“No,” she said, finally. “That’s not the reason.”
I opened my mouth to press my claim, and then shut it again. I didn’t believe it either. Perhaps it was just because of the behaviour of the publican, or the overall atmosphere of the town. Maybe it was just the colour of the sky, or the way the rain angled as it fell, but somehow I just didn’t quite believe that there wasn’t more to the pub’s name than a simple remembrance. There’d been something about the painting, some aspect of its style or colours, that hinted at something else, some more confused or inexplicable element. To name a pub after a ship that sank in—possibly—dubious circumstances, and to put that ship’s name up on a sign with a painting that seemed almost to have some intangible air of celebration about it, hardly seemed like amiable quaintness.
But such speculations weren’t what we were here for, and I saw my job as being that of steering Susan away from them. Although there was something a little strange about the whole thing, it didn’t mean that the villagers had tried to cause harm to the passengers of the Aldwinkle thirty-odd years ago. It simply didn’t make sense: what could possibly have been in it for them? Either way I didn’t want the weekend to compound Susan’s suspicions. Her mother’s blatherings had left her with more than enough distrust of the human race. We’d come here to try to undermine that, not provide documentary evidence to support it.
So I steered the conversation away from the sign, and focused on the publican. There was enough material for speculation and vitriol there to keep us going to the other side of dessert, by which time we were more than a little drunk and rambling rather. By the time the waiter came through with our coffees I thought Susan had left more disturbing thoughts behind.
I was wrong. As he stood at the end of the table she turned on him.
“What do you know about the Aldwinkle?” she said, challengingly. The waiter’s hand paused for just a moment as he laid the milk jug down. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe I imagined it.
“It’s a pub,” he said. Susan tried again, but that was all he would say. As he’d observed, he was from out of town and only came to Dawton to work. He sat at an adjoining table as we finished our third bottle of wine, and we chatted a little. Business wasn’t going well, it would seem, and we’d made it to the restaurant just in time. Within a few weeks he suspected that he would probably have to give up. There simply wasn’t the custom, and we’d been his only patrons that evening.
We enquired as to what the locals did of an evening. He didn’t know. As we talked I began to sense an air of unease about him, as if he would prefer to discuss something other than the town and its inhabitants. Probably simply paranoia on my part. I was starting to realise that we were going to have to leave this haven, and return to our room. The thought did not fill me with glee.
In the end we paid, bid him goodnight, and stepped out onto the front. The first thing that struck me was the realisation that I was extremely drunk. I tend to drink just about everything as I would beer, that is in the same sort of quantity. This approach doesn’t work too well with wine. I’d probably had the better part of two bottles, and suddenly, as we stood swaying in the wind that whipped down the soulless stretch of the front, it felt like it.
Susan was a little the worse for wear too, and we stumbled in unison as we stepped off the kerb to walk across the road to the front. Susan slipped her hand underneath my coat and looped her arm around my back and, not saying anything, we stepped up onto the ragged pavement on the other side of the road.
It was late now, but a sallow moon spread enough light for us to see what lay in front of us. Beyond the low wall a ramp of decaying concrete sloped down to the shore. The shore appeared to consist of puddled mudflats, and stretched at least a hundred yards out to where still water the colour of slate took over. In the distance we could just hear the sound of small waves, like two hands slowly rubbed together.
“Tide’s out,” I observed sagely, except that it came out more like “tie shout.” I opened my eyes wide for a moment, blinked, and then fumbled in my pockets for a cigarette.
“Mn,” Susan replied, not really looking. She was gazing vaguely at the wall in front of us, for some reason not letting her eyes reach any higher. She shook her head when I offered her a smoke, which was unusual. I put a hand on the cold surface of the wall, for something to lean against, and looked back out at the sea.
When I was a kid my family often used to go on holiday to St. Augustine. Actually the place where we stayed was just outside, a little further down Crescent Beach in the direction of, but thankfully a good ways from, Daytona Beach. I remember standing on the unspoilt beach as a child, probably no more than five or six, and slowly turning to look out at the sea from different angles, and I remember thinking that you can’t ever really stand still when you’re looking at the sea. There’s nowhere you can stand and think “Yep, that’s the view,” because there’s always more of it on either side.
In Dawton it was different. There was only one way you could see it. Perhaps it was because of the curve of the bay, or maybe it was something else. Your eye was drawn outwards, as if there was only one way you could see the view, only one thing you could see.
Suddenly Susan’s arm was removed and she took a step forwards. Without looking at me she grabbed the wall purposefully with both hands and started to hoist herself over it.
“What’re you doing?” I demanded, stifling a hiccup.
“Going to see the sea.”
“But,” I started, and then wearily reached out to follow her. Obviously the time had come for Susan to do her staring out across the water. The best I could do was tag along, and be there if she wanted to talk.
The concrete ramp was wet and quite steep, and Susan almost lost her footing on the way down. I grabbed her shoulder and she regained her balance, but she didn’t say anything in thanks. She hadn’t really said anything to me since we’d left the restaurant. Her tone when telling me where she was going had been distant, almost irritable, as if she was annoyed at having to account for her actions. I tried not to take it personally.
When we got to the bottom of the ramp I stopped, swaying slightly. I peered owlishly at the stinking mud in front of us. Clearly, I thought, this was where the expedition ended. Susan felt otherwise. She stepped out onto the mud and started striding with as much determination as the ground and her inebriation would allow. I stared after her, feeling suddenly adrift. She didn’t seem herself, and I was afraid of something, of being left behind. Wincing, I put a tentative foot onto the mud and then hurried after her as best I could.
