh, Mr Wilkinson? Who would do such a thing?” He folded the newspaper and put it back beneath his arm. “Yes, you do well to seek out a refuge, leave it all behind.” He smiled and gave a mock bow. “Please, do not let me fetter your company a moment longer or interrupt your restorative perambulations.”
They held each other’s gaze for a second. “Good day, Mr Croker,” Wilkinson said and strode quickly away.
Coker spat on the ground again, threw away the barely-smoked cigar and took another out of his jacket. He grinned as he lit it up, put his hands back in his trouser pockets and headed towards the wood humming a little tune to himself.
* * * *
The Jacobite Bolt
Death was hovering near. His every breath rattled in his leathered throat and became weaker with each exhalation, his life gradually being squeezed out. Soon it would all be gone. He knew this. In his long life Yardarm Pellow had seen many people die.
“It is my turn to lead the line,” he said to Tunny.
The young man’s sad eyes spoke his feelings. He tugged the blanket up close under Yardarm’s chin. The air inside the old cottage was chilled and damp, despite the small fire smouldering in the grate.
“Yet still I would have liked to have seen one more spring and summer,” he wheezed. “One last full seine net.” His scratch-thin voice was difficult to catch.
“Rest, Yardarm,” urged Tunny. “Save your strength.”
He managed a croaking laugh. “There is so little to save.” A stick of an arm slid itself from under the cover and his faltering hand reached out to rest on Tunny’s forearm. “Tunny, you know it is time for you to take my place.”
“No, I can’t. I have told you.”
Fingers squeezed Tunny’s arm. “It has always been so. They know it. They are ready to come to you. I have seen it.” He paused, sucking in cold air. “I have passed on all I know to you, Tunny. Secrets that few people share. You have been a good pupil but now it is time to be the master. You knew this time must come. When I am finally gone they will look to you as they once looked to me.” He coughed violently and Tunny put a cloth to the man’s colourless lips. It came away bearing a bright scarlet moon of blood. He lay exhausted, his mouth fish-wide.
“Please, do not exert yourself, Yardarm,” he said.
“You have to protect them from Baccan. You have to fight him at every turn. Search for his evil work in all things.”
“I can’t…”
“You will. The choice was never yours to make. It was made for you at the moment of your birth. You have been granted the Gift.”
“I do not feel ready.”
“It’s not what you feel but who you are.” His fingertips pinched. He beckoned him come closer to his ear. “You have to mistrust every Connoch, for they are bad to the core and in league still with Baccan. There are those still that must be flushed from the village. You must hate them all with your very heart and not rest till they are gone forever. Promise me this, Tunny.”
He shook his head. “You ask too much of me, Yardarm. I cannot find it within me to hate them.”
“Then Baccan will feed off their evil and one day he will destroy Porthgarrow. It will be on your head and you will have proved yourself a coward, Tunny. Do not flinch from your duty and your destiny.”
It cut deep to hear him speak so. “I am not a coward.” Though inside fear reminded him that he was young, inexperienced in things, an outsider even amongst his own people. Alone, save for the man whose life was even now draining away.
“Then promise me.”
His head bowed and he clasped in his own the hand that clung desperately to him, beseeched him. “I promise, Yardarm.”
At this Yardarm released his grip. He closed his flickering eyelids, muttering the last words he would ever say. “I am pleased…”
He lay silently, his death-still form struck into periodic ragged motion by weakening convulsions of coughing. Tunny sat down beside the crude straw-packed bed, the light fading into dusk. He lit a candle and continued his lonely vigil. Outside the door there were the sounds of people mumbling, shuffling, but Yardarm had forbidden anyone from entering save Tunny.
Two hours later the candle guttered and was snuffed out. In the dark Tunny heard the final rattle of death in the man’s throat and knew Yardarm had passed on. Tunny solemnly opened the window and the door to let his spirit out and all in the room was peaceful and still.
“Is Yardarm dead?” said one of the men, holding aloft a lantern which lit the murky forms of around fifteen people looming out of the night.
Tunny’s breath unfurled into light clouds in the crisp air. The tiny crowd gathered round him, their faces anxious, even fearful.
Tunny nodded gravely. “Yes, he is dead.”
