The tide was out and the first families were already arriving on the beach, picking their way between the broken bottles from last night’s drinking and fighting that still littered the sand. Amanda skirted the boating lake and passed by the pier which, silhouetted against the low, bleached sun, seemed longer and more desperate than ever, reaching far, far out over the muddy shores like a root in search of water. She passed by the amusement arcades, flicking her hair as she did so, tousling it out behind her in a way the wind might if there were any, a gesture that asserted in some small way her difference from those few who were already loafing about in there, frittering their time along with their very average wages, as if it too were simply for spending and not for living. Such dreary pursuits were not for Amanda. She knew her family to be different. They had money. Rich: she liked the word, and had whispered it once to Ruth when, as young girls, they’d agreed to share secrets—not because she was ashamed but because she felt its power and understood it was something to be closely guarded. A small explosive thing that she carried in her pocket like a little firework, ready to burst into a shower of thrills and experiences she trusted would make way for a future beyond this town or even the comfortable wealth her parents had achieved. But Amanda being young, sheltered, and attractive, these hopes had not really attached themselves to anything beyond the city that lay twenty miles upriver, or the eligible man she felt sure was waiting there for her.
She carried on along the road, following the shell-pink curve of shingle. Beyond it, deserted dinghies sat marooned in the mud, upon which the sun lay with a kind of brazen beauty as if imploring the town to wake up, to see that the world really was wonderful. Amanda quickened her pace, feeling pretty and strangely elated, as if someone might fall in love with her at any minute.
She rang the doorbell of number eight Belvedere Close and stood waiting with her hands clasped in front of her, her mouth twitching in readiness for a smile. She noticed as she waited that the curtains were closed and realized her mistake in coming out so early on a Sunday morning. She stepped off the path to her right in order to inspect the window a little closer, for there was a chink between the two curtains. But without pressing her nose against the glass she could see nothing through it and, not wanting to be caught snooping, she returned quickly to the path. She rang the doorbell one more time and, with no expectation that it would be answered, she was just thinking how she might kill an hour or two in Shoeburyness when she noticed that the door was not actually closed. With a little push it would easily be fully opened. She gave it a very small nudge and called hesitantly through the gap:
“Hello?”
There was no reply, so she pushed a little harder, harder actually than she intended, so that the door swung completely open, although the interior was so dark it didn’t initially reveal much at all. She took one step inside and peered down the hallway. Before her eyes had fully adjusted to the dim interior her nose was detecting a stale tang that could only emanate from a sink piled high with unwashed dishes, and already her mind began piecing together a picture that was fast dispelling any hopes she might have attached to Raymond Eccles—hopes that arose not from anything she knew of Mr. Eccles or from anything Jennifer Mulholland had said, but simply from the fact that he was a man and she a good looking girl and one never knew what possibilities that might present.
She called again, a little quieter this time, for she wasn’t so sure she wanted an answer. But even so she took a cautious step further in, her surroundings emerging as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Ahead of her stretched the narrow passageway she stood in. There was a door to the left, which was closed, and a door to the right, which was open, leading to the room into which she’d tried to see from outside. Putting her head round it she began to fear she had interrupted a burglary, for the room appeared to have been ransacked. The furniture had been pulled away from the walls and formed a haphazard ring around a large disordered heap of objects, within which she could make out framed pictures, books, and ornaments. In addition to this, strewn all over the floor rather than limited to the central heap were sheets of white paper, some of which had spilled out into the hallway where they littered the floor around her feet. Looking down she noticed that they weren’t blank as they’d first appeared but that each one had been drawn upon. She bent down slowly to pick one up, and it was as she did so that she noticed the man crouched silently in the shadows at the end of the passage.
Upon seeing him she was at first terribly afraid, so much so that she felt unable to move but remained frozen in a squatting position, her right hand outstretched, clutching the piece of paper she’d bent to retrieve. Crouched at either end of the passage, they faced each other. The man’s wide startled eyes reflected her anxiety and slowly dissipated it, for she soon understood that he was a timid creature more afraid than she was, to be treated with caution only because of what his own fear might cause him to do next. If there had been a burglar this was surely not he.
Although their heads were turned to face each other, their bodies were oriented in opposite directions: her own towards the open door into what she assumed was the sitting room; his, bizarrely, towards the wall on the other side of the hallway. He was positioned so close to this wall that his knees were actually touching it, as if he were a child making a crude attempt to hide. She could see also that he was holding something in his hand, a thin stick-like object which he held poised like a pen but which she soon realised was actually a small plastic paintbrush. Around his feet were scattered various open tins and jars of food: jam, tomato ketchup, baked beans, salad cream. It was clear he had been engaged in some activity which she had interrupted, although he made no reaction to her presence other than to continue staring at her. She noticed now a medical dressing taped to his forehead and, remembering the accident she was supposed to be reporting on, she realized that this must be the man she was here to interview.
“Are you okay?” she asked feebly, finally breaking the silence between them. “I understand you had an accident yesterday.”
Again there was silence, in which he slowly raised his left hand and touched the dressing with his fingertips.
