The Girl on the Pier

by Paul Tomkins

  I can’t recall the last time I sat and quietly watched the sun rise. Indeed, have I ever actually done so? Experiencing it from the vantage point of this pier makes it all the more vibrant. It’s such a primal part of human existence, but our awe of that burning giant – bringing light on its journey across the heavens – is no more; we simply don’t deify what we feel we understand. A phosphorescent halo at the horizon forewarns of its impending arrival: an envoy running ahead to herald the new day. Before long the sun itself is inching over the horizon. And as the world before my eyes is painted in luminescent oranges and blues – and with Black dozing softly against my shoulder – to have never previously experienced this seems like a kind of gross negligence. The moment feels truly transcendental, almost spiritual. This is my mystical morning. This is my new life.

  I’ve tried my damnedest to stay awake, to not miss a moment of this night as it turns into day. Black had earlier promised to do the same, only to succumb to light sleep on a couple of occasions. Awake again, and upon seeing what I see, she angles her body to a more upright position, to take it all in. But she does not pull away from me. Against the odds, the most beautiful woman I have ever met is still huddled up to my side, gripping my upper arm for support, as my jacket shrouds our shoulders. But with this bliss comes the daylight that will make our exit inevitable. It is the most perfect moment of my life, but no sooner am I aware of this fact than I realise that its end is imminent.

  Spinning blue lights flicker in the distance on the shoreline, bright cyan stark against the morning haze. The lack of a siren lends an eerie quality to the scene; another visual distraction disconnected from our island existence. What appear to be an ambulance and two police cars speed into view, then disappear behind a row of houses. We look more closely, trying to work out the exact location. It’s impossible to tell for sure, but the lights are reflecting on properties close to Jacob’s studio. His unreliability is legendary, but suddenly we’re considering an alternative explanation for his absence.

  “You don’t think…?” she asks.

  I do think. At least I think I think. I keep the moment on hold, choosing not to say anything as I try to convince myself otherwise. In truth, my mind is a jumble. I’m obviously concerned about my friend – if something has indeed happened to him – but also about how such a turn of events would affect my relationship with Black. A connection could be broken. Then again, perhaps a tragedy would unite us?

  “Look – they’ve gone,” she says, cheerily. “False alarm.”

  However, it’s not long before she says it’s light enough to safely leap into the sea, and what reason can I possibly offer to have her stay here instead?

  * * *

  I believe it to be my earliest memory – but it can be hard to put a definite chronology to such distant, fractured recollections. Perhaps I have sensory impressions that predate it, but no actual events spring to mind.

  It belongs to the cottage, at a time when I lived in Croydon with my mother. Our own house appeared so suburban, so urban-planned. By contrast, Kitty’s property sprawled, almost unconfined, across the landscape. And the lake – well, that fascinated me. A great big expanse of water – in the back garden. Another world.

  Early afternoon, high summer: it must have been Kitty’s 50th birthday, because I remember bunting, colour and cake. I guess I was three or four years old. The kitchen heaved with the presence of strangers. I kept wandering outside, to find some space and freedom. All of this would perhaps have been lost like a million other nascent memories, had it not proven such a uniquely strange day. Unlike my father, my mother wasn’t an alcoholic, but she did drink to excess in social settings. If running outside offered my escape from a large group of people, then drink provided hers. And on this occasion she had passed all sensible limits. She’d already got into an argument with someone, and I saw her ushered out into the front garden, to be calmed down.

  My desire to explore took me out the back, to the edge of the lake. I could see tadpoles just beneath the surface of the water, and poked at them with a twig. And then, from nowhere, a sense of overwhelming panic as I found myself submerged; I don’t recall the slip at the water’s edge, just the moment when I understood that trouble had me. I have no idea how long it lasted, but even now, in my mind’s eye, time remains slowed. As I flailed, I felt a clutch of fingers grab my shirt and haul me out.

