The Beachcomber

by Josephine Cox

  “Come in!” his authoritative voice boomed out.

  When she gingerly opened the door, it was to see Mr. Martin on the phone. Gesturing for her to sit down, he concluded his conversation. “Thanks, Harold. I’m glad you told me. No, that’s perfectly fine. You’re doing a grand job out there. Yes, it’s all right. I’ll catch up with him later.”

  Replacing the phone, he leaned forward on the desk and, wiping his hands over his thick, graying hair, looked up to address her. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a problem as well?”

  Nervously, Alice swallowed, before blurting out the reason for being here. “It’s Lilian, sir.”

  Frowning, he looked her straight in the eye, unnerving the girl even more. “Lilian? She turned up all right this morning, didn’t she? I was just on my way down to see her, but the blessed telephone hasn’t stopped since I got in.”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m being a snitch, or anything like that, sir, only –”

  “Well, get on with it!” Exasperated, he blew out his cheeks; already this morning he’d had problem after problem. “If you’ve something to say, I’d best hear it now.”

  Alice sat up, angered by his attitude. After all, she had only come here to help. “Yes, Lilian did come in this morning, sir, only I don’t think she should have come in at all.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “She’s not well, sir. She should be at home in bed. I really think she needs to see a doctor.”

  “But I thought she’d got over the ”flu.” He couldn’t understand. “When she phoned, she said she was ready to come back to work. She sounded fit enough to me.”

  “It’s not the ”flu, sir.”

  “What is it then?” Falling back in his seat, he groaned. “Don’t tell me she’s got ‘women’s problems.’ Honestly! That’s all I need.” As he spoke he thrust a fist here and there to emphasize what he was saying. “Just look at it! There’s paperwork piled mountain high, filing to be done, urgent things to be dealt with …” He ran his hands over his temples. “Since she’s been away, the whole damned place seems to have fallen apart.”

  Alice blushed at his mention of “women’s problems.” Hastily she said, “It’s not that kind of a problem, sir. She’s … she’s …”

  “For God’s sake, woman … say what you came to say and be done with it.”

  “Well, sir … I think she’s –” It was difficult for her to say, because she was fond of Lilian. “I think she’s unstable, sir.” There! It was said.

  “Unstable!” He glared at her, eyes wide with astonishment. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “She’s not like her usual self, sir.” Wanting it over with, Alice gabbled it all out in one breath. “She was really upset when she came in … bad-tempered … shouting at everybody. And now she’s shut in her office, pacing the floor, talking to herself. And she won’t come out, or even talk to anybody.”

  “I see.” This wasn’t like the Lilian he knew – bright, organized and efficient. “Has she done any work since she’s been in?” Normally she was straight onto it.

  “No, sir. She went directly to her office, and hasn’t come out since.”

  “Has she asked you to do anything on her behalf … or ordered a résumé of what’s been happening in her absence?”

  “No, sir. Nothing like that.”

  “How long has she been in?”

  Alice couldn’t be exact. “About an hour … or thereabouts.”

  Alice hated having to run to him like this, behind Lilian’s back. But she was concerned. “It’s not like her, sir. She’s usually so talkative and she works harder than any of us.” She cautioned herself. “As hard as any of us, I mean …”

  He seemed not to have heard her self-condemning remark. Instead he was deep in thought. “Mmm.” He found it all very disconcerting. “It sounds as if she might well have come back to work a bit too soon.”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Right then!” Picking up the telephone, he asked the operator for a number. “I need to return an important call, then I’ll be right down.” He eyed her with suspicion, and a hint of humor. “This isn’t a ploy between the two of you to get her more time off work, is it?”

  “Oh, no, sir, and I’d be very grateful if you didn’t tell her I’ve been up here talking to you. I’m only looking out for her. She’s been very good to me.”

  He could see she was genuine in her concern. “And you’re a good friend to her. I hope she realises that.” He reassured her that she had done the right thing in coming to him.

  “How will you approach Lilian, without her knowing you’re checking up on her?”

