“Will I see him?” she said, clasping the bottle eagerly to her chest.
“There have been instances when people have said they were visited by their loved ones, but it does not work for everyone, you must understand this. Sometimes it is more a feeling than a vision. It is all I can offer. But in time the pain will dull, Keziah. In time all things dull.”
She did not get chance to respond as the door was flung wildly open. There was no mistaking the figure framed in the doorway. Or the ragged form of the black dog at his heel.
“Baccan’s Hound!” gasped Keziah.
“What are you doing here, Connoch?” Tunny growled.
Keziah jumped from her chair, backing away from the man who strode slowly towards her, the dog loping after him, as if she were faced with a childhood ogre, a demon from tales past.
“Go away,” said Jowan to the woman. “Leave us alone.” She stood as if mesmerised. He withdrew a knife from its leather scabbard. “I said leave.”
She turned to Tunny, her face ashen. He spoke calmly. “It would be best, Keziah. Remember what I told you with the bottle and you will be alright.” She hesitated but he nodded emphatically for her to go. Jowan slammed the door closed behind her. The two men faced each other.
He was unprepared for Jowan’s sudden rush towards him, his shirt grabbed at the throat. He was bundled backwards till he smashed against the cottage wall and he groaned with the sharpness of it. Jowan held him there, the knife but a few inches from Tunny’s throat.
He was not cowed. “So, you can frighten young women and you can manhandle old men. As true a Connoch as ever there was.” At this the young man pressed harder, his balled fist boring painfully. “What is it you want here, Connoch?”
“I think you know why I am here. I am come back to find out the truth.” Jowan snarled. “If I have to cut it from your very throat in order to do so! I have thought on this moment many times, Tunny. Driving this knife into this withered old neck of yours and stilling these vile, poisonous lips for good.”
“You will do as your kind always has. There is no escape for you.”
He pressed the tip of the knife into Tunny’s exposed neck, drawing a speck of blood. “For too long you have had people in your thrall, your superstitious ramblings, your pretences of second sight, hiding your malicious intent behind ancient tales. You destroyed lives. You destroyed my family. I mean to have answers. I mean to have my vengeance. Did you really think sending those thugs to warn me off last night would alter my course? Frighten me away? You do not know the depths of my passion to believe so.”
“You are full of wild imaginings. I did not send anyone.”
Jowan let go of the old man’s shirt, lifted his own, his side and chest a mass of dark angry bruises. “I imagined this, then, as I now imagine the ache?”
Tunny put a finger to his neck, smearing blood. He stared at the bruising, eyes narrowing. “I sent no one,” he said again. “There is nothing for you in Porthgarrow; nothing except hatred and mistrust.”
“The evidence for that is plain to see,” spat Jowan, letting his shirt fall to cover his marks. He glared at Tunny. “I seek the truth about what happened to my father, thirteen years ago.”
“The truth?” he grunted. “He murdered his wife - your mother. He paid for his sins with his own miserable life. What more is there to tell?”
With the knife Jowan pointed to the stool for Tunny to sit. He did so reluctantly. He sheathed the knife and folded his arms, hating this man as much as he knew the man hated him in return. Their eyes were locked in a searing, sulphurous gaze. How the Connochs are still reviled, he thought. Even by strangers on a cliff top. And again he felt the pain of his very name being spat upon. As he had when he was a boy. The pain of seeing his mother and father having to endure the cold whispers and cold shoulders of a cove united against them in loathing and fear.
At the very heart of it the rancid, insidious influence of this venerated old man.
Jowan’s father, and his father before him, had operated a small drifter, an old boat trawling out a meagre existence miles offshore, prevented by law from entering the rich fishing grounds of the seiners closer inshore. It was a law, he heard his father complain loudly many times, that had for hundreds of years favoured the seine owners and one they were keen to impose. The drifters were forced into living a perilous, hand to mouth existence, under constant threat not only of starvation but of having to suffer severe penalties should they extend beyond the proscribed limits and trespass on the more lucrative grounds of the seiners.