  To my great shame I can’t recall the name or the appearance of the man. Perhaps I was told at the time, but his identity faded long before I realised just how important it was to remember. It certainly wasn’t someone I knew – and yet I literally owe him my life. Another minute, maybe less with such tiny lungs, and I’d have drowned. He’d seen me from the kitchen window, and raced to my rescue. Sodden, I made straight for my mother, whose reaction, as she came running around the side of the cottage, was one of total hysteria; stumbling, crying, mumbling. The growing crowd of people parted for us to embrace, but once in her arms she violently shook me. She screamed, I shrieked; both of us increasing in volume as she had to be pulled away.

  Weeks passed before I saw her again. I was shipped off to my father’s. As it had in the lake, time slowed; it seemed an eternity, and I carried the guilt of being bad, the guilt of having forced her away. My fault; always my fault.

  * * *

  The hush of the wash, as waves broke gently beneath the pier, had been the only accompaniment in the final hours of darkness. Every so often a more voluminous wave would crash with a surprising crescendo of noise. Mostly, though, it soothed: the calm, rhythmic sounds of sea meeting shore.

  But now, as we stand side by side and stare down thirty feet into the water, it doesn’t seem quite so benevolent. The beach is deserted, apart from a woman walking a collie in one direction, and a jogger vanishing towards the horizon in the other. I cannot let Black see my fear. Fortunately the water is not dangerously deep, but that provides a different problem: I’ve no idea how sufficiently it will break our fall.

  “What do you reckon?” I offer.

  “Looks okay to me,” she says, bright and bubbly. She stands near the edge, clutching her waterproofed camera.

  She goes first: plummeting into the water, swallowed whole by a breaking wave, and in an instant coughed out several metres closer to shore. Visible for a second, then gone; just a collision on the surface of lambent ripples and spume. An arm, a foot. A patch of clothing. Another wave, and lost again. Then, even closer to shore, she is upright, dancing, kicking her feet through the shallow water. It provokes in me a slight sense of panic: that familiar fear of abandonment. She is safely down, and I am still nervous atop this rickety platform: a high-board diver who cannot swim. I remain stationary, recalling the shallow depth of the lake all those years ago, and my utter helplessness in it. I feel Black’s eyes on me, sense the time I’m taking. My mouth is dry, my stomach churning.

  But fear begets bravery. I launch: a split second of flight, then total immersion. I feel myself dragged under – unable to gain control – but soon I am floating on an inbound wave, shoved into shallower water, and through ears filled with brine I hear Black’s whoops of delight as I crash safely ashore.

  At several stages over the past nine-or-so hours I’ve thought the current moment to be the pinnacle, when it comes to feeling alive. But this – this will take some beating, as the sound of her cheers and the beat of my heart resonate in bubbling eardrums, and as, through stinging eyes, I take in the final stages of sunrise. Every fibre of my being is atingle. My legs are shaking, but I feel an exhilaration that circuits every inch of my skin.

  I take her outstretched hand, and she leads me from the sea.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  This is how she looked! However, David’s words don’t equate to an identification. The woman’s appearance finally feels right – I share his optimism on that – but decades after she died, will anyone recognise her? All those hours spent alone in her company, mostly at night, staring deep and hard; all the time aware that t
his is someone. Rather than simply see her case resolved, I want to know her, in life. Of course, professional pride and ego mean that I want identification to be swift, and for people to get goosebumps upon witnessing the likeness; to commend me on my amazing work, my unique talent. For the sake of everyone concerned I want a solution, so that a killer comes to justice and that good men – particularly David – can remove a weight from their shoulders.

  But above all else, I want a story to go with the face. I feel a kind of love for Marina, one based on proximity and imagination. Maybe it’s almost Frankensteinian, in that I want to bring her back to life. Ludicrous, I know, but on some level I want to experience her as she was. Maybe some old ciné film would suffice: enough to sense her movements, as well as her likeness. But on a deeper level I crave more. It’s the story of my life: desiring the impossible woman. And none – not even Black – could ever be more impossible than Marina.