  He patted the side of his nose. “I wouldn’t be successful in business if I didn’t know a trick or two.”

  Downstairs, her colleague was waiting as Alice got to the bottom of the steps. “What did he say?”

  “He’s coming down.”

  “Good. She’s still acting weirdly,” she said. “I knocked on her door and she told me to go away … said she didn’t want to be disturbed. She’s not answering her phone either … it’s been ringing for ages.”

  It was still ringing when Mr. Martin came down.

  A glance through the window only confirmed what Alice had said; Lilian was seated at her desk, muttering to herself and smiling, as if amused by a private joke.

  Tapping on the door, he went straight in. Having brought a sheaf of paperwork as an excuse to check out Alice’s worries, he placed it on the desk before her. “Glad to see you back,” he said with a bright smile. “Fit and ready for work, are you?”

  Lilian nodded.

  “Right then, here’s the surveyor’s report for that Brighton hotel. I need you to get onto it straight away … four copies in all, and a covering letter for each.” He pointed to the papers. “I need them back on my desk within the hour.”

  Going out of the door, he turned with a compliment. “This whole damned place has gone to pot since you’ve been gone.”

  Lilian didn’t look up. “I’ll deal with it straight away, sir.”

  Emerging from the office, he saw Alice waiting anxiously around the corner. “She seems fine,” he told her. “In fact she’s in there now working on a surveyor’s report.”

  Alice shook her head. “No, sir, she isn’t. Look!”

  Curious, he turned, and was shocked to see Lilian standing over the waste-paper bin and slowly tearing up the report. Bit by bit she began dropping it into the bin. “Hey!” Going at a run, he burst back through the main office door. “What’s the matter with you? Have you gone stark raving mad, or what?”

  Anger turned to shame when, suddenly, Lilian dropped into her chair and began sobbing: deep sobs that shook her frame and tore the heart out of Alice, who was watching. “Hey, now!” Going to her, she slid a comforting arm round Lilian’s shoulders. “It’s all right … everything’s going to be all right.”

  Ignoring the bewildered stares of the other staff, and stooping to look into Lilian’s face, she asked gently, “Don’t you think it would be better if you went home?”

  Lilian didn’t answer.

  Having successfully retrieved the pieces of his precious report, Mr. Martin offered, “I’ll arrange a car. Get her home. Call the doctor. She’s obviously ill.”

  Instructing a secretary to organize Lilian’s ride home, he went to her and softly apologized. “I should have seen straight off how ill you were.” Until now, though, he hadn’t noticed the pale, pinched skin, or the abject misery in her eyes. Her hands, too, were trembling uncontrollably. “You need a doctor, Lilian,” he said kindly. “Alice will take you home. Let her call the doctor. She can stay with you for the rest of the day if you like.”

  Being the businessman he was, it crossed the back of his mind that, if Alice was away too, he would be desperately short of staff. But suddenly, in the midst of it all, he realized there were times when he wished he could just walk away from it all. Instead of working for a living, the work had t
aken him over.

  It was a sobering thought.

  Within ten minutes, Alice was escorting Lilian from the building. Now a shivering wreck, Lilian clung to her. “I didn’t mean it to happen,” she kept saying. “I didn’t mean it to happen.”

  Alice helped her into the car. “It’s all right,” she kept saying. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

  The driver softly hummed a song as he went away. If there was one thing that unnerved him, it was a sobbing woman.

  In the back, Alice was deeply concerned about Lilian, who was muttering and crying, and telling her how she was “sorry.” “You don’t need to be ‘sorry’ for anything,” Alice assured her.

  Yet she could not imagine why Lilian was in such a state. She wondered if it was because of what she had done to the surveyor’s report. Then she wondered if it might be something in Lilian’s private life that had rendered her such a shivering wreck.

  Whatever it was that seemed to be eating away at her, Alice knew one thing for certain: it had sent Lilian dangerously close to a breakdown.