And the reason, Jowan knew, why for generations his family had been drifters was because the name of Connoch was abhorrent, mistrusted and feared. Over time no one would take a Connoch on as a seiner. The owners turned their backs on any Connoch seeking work, perhaps themselves half believing in the old tales of their ancient alliance with Baccan, wary always of poor catches, bad weather and dented profits. They gave ear to the superstitions of their crews, for an unhappy crew meant smaller fish, everyone knew that, and the Connochs were left to ply their own trade in the hope that restrictions or starvation would eventually drive them out for good.
But they would not leave the place of their birth, pride and hard headedness would not let them, so they stayed and scraped out a miserable living. The sense of injustice ran like an iced river through their lives, but they decreed they would not be forced from their home. They would not be so unjustly cast away, thrown into exile.
Eventually the Porthgarrow Connochs numbered only four: his father and mother – a woman from outside the cove as none inside would marry a Connoch – himself and a baby sister but a few months old. Yes, he heard the cruel whispering that stirred in the air like a malodorous cloud when she was born, that she was a demon child, a seed of Baccan that would summon up the wind and the waves. And true to their predictions the season did grow worse, the catches thin, and people talked of starvation. Their volley of blame lay square upon the Connochs.
His father took ever more to drink, washing what little money they had down his embittered throat, and Jowan recalled how he would transform into a snarling, pacing beast, hammering his chest with a meaty fist and cursing for all time the simple-minded and foolish people of the cove, the seine owners and their children. At such times Jowan would shrink into a dark corner and watch in terror, his father, lips spittle-flecked and pale, wailing long into the night, his mother failing to pacify the pain-wracked animal that his father had become. Yet not once did he lay a hand upon his mother or himself. Not once. The only man he beat blue in his despair was himself.
It was Jowan’s bane that he carried this with him still. As the last of the Porthgarrow Connochs he bore the weight of generations of hurt and grievance and now it was concentrated into an intense, hateful beam like sunlight through a lens onto the man sat before him.
“Are you to keep me here all day, in silence, Connoch?” said Tunny.
“For years I believed what had been said about my father. I cursed him for what he did. I was ashamed of my very name. Then I happened by chance upon a sailor in Liverpool, a man of the cove. He was here on that night thirteen years ago. And what he told me caused me to look upon the events in a different light.”
“A Different light? What rot is this? The man had evil in his heart. He murdered your mother.”
“And what motivated him to do such a thing? Have you thought upon that? A man that had not once raised a hand to his wife and child suddenly takes leave of his senses and murders his only true friend and love?”
“You know what drove him to his final act.”
“I know that you got what you all wanted.” Jowan pulled up a chair, sat down opposite the old man, his elbows resting on his thighs. He saw a trickle of dark blood trace a ragged path over the creases of Tunny’s sunburned neck. “I know the tale well, Tunny. How the Connochs were in league with Baccan. How you used every possible means to rid Porthgarrow of us. How the people believed you when you told them the stor
ms and low catches were down to my father and his kind. How everyone conspired against him to try to drive him from the village, and how you all succeeded in your vile ambitions – my mother and father dead and both their despised children farmed out to families many miles away, to be forgotten, treated as animals. Did any of you ever think on what became of us? What hardships we had to endure? I never saw her again, did you know that, Tunny? I have not seen my sister in thirteen years and for all I know she is dead, as I might have been had I not taken to the first ship that would have me. When I look for motive, I do not see it in my father, but I see it in many dark eyes around me. It chokes the very air.”
“He was driven to it by his own foolishness and a disregard for all the laws decent people abide by!” retorted Tunny. “You come here looking to absolve him of blame?” He laughed. “You did not know him like others. You see him only as a son sees a father. You build him up into something he is not and are blind to the facts, egged on by a drunken sailor’s fanciful tale. Your father had twice been brought before the law for trespassing and shooting his line beyond the limits. And twice he put his mark against a declaration that he would refrain from doing so or suffer the full consequences of the law. Anyone else would have been cowed. But he had no regard for such things. One night he was caught lifting baskets of fish out of one of Mr Hendra’s seine nets.”