“Poor Yardarm,” a woman croaked under her breath. “I half-expected him to go on forever, he has been so long with us. Can we see him now?”
He noticed how their behaviour towards him was different. No longer did they regard him as the strange young man whom Yardarm had demanded should accompany his final moments. They now asked his permission. They held him in some respect. And something inside the young man liked this sudden importance, being thrust to the centre of meaning and not forever on the outside. For up till now he had been someone they could not quite understand, someone who had lived on the fringes of village life, never quite accepted, a deep, fathomless being that people had suspected long ago saw and felt more than was normal.
Tunny had made no close friends as others in the cove had made them. The ones from his boyhood had long since abandoned him, even encouraged to do so by their mothers. They believed he carried bad luck around with him. He had no friends other than Yardarm. In him he had found common understanding and acceptance. The old man had encouraged the youth to sit and talk, and over the years he would delve deep inside the tangled workings of this troubled soul. Though unspoken, each knew they were the mirror of the other; each destined to live lives alone, even when in company. Separated from the others by their very thoughts, their inexplicable insights. In Yardarm Tunny had found a kindred spirit, and in Tunny Yardarm had found his unknowing successor.
The people began to file into the cottage, each patiently awaiting their turn to pay their respects to Yardarm, mumbling prayers as they did so. Tunny stood at the doorway and each offered him a respectful nod or acknowledged him with their sad eyes. The same reverence they once paid to Yardarm he knew was now being transferred to him. It was a new feeling. It warmed him. They were looking to him to fill the great void left by Yardarm, he could read it in their faces, and he found he grew strong on it as Baccan grew strong on the evil of others.
For the first time in his life Tunny did not despise his loneliness, the pressing weight of difference. The sense of separation was no longer alienating but empowering. He basked in it. He finally understood its purpose.
* * * *
In the same cottage, on the same stool that Tunny had kept his lonely watch on Yardarm’s fading life all those long years ago, the woman sat with her hands clasped in her lap like the tight bud of an unopened flower. Dust motes circled her young face.
He had never been married, and now he never would, but he imagined that if ever he had then it would have been to someone like Keziah Polsue. He’d known her since the hour of her birth. She was a good woman. He had known her husband too, also since birth, and he too had been a good man. He had drowned four months ago, hit by a spar and knocked overboard, sinking under the waves like a lead weight never to be seen again. There was no shortage of men in the cove who vied for her recently-widowed hand but she had eyes for none of them. She had become a hollowed-out shell since her husband had died,
a husk of a woman, grief-scraped and bitter.
“Is he safe, Tunny?” she begged.
He sat opposite her, even now seeing Yardarm in his posture, in the way he spoke to her. He took her hand. “I am certain that he is.”
“But is he warm, is he happy?”
Her fingers were long, elegant, did not belong to a woman of the cove. They would soon be calloused and scarred. “I know in my heart he is both warm and happy.”
Tears filmed her eyes. “Why did Baccan take him from me, Tunny?”
“It was God’s will, Keziah.”
“Then he is in league with Baccan!” she cried angrily. “Between them they have taken him from me! I want him back, Tunny. Bring him back to me!”
The Church was Keziah’s life, thought Tunny, yet as with so many in the cove she felt it did not cater for all her spiritual needs. They came to him to provide answers or solutions to the deeper mysteries that the Revered Biddle with all his rehearsed assurances could not.
He squeezed her hand. “You know I cannot do that,” he said quietly.
“But you have the Gift, Tunny. Please…” The flat of her hand wiped her wet cheek. “I ache inside. It hurts. It hurts so much.”
He reached across, put a hand on her stomach, held it there and closed his eyes. Her breathing was rapid.
He couldn’t see anything. No sign came to him. “It will subside soon,” he said reassuringly. Rising he opened one of the crude wooden cupboards that Yardarm had made from the timbers of an old boat. “Here, take this,” he said, handing her a small dark green glass bottle. “Tonight, at one after midnight, go to the site of St Michael’s holy shrine in the grounds of the monastery. Pour out the contents onto the stone slab, smear it with your hand and then put your forefinger to your tongue. Sit, close your eyes and wait.”
The House of the Wicked (a psychological thriller combining mystery, murder, crime and suspense) Page 13