  It was a ten-minute ride to Lilian’s small house; with the streets busy, it was a stop-start journey.

  When they arrived at their destination, Alice thanked the driver and told him he could go. “If I need to, I’ll catch the bus,” she told him.

  At the door, Alice asked Lilian for the key. While Lilian fumbled in her pockets, Alice noticed the front door was partly open. Her first instinct was that Lilian had been burgled. “You stay there a minute,” she told Lilian, who was still preoccupied searching for the key.

  “I can’t find it,” she was muttering. “I don’t know where it is.”

  Cautiously, Alice went inside. From somewhere close, she could hear a wireless playing loud music, and Alice began to feel apprehensive of what she might find inside the house. “Who’s there?” Any minute now, she expected to be confronted by a burglar.

  With her heart in her mouth, she came into the sitting room, and what she saw gave her a shock.

  The room was littered with newspapers and empty cups. Two of them had turned over on the table, the spillage of tea now dried on the surface and on the lino, where it had at one stage dripped and had left a dark smudge.

  There were other cups in the hearth, and writing paper torn into shreds and thrown across the rug. The fire-grate was piled high with ash and cinders, and the curtains of one window were still drawn. There was a crumpled pillow and blanket in the fireside chair, as if somebody had been sleeping there.

  Alice couldn’t understand it. This was not the work of a burglar.

  She almost leapt out of her skin when Lilian’s voice whispered in her ear, “I’ve been too busy to clean it up.”

  Recovering her composure, Alice took the blanket and pillow from the chair. “Here, you sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea, and don’t worry about all this.” Knowing how Lilian was always so particular about her appearance and the tidy manner in which she kept the office, Alice still could not believe that she had been living in such a pigsty as this. It was unthinkable, and only served to confirm how ill she was.

  Once Lilian was comfortable in the chair, Alice asked her where the doctor’s number was.

  Lilian said she didn’t want the doctor, and when she seemed to grow agitated, Alice calmed her down. “All right. Let’s have a cup of tea and a chat first,” she said. “Then we’ll see.” Though she was determined to get a doctor to her, she thought another few minutes wouldn’t hurt; at least until she had tidied the place up and got a fire going in the hearth.

  After a quick look round, she soon found the matches. Lighting the stove, she filled the kettle and set it on the hob, leaving it to boil while she took the pillow and blanket upstairs.

  Another shock awaited her, and this time she was shaken to her roots.

  In the first bedroom, where the blanket and pillow obviously belonged, there were pictures plastered everywhere: over the wall, on the dressing-table mirror, and even on the bed-head.

  Alice could hardly take it all in. “Oh, dear God!” Never in her life had she encountered anything like this.

  She walked slowly around the room, looking at the pictures, unable to believe her eyes.

  They were all photographs of Tom.

  In different settings: walking from his car; sitting at his desk; climbing into a taxi; even several with his children. And here was another, of him sitting in a café, and yet another, of him with his brother, heads bent over the desk where a sheet of drawings was laid out. And another, of Tom discussing business with John Martin.

  With the exception of the one with his children, which was taken from close up with Tom obviously aware it was being taken, they were all shot from a distance, Tom apparently unaware that his picture was being taken.

  Horrified, Alice began to back off, when she saw other scraps of photographs at her feet. Stooping to pick them up, she pieced them together, one by one, in the palm of her hand.

  The pictures were all of Tom and his wife, smiling into the camera.

  In the background of one, Alice could see a Christmas tree, and baubles strung from the fireplace. In another, Tom had his arm around his wife, looking down with a smiling face and the look of love in his eyes. And in another, they were outside in the snow. All carefully taken pictures of a man and woman, happy and in love.

  And every one torn to shreds, with the woman’s head being deliberately torn off, while the man was kept intact, yet discarded, as though in anger.

  Alice shivered.

  From the doorway, Lilian watched her. “That’s private,” she said, her voice as cold and hard as her hate-filled eyes. “You shouldn’t be in here!”