“You have to be careful with head injuries,” she said.
He looked away from her now, towards the wall, and it was only then that she saw there was something on it, some kind of substance, something lumpy, and wet, for it shone in the soft shaft of light which fell upon the wall from the dappled glass panels of the front door. Whatever it was, given the paintbrush in his hand, it was clear that he had been applying it to the walls himself, although she was certain he was not merely decorating. He had turned to face the wall now and, if it were possible, had shifted even closer to it so that his face was now within the shaft of light. He closed his eyes. Maybe it was the light that fell upon him, or the slow and precise way in which he made even the slightest movement, but Amanda could now not only see his face very clearly, but was made intensely aware of it. She stared at him, watching intently, feeling at liberty to do so, for it was clear he had slipped into a sphere from which she was completely excluded and that her presence had ceased to have any effect upon him. Even the closing of his eyes was done slowly, purposefully, as if surrendering himself to something deeply pleasurable. And the light now touched upon his lids in such a way that she could see his eyeballs trembling beneath. After a time he opened his eyes once again but stayed facing the wall, inching even closer until his nose was almost touching it. And then he moved his paintbrush to the wall, rising up a little onto the balls of his feet, with his other hand also raised, skimming the surface of the wall as if caressing it.
Amanda realized she’d been holding her breath and she let it out. And as she did so her attention broke, as if there had been a taut thread linking the two of them which now had snapped, releasing her from her absorption. She felt suddenly uncomfortable, confused, a little afraid again. Slowly she lifted herself to her feet and, without saying a word
, turned and slipped back out through the front door.
Her eyes squinted shut, recoiling from the bright light, and she stumbled slightly as she made her way back down the short path to the gate. She opened it and encountered, quite alarmingly close to her on the other side, a woman.
“Are you a friend, dear?” The woman’s face lurched towards her, all lipstick and wrinkles in the harsh light. She was holding out a milk bottle filled with murky water—holding it, Amanda felt, as if she might be about to smash it upon something.
Amanda blinked.
“Of Raymond’s,” the woman added. “Have you been visiting?”
“Oh … no,” said Amanda. And then, feeling the woman’s quizzical gaze still upon her: “A friend of a friend.” She didn’t want to explain the purpose of her visit to this woman. She was not even sure of it herself anymore.
“It’s just that I’m awfully worried about him,” the woman continued. “I know he’s had some kind of accident and he’s been acting rather strangely ever since. I don’t like to pry but I popped some soup round to him yesterday and he didn’t seem his usual self at all.” She leaned even further forward and dropped her voice. “In fact, it seemed to me as if he was trying to hide something. Not that it would normally be any of my business but it’s not his house, you see. And Mary, who owns it, is a friend of mine. I have a duty, you understand.”
The short time in which the woman had been talking had given Amanda a chance to adjust, for the world to settle comfortably around her once again. The woman herself, initially so garish and intrusive, softened. The milk bottle was no longer threatening. She was simply a neighbour out watering her garden, with normal neighbourly concerns. The birds sang. A car pulled smoothly into the Close. And the sun fell warm upon Amanda’s shoulders. The bright, confident ease of everything around her, the limitations of her experience, and the inability of her youthful self to really perceive what it felt, combined to disregard what she had just witnessed inside number eight Belvedere Close. She said nothing to Mrs. Foyle about what in that soft shaft of light had seemed so intimate, magical, and strange, for already her sense of it as such had all but disappeared. Instead she said: “You’re right, something’s not right in there. The house is a complete mess. Really bad. And he’s painting the walls with something … I don’t know what it is, something disgusting.”
“Oh my dear!” The woman raised a hand to her mouth. “We shall have to take action. Thank goodness we have a Neighbourhood Watch meeting this evening.”
“You know,” said Amanda, dropping her voice conspiratorially, “I work at the Echo. You probably know our legal expert, Bentley? He has a column every Thursday. If you write a letter to him I’ll make sure it gets published. He’s always helping people with nuisance neighbours.”
“Thank you dear, I shall certainly suggest it. Bentley’s Legal Clinic, of course, I know it well.” She looked at Amanda now with renewed interest. “You work with Mr. Bentley you say? He strikes me as such a gentleman! You open the paper and see him smiling and it’s like he’s smiling just for you.” The woman lowered her gaze slightly and a coy smile came over her face as if Dave Bentley were flashing his grin at her right now. “You really think we have a chance of getting in the paper?”
“Of course, I’ll see to it,” said Amanda, knowing that being the source of a bona fide reader’s letter would score her some points with the editor whose task it was to make them up each week. “My name’s Amanda. Amanda Parsons. Just say I suggested you write in.”