“Hunger can drive a man to many such acts,” said Jowan.
“We’ve all suffered hunger, Connoch,” Tunny returned. “The night of your mother’s death he was summoned to attend a meeting of all the seine owners, called at Mr Hendra’s house, for him to give account of himself and his actions, before they decided whether or not to throw the full weight of the law against him.”
“Judge, jury and executioners all,” said Jowan sourly.
“Their intentions were to demonstrate understanding and fairness. To hear him out. It would have meant the ruin of him, the confiscation of all his nets and three months imprisonment at the very least. It was a decision they did not want to take lightly.
But he had taken to the ale, and was as drunk as a lord by the time he got there. He would not listen to them. He hailed down abuse on the party and they concluded that they had no choice but to have him arrested. At this he took one of Mr Hendra’s vases and smashed it against a wall, saying that he would rather be hung for a flock than a single sheep. He stormed out of the house in a wicked temper declaring that if anyone were to follow him or try to arrest him he would kill them.”
Jowan imagined the scene. The black-frocked gentlemen of Porthgarrow, sitting behind one of Mr Hendra’s large mahogany tables, his father helpless before them knowing in his heart they had him where they wanted him, offering a pretence of mercy but to a man gloating in their small moment of victory.
“Three hours later,” Tunny continued, “I was summoned before Mr Hendra. He wished me to carry a message to your father, saying that if he agreed to leave Porthgarrow for good Mr Hendra would show leniency and not press charges.”
Here he paused, looked down at his feet, watery eyes looking upon a scene long past. Jowan could not help but notice how he struggled with the recollection. “By this time it was late, quite dark, the streets deserted. As I approached your father’s house with my message I saw that the door was open by a foot or more. A lamp burned within and I perceived a shadow moving in the light. I approached with caution, for I had heard about your father’s actions at Mr Hendra’s house. I put my hand to the door…”
His hand, blue veins running like threads of wool between his knuckles, reached up in front of him as he said this, stretched out as if he were performing the action all over again. His lower lip was wet like a slug. Concentration forced tears into the old man’s widening eyes.
“Yes?” prompted Jowan.
The door was old, heavy, stout timbers bearing ancient scars left by a carpenter’s blunt tools. Above it was carved in stone the name Connoch, at which sight his chest tightened. Tunny’s fingers grasped the door edge and warily swung it open. He could feel a little heat from a fire creeping out into the night, smelled the mixture of sea coal and damp wood, but all was silent.
He stepped into the cottage and his mind reeled with the sight before him. His stomach retched and he put a hand to his mouth the stem the scorching bile. He had been hardened to many sights but none had prepared him for what horror he beheld in the centre of the small room.
Jowan’s wife was sprawled out on the hard stone slabs before the fire, arms by her side, her legs slightly parted. Her skin was as pale and translucent as marble, her face in the lamplight appeared as if carved by a master sculptor. Delicate lips mouthed a tiny o as if she’d just that moment breathed a sigh; her eyes were open but they had a vacant, sleep walking film on them. Yet all this apparent calm was at odds with the animal savagery with which her dress had been ripped apart and her body sliced in one long drag of a sharp blade, her blood-shiny intestines and other organs bubbling out and cascading over her body. Her white neck was split open and caked with drying blood.
Crouched on one knee over the body of his wife, Jowan Connoch moaned. His craggy head turned slowly and looked up at him. Beside him sat his black dog, tongue lolling, smelling the corpse’s bloodstained clothes. In Jowan’s wet hand was a long knife, a blink of light from the lamp bouncing off its matted surface. Teeth bared, crazed flaming eyes, Jowan had the desperate look of a madman about him. And beyond him, in a crib, Tunny saw their baby begin to stir beneath its blanket.
He felt his legs go weak and he fell back against the wall to steady himself. “My God, Jowan! What have you done?”