  * * *

  She first came to me, Marina, wrapped tightly in manilla, one memorable morning at the end of 2002.

  The day began with the phone sounding, shrill and insistent, as I lay submerged in a deep winter’s sleep. For a foggy-headed second, with the quilt drawn over my ears, I did not recognise its signature bleeps, the staccato notes entering into my dream as a dance track on a distant radio. Eventually I fumbled and located the handset, as Laura, with ears plugged, slept on.

  “Have you heard the news?” David asked breathlessly. “Get yourself down to the pier”, he said, his words swift and tremulous. “As quick as you can, Patrick. Hurry, lad.” I could tell he was already there: the familiar rush of the dispersing tide, the wind howling into the mouthpiece, the echo of a gull. His signal failed before I had time to argue.

  Half a mile from the West Pier, David’s news became all too apparent. Despite the fine rain and sea-spray blustering about me on the promenade, the landmark on the horizon looked clearly altered as it moved into view. My heart sank: the structure – a symbol of unfathomable endurance – had suffered a near-fatal prolapse. The central section had dropped away, the walkway declining at a 45º angle in both directions to form a ‘V’, its base lost in the shallows. Rows of supports beneath the Concert Hall had bowed and snapped, causing the southern half of the building to teeter just above the waterline; an optical illusion suggesting it was sliding slowly into the sea. The pavilion, at the pier head, now stood even more isolated. The country’s most exposed Grade One listed building, earmarked for special concern – nil by mouth, priest on standby – simply crumbled; dismantling itself, washing away its central section – its heart? its soul? – in the manner it had for so long threatened, as waves and wind lashed and ripped. Enormous planks of wood turned into juddering gliders that could hold their poise in the gale for no more than a split second before crashing into whipped-up waves. Smaller timbers splintered and dove into the water, bobbing haphazardly to shore. Tubular iron struts snapped and submerged in violent descents, lost from view until they washed up on the shingle.

  I couldn’t yet pick out David amongst a hundred-or-more onlookers, in front of what could have been a stricken whale in shallow water; the crowd unsure of how best to intervene, before concluding that nothing could be done. Manpower stood no chance against such weighty catastrophe.

  All the while, a crime scene – and a love scene – washed itself away.

  Hours later, David and I sat nursing drinks in a gloriously warm pub overlooking the sea, as the storm raged on. “Have a look at this,” he said, removing a manilla folder from his holdall.

  “What is it?”

  “An old case,” he said, placing the folder on the table, and giving it a tender pat. “Go on, look.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Marina. The girl found on the old pier.”

  I placed my hand on the folder, and kept it there.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “Nothing, no… no problem,” I said as I finally lifted the thick file. Crime scene photographs – large, and rich with colour and clarity – spilled out over the table, along with notes, drawings and typed statements.

  “What am I looking for?” I asked, moving my pint glass to make more room.

  “Something.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “No. Because I don’t know myself.”

  I looked at the images, perused the notes.

  “Anything jump out at you?” he asked, wiping a thick white cloud of Guinness from his stubble with the back of his hand.

  “Just that it’s the pier. And that the remains are skeletal. I’m not sure what you want me to say?”

  “Take a look at this,” he said, pulling a sheet of cartridge paper from the bottom of the file.

  “It’s good,” I noted, as he held up a sketch of a young woman. “But obviously I don’t know how true to life it is, just from looking at it like this.”

  “Thought not. Ah well.”

  “But it looks like it was drawn by a competent artist. I’ve seen worse.”

  “You think? I want to reopen the case, but I’ve been told it must wait. Too many others on the go already. One day I’ll get onto it, if they let me. One day, before I retire.”

  “You’ve got a while left yet, haven’t you?”

  “Maybe,” he mumbled, behind his pint glass, before falling silent.