As Amanda left the Close, any disappointment she may have felt at the loss of her first proper story was outweighed by the relief of not having to write it, of being free to turn her thoughts to the evening ahead of her, and to Dirk, a tall boy with a smooth, hairless torso who was taking her on his motorbike to watch the sunset at Canvey. As she turned the corner she realized that she was still clutching the sheet of paper she’d picked up inside the bungalow. She held it up to take a look at what was drawn upon it: a simple, childish pencil drawing of a face, an oval outline inside which the features seemed strewn almost randomly. There was a lopsided kind of mouth sitting just inside the confines of the jaw line, a boxy nose positioned too high above, and two large, crude eyes, one right up on the forehead, the other in the middle of the left cheek. With one hand she scrunched it into a ball, gathering it into her fist, and threw it into the next bin she passed. Any hint of freshness that the morning air had held was gone now, the sparse strands of grass around the bin so dry and scorched they seemed to threaten fire, as if each held a little flame preparing to spark. She decided she’d get as far as the beach huts at Thorpe Bay before waiting for the bus. And as she walked, the heat of the day coiling round her limbs, she remembered Jennifer in her stuffy bedsit and thought how sad it must be to be alone.
Five
Those who worked on the Echo never considered the possibility that their words would be read by anyone outside of Southend. And by and large they were perfectly right not to. The paper was just a part of the town, like the pier, and a much more insignificant part at that. But unlike the pier, stuck resolutely in the mud of the estuary, the Evening Echo was occasionally presented with an opportunity to escape, usually via the commuter route.
This particular copy left on the 08:02 from Southend East in the hands of a Mr. Brian Fellen: not a regular commuter and thus not someone who had given the matter of reading material a great deal of thought, but who nevertheless grabbed the Echo from the hall table on his way out of the door. Once he had settled in his seat and the train had left the station, he glanced over the front page: a story about the water crisis, and a picture of local girl Lesley Ayres in her bikini, praised for shedding three stone and being now lovely enough to take the weight off any man’s mind. He went no further, for he was distracted by the mist rising off the estuary as they passed by Leigh-on-Sea, and shortly afterwards he fell asleep. By the time he woke up at Fenchurch Street, the Echo had fallen onto the floor of the carriage and there it would have stayed, destined for a return trip to Southend, had not Mr. Fellen had a vague interest in the cricket match between Witham and Thorpe Bay, which had been attended by his son and was featured on the back page. So, keeping a foot on the paper to prevent it being kicked around by his fellow passengers as they rushed to leave the train, he sat and waited until he was the last person left in the carriage before picking it up and taking it with him down onto the Circle Line at Tower Hill.
By the time Mr. Fellen had reached the next stop, Monument, he had read all he wanted to read about Witham versus Thorpe Bay and, folding the paper in half, he turned around, placed it on the ledge behind his seat, and prepared to leave the train in three stops’ time.
And there the Echo waited, completing an entire lap of the Circle line before it was picked up by a Mr. George Zoob, who was on his way to a meeting at the Serpentine Gallery. Mr. Zoob had a particular fondness for provincial papers, a fondness he didn’t often find an outlet for in London, more often at his cottage in Norfolk, where the purchasing of the Holkham Chronicler was an event much anticipated by him and his wife Grace on the drive up. Indeed, the spotting of the first board displaying the Chronicler’s latest headline outside a newsagent was a triumphant signal that they were nearly there. Seeing the words Evening Echo, and perhaps also the picture of lovely Lesley Ayres in her bikini, gave Mr. Zoob an unexpected intimation of these holiday high spirits. Which is why he stood up from his seat, reached across the carriage, and retrieved the paper.
He too glanced over the piece about the water crisis and read a little about Lesley’s battle with the bulge, but he knew the best bits would be nearer the back. It was the jaunty handwritten font of Bentley’s Legal Clinic that made him stop at page 33, for it reminded him of the Chronicler’s Ask Alice column, always his and Grace’s first port of call when they first sat down at the cold kitchen table in the cottage with their mugs of tea, eager to pore over the latest cleaning, f
ashion, and beauty tips being imparted to the housewives of Holkham. This Bentley, though, was much better looking, and George Zoob settled a little lower in his seat, crossed his legs luxuriously into the centre of the near-empty carriage and felt the beginning of a small smile cross his face as he tucked into a letter about a neighbourly dispute.
But about halfway through the letter he hit upon a sentence that changed his mood, that put him back in mind of his meeting at the Serpentine Gallery, a meeting he had, up to that point, been dreading a little, for he knew that the curator of the gallery, a close friend of his, was going to ask him for a list of artists who would be exhibiting at his forthcoming show. This he did not have. Or he did have it, but there were only five names on it. Having talked excitedly over two bottles of red wine about a groundbreaking exhibition featuring the works of British Outsider Artists he had realized quite soon afterwards that he really didn’t have enough artists to put on a show of the size and magnitude they were talking about, and in the last couple of months his attempts to find more had been disappointing. But here was a sentence that gave him hope, that caused the holiday high spirits to turn into high spirits of a different kind. The sentence was this: “He has covered the walls with some kind of disgusting mural; certainly in the hall and very likely in other rooms too.” That was all. But it was enough—more than enough—for Mr. Zoob to take the Evening Echo with him when he changed trains at South Kensington and to relay the story (with a few embellishments) to the curator of the Serpentine Gallery. And the next day he and Grace were off on a trip to Southend-on-Sea to make the acquaintance of Mr. Raymond Eccles.
Man with a Seagull on His Head Page 4