The dog growled.
Jowan looked at the knife as if the object had magically appeared there. Dropped it with a loud clatter to the stone. A whine built up in his throat that exploded as a devilish scream. “You swine!” he wailed.
“What have you done?” was all Tunny could say. He turned aside and choked back the vomit.
Jowan bound to his feet and in an instant struck Tunny across the face with his massive fist, felling him at once. He hit the floor and lay stunned for a moment, his nose but an inch or two away from the dead woman. He could smell death.
The dog barked and bound over him. He flinched at the sight of its gums drawn back over its teeth. Horrified he scrambled as best as he could to his feet, arm across his face to defend himself from the animal, but it turned and followed close on the heel of Jowan as he dashed out into the street. “He has done for me!” he was screaming. “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill you all!”
By the time Tunny had found his footing and reached the door the man was running off into the night, bounding uncertainly down the hill towards the cove. Breathless, Tunny leant against the wall, the metallic smell of blood and his own bile causing his stomach to heave again. He didn’t know how long he stood there, his mind a screaming, raging sea of dark images.
Three men came unexpectedly to his side out of the gloom.
“Where has the murderer gone?” one of them said.
Tunny, still gathering his thoughts, heard it as if in a dream. He pointed weakly. “The cove. Quick, you may catch him. I think he means to do Mr Hendra harm.”
And then they were off, their nailed boots clattering on the cobbles. He was left alone with the dead woman. He closed the door on her poor corpse and ran after the group of men.
A woman, disturbed by the shouting, came out onto the street as Tunny ran past. “Tunny! What is wrong?”
He shouted back. “Connoch has murdered his wife! Watch the house. Let no one enter.” Then he stopped, catching his breath. “Find Reverend Biddle!”
He ran down to the beach. There was no sign of the men.
Voices, muffled by distance. Up on the headland.
He took himself off again, the pain of breathlessness stabbing at his ageing chest as he took the steep road upwards, eventually stumbling upon the scattered stones of the monastery, brushing aside the scraping briars and tangled brush of the wood.
In the dark, set against the slightly lighter hue of the sky, he saw the small knot of men, poised untidily on the cliffs above Baccan’s Maw. He was gasping for breath as he came up to them.
“Where is he? Where is Jowan?” he wheezed, his legs feeling as if they would buckle beneath him at any moment.
The wind howled and grabbed at their flapping coats. The sea moaned.
One of the men, his face in complete shadow, raised a hand and pointed over the cliff. “There,” he said.
Tunny did not recognise this man or his accent. An outsider. A Clifftopper. Here for the work. “He jumped?”
Another answered. Again a stranger to the cove, but he recognised the voice as belonging to the same man that spoke to him outside the Connoch house. “He ran to the edge and shouted ‘I am guilty’ and threw himself over the cliff. We could not prevent him.”
Tunny watched Jowan’s face intently for a reaction to the tale, the slightest change in his countenance. He did not trust this young man. He was his father made real again. He could sense vile clouds of anger, of rage and hurt, steaming from him.
“We found his body two days later,” Tunny continued, “so dashed upon the rocks that he was scarce recognisable.”
Jowan remained silent, his face blank, as if he wore an expressionless mask. Tunny flinched slightly as Jowan got to his feet, walked to the window and stared out. The dog remained lying on the floor, panting, its pulsing tongue dripping scummy saliva between yellowed teeth, its bead-like eyes fastened upon the old man.
Had he but known that was the last time he’d ever see her, Jowan would have paid more attention to how she looked, so he could remember her. He could not recall his mother’s face. Not the detail. It frustrated him, and guilt tore at his insides because of it. All that was left was a moon-shaped blur floating in the dark heavens of his memory.
“Did you not once suspect where I was on that night?” he said, his breath fogging the chilled window.
“What?” said Tunny.
Jowan turned. “A mere ten year old boy. An inconsequence. Forgettable. Where was he?”
The House of the Wicked (a psychological thriller combining mystery, murder, crime and suspense) Page 14