  The photographs also provided evidence of my own dramatic encounter with the pier. Both Black and I had of course alighted safely – ours was not a crime scene – but something monumental had taken place that night, too. And while the elements had wreaked further havoc in the decades between the capture of these images and our time aboard, it remained recognisably ours.

  Over the following years, in pubs across Brighton and in visits to my house, David provided snippets of the investigation, until I gained the full picture. The body had been located inside the south-western kiosk, against which I had been photographed all those years later; her bones discovered beneath piles of detritus. Although the debris supplied a degree of protection from the weather and the sea, it proved no place for the preservation of evidence. An entomologist had shown that, due to specific insect activity, she had died the previous summer, which at least provided something to go on. Nesting pigeons had defecated and died all over the scene, and the discovery occurred a long time before the ultra-fine forensic detection now commonplace.

  At the time of the pier’s violent collapse, Marina’s skull remained stored as evidence, not even afforded the dignity of an unmarked grave. For years, despite bringing the case to my attention and poring over it on numerous occasions, David never asked for a fresh attempt at capturing the girl’s likeness. That finally came earlier this year, as he sought out one last desperate attempt at jogging a memory.

  And now that I have finished that work – now that Marina is complete – he wants to box her up and take her away, so that she can be filmed and photographed by the media. He wants to show the world.

  But after all this time together, I suddenly don’t want to let her go.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The time I’d been craving: alone, in Genevieve’s company. Of course, she needed a favour; nothing with her ever came without a catch – something I’d become acutely aware of as the summer unfolded.

  The previous night she’d lost a silver heart-shaped earring gifted by Darren, and wanted me to accompany her back to the scene: a secluded area beyond some woodland, to which he had recently introduced her; and as such, I guessed how the jewellery went missing. An hour or so before dusk, she had me follow her.

  As we walked, the surroundings became increasingly rural. The pavement wore away into nothing more than an unkempt gravel path, which itself faded into a dirt track beaten out by feet and bike tyres, sandwiched between wild grass, leading us down to a shady wood. The chimes of an ice cream van, pulling away on a country lane beyond the trees, carried on windless air; the signature tune of an off-key Three Blind Mice diminishing with every corner tu
rned.

  We cut through an area densely populated with trees. The sun pierced the tangle of branches in thin straight beams, casting a spotlight on swarms of gnats, bobbing and weaving like crazed atoms, and the expansive spider webs crafted between oaks and ash. “Not far now,” she said, as I rubbed at my itching eyes. “Just a little bit beyond this churchyard. But first, follow me. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Blackcurrant bushes, left to reach out unfettered, grew wildly over the path to a graveyard. She led me through the lines of granite and marble, over to one shabby grave, where she stopped and knelt.

  “Who’s this?” I asked, before even thinking to look at the inscription. For some reason I just defaulted to Genevieve, almost becoming dumb in her presence. She knew stuff, and I didn’t.

  “Doris Florence Lindley,” she said, as if the name should mean something. “She’s just ten years old,” she added, the present tense used in a matter-of-fact way. “She died on the Lusitania.”

  “The Lusitania? What’s that?”

  “A ship that sunk in 1915. I’ve visited her a few times this summer. But no one else does. Not any more. It breaks my heart.” She wiped gravel and moss from the tombstone, and I got to see a side of her I’d not previously encountered; at least not since she’d been reborn as a self-possessed, aloof creature.

  “It makes you wonder,” she said, sitting down beside Doris’ plot, as I remained standing.

  “What?”

  “If anyone will visit our graves. I think we just assume that people will. But they won’t, not always. There comes a time when it stops. Has to. We all get forgotten.”

  I didn’t know what to say; transported beyond my comfort zone. I thought I knew what she meant, but felt unable to articulate it for fear of sounding stupid. Cross-legged, chewing on a blade of long grass, Genevieve’s eyes swelled, red and moist. Perhaps I’d been invited back into her world, after a couple of years’ absence, but I didn’t feel assured enough to relax. Finally I sat down, doing my best to look at ease.