  The streets were busy, with mothers pushing prams and hurrying about their chores. They didn’t take too much notice of the young woman running through the streets, wild and frantic. A female in flight was not an uncommon occurrence in these winding streets.

  Her mind alive with fear and suspicion, Lilian wasn’t even aware of their presence. She was running away; looking for some kind of forgiveness. Driven by the ghosts that would not leave her be, she knew one person who would gladly take her in. One friend in all the world.

  For all their sakes, it was time he knew the truth.

  CHAPTER 18

  JASPER WAS ON Jack’s boat, the Mary Lou, listening to the news on North Korea, where U.S. Marines had been forced to resort to using flame-throwers in an effort to rid the area of snipers. “By! It’s a bad old do, an’ no mistake,” he muttered, sipping his mug of tea. “Thousands med homeless and soldiers being tekken home in boxes. Will it never end?”

  He thought back to the terrible years of the last war, and further back to the time when he had been a sailor. He had seen the horrors of war first hand, and it was not something he would ever want to get involved in again. Yet tragically, premature death had now come to West Bay; he’d arrived back from his visit with Liz and Robbie to find that Kathy’s sister had met with a terrible accident. Poor Kathy was beside herself: more so, since her mother had turned up.

  He thought about Kathy’s mother, Irene. She was a hard, unforgiving woman, it seemed to him. “Aye, she’s a bad ”un, is that Irene!” he muttered, swilling back the dregs of his tea. “How a mother can turn agin her own child like that is a mystery to me. All right! I know she’s grieving and I’m sorry it had to happen that way, but to blame that lass is a sin an’ a shame, that’s what it is!”

  “Talking to yourself again, is it?” Jack’s ruddy face peered through the cabin door. “They do say as how it’s a sign of madness.”

  Jasper’s face broke into a half-smile. “Oh hello, lad. I were just thinking aloud, that’s all. It comes o’ growing old, I expect … I hope you don’t mind me mekkin’ meself at home here while I waited for you?”

  “No, of course not,” the skipper said, settling himself down before remarking, “Bad business, though, and now they say Kathy’s mother is ranting and raving … blaming Kathy for what hap
pened. She seems a right old witch; from what I’m told, they can hear her all over the place, screaming like a fishwife. I know she’s had shocking things to deal with, but for the life of me I can’t see the reasoning behind her attitude to Kathy.”

  Jasper shook his head. “Ours is not to reason why,” he said. “But you’re right about one thing … her mother has had to bear up to the most shocking news. Summat like that could affect a body real bad.” Once more he shook his head slowly from side to side. “It’s terrible what happened. It just don’t bear thinking about.”

  “I couldn’t help but hear what you were saying … just now.” While he talked Jack poured himself a cup of tea from the pot. “How is Kathy? Is she coping all right?”

  “She’s devastated, poor lass.” Jasper had only now come back from there. “I were there a few minute since, doing me best, like yer do. Trying to help where I can. Only her mother arrived, so I thought I’d best mek mesel’ scarce.”

  Taking out his hankie, he wiped a dewdrop from the end of his nose. “I can’t imagine how it must feel … being told that yer daughter’s drowned. In one way me old heart goes out to her. But though I say it as shouldn’t, that woman’s a bad bugger if ever there was one.”

  “Why don’t they get on, her and Kathy?” Jack asked.

  “Goes back a long way, from what I understand. According to Kathy, she’s never been like a real mother to her. It were Kathy’s father who seemed closest to the lass.”

  Just then he peered out the porthole. “Hang on a minute! Look! Her mam’s just going.”

  Two pairs of eyes followed Irene as she emerged from Kathy’s house. Dressed in a dark suit with fur collar and black ankle boots, she was a picture of elegance, much as her elder daughter had been before her.

  With her, and holding onto her arm as if to support her, was a portly man, somewhat older and graying at the temples. “Who’s that?” Jack was curious.

  “It’s Kathy’s stepfather.” Jasper switched off the radio. “I’d best go and see how she is. I’ll see you later.”