We walked a long way. The mud came in waves. For twenty yards it would be quite hard, and relatively dry, and then it would suddenly change and turn darker and wetter until, to be honest, it was like wading through shit. The first time this happened I tried to find dryer patches, to protect my shoes, but in the end I gave up. It was as much as I could do to keep up with Susan, who was striding head down towards the sea.
I glanced back at one point, and saw how far we’d come. When we’d stood on the front I’d thought the sea was a hundred yards or so away, but it must have been much further. I couldn’t see any lights in the houses on the front, or any of the streetlights. For an awful moment I thought that something must have happened, that everyone had turned their lights off so we wouldn’t be able to find our way back. I turned to shout to Susan but she was too far ahead to hear. Either that, or she ignored me. After another quick glance back I ran to catch up with her.
She was still walking, but her head was up and her movements were jerky and stilted. When I drew level with her I saw that she was crying.
“Susan,” I said. “Stop.” She walked on for a few more yards, tailing off, and then stopped. I put my hands on her shoulders and she held herself rigid for a moment, but then allowed herself to be folded into me. Her hair was cold against my face as we stood, surrounded by mud in every direction.
“What is it?” I said eventually. She sniffed.
&
nbsp; “I want to see the sea.”
I raised my head and looked. The sea appeared as far away as it had when we’d been standing on the front.
“The tide must still be going out,” I said. I’m not sure if I believed it. Susan certainly didn’t.
“It’s not letting me,” she said, indistinctly. “And I don’t know why.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and just stared out at the water. I wondered how much further it was before the bay deepened, how much further to the crop of rocks where the Aldwinkle presumably still lay.
In the end we turned and walked back, Susan allowing me to keep my hand around her shoulders. She seemed worn out. I was beginning to develop a headache, while still feeling rather drunk. When we got back to the ramp we climbed halfway up it and then sat down for a cigarette. My shoes, I noticed belatedly, were ruined, caked about a centimetre thick in claggy mud. I took them off and set them to one side.
“This weekend isn’t going quite as I thought it would,” I said, eventually.
“No.”
I couldn’t tell from Susan’s tone whether she thought this was a good or a bad thing.
We looked out at the water for a while in silence. Now we were back it looked little more than a hundred yards away, two hundred at the most. It couldn’t have moved. We simply can’t have walked as far as we’d thought we had, which is odd, because it felt like we’d walked forever.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“It’s out there somewhere,” she said.
I nodded. It wasn’t a direct reply, but in another sense I guess it was. “Was it the sea you wanted to see?” I ventured.
“I don’t know,” she said, and her head dropped.
A little later we stood up. I decided to leave my shoes where they were. They weren’t an especially nice pair, and it seemed less troublesome to leave them there than to find some way of taking them home in their current state and then cleaning them. On a different evening, in a different mood, leaving them might have felt like a gesture of some kind, something wild and devil-may-care. Instead I just felt a little confused and sad, as well as vulnerable and exposed.
***
Susan warmed up a little on the walk back along the front, enlivened slightly by a stream of weak jokes from me. After a while I felt her cold hand seek out mine, and I grasped it and did my best to warm it up. The village we passed in front of seemed to have died utterly during the course of the evening. The streets were silent and not a single light showed in any of the windows. It was like walking beside a photograph of a ghost town.
Until we got closer to our guest house, that is. From a way off we could see that all the lights seemed to be on, though dimly, and as we approached we began to hear the sound of car doors slamming carried on the quiet air. About fifty yards away we stopped.
The street outside the house, which had been empty when we’d arrived, was lined both sides with cars. The lights were on, on all three floors. They looked dim because in each window a shade was pulled down. The other guests had evidently arrived.
As we looked, someone moved behind one of the upper windows. The angle of the light behind him or her cast a grotesquely shaped shadow on the blind, and I found myself shivering for no evident reason. Quietly, and to myself, I wished that we were staying somewhere else. Like London.
I was fumbling for our key on the doorstep when suddenly the door was pulled wide. Warm yellow light spilled out of the hallway and Susan and I looked up, blinking, to see the old lady proprietor standing in front of us. My first befuddled thought was that we must have transgressed some curfew and she was about to berate us for being late.
Far from it. The old crone’s manner was bizarrely improved, and she greeted us with strange and twittering warmth before ushering us into the hallway. Once there she steered us into the sitting room before we’d even had time to draw breath, though we had no desire to go there. Susan entered the room first and glanced back at me. I opened my eyes wide to signal my bafflement. Susan shrugged, and we seemed to mutually decide that it would be easier to go along with it.
The old woman flapped us towards some chairs in the centre of the room and offered us a cup of tea. My first impulse was to refuse—I was beginning to sag rather by then—but then remembered that our room didn’t have so much as a kettle, and accepted. The woman clapped her hands together in apparent delight, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Susan glancing at me again. There was nothing I could tell her. None of it was making any sense to me either, and as soon as the woman left the room I turned to Susan and said so. I also observed that there seemed to be something gaudy and strange about the old woman. She looked different.
“She’s wearing make-up,” she said. “And that dress?”
The dress, made of some dark green material, was certainly not to my taste, and the make-up had been hastily applied, but it clearly spoke of some effort being made. Presumably it was the new guests, whoever they might be, who merited such a transformation. We looked round the room, feeling slightly ill at ease. On the table to one side of me I noticed something.
A pamphlet for the Dawton Festival lay next to the large glass ashtray. I looked across at the windowsill and saw that the one I had consulted earlier was still there. For want of anything else to do I picked it up and showed it to Susan. Flicking through the pages a second time failed to furnish us with any more information on what the Festival might consist of. When we got to the centre pages I nudged Susan, looking forward to drawing her attention to the oddity of a Dawton Beauty contest. But when my finger was pointing at the photo I suddenly stopped.
I realised now what had struck me about the publican in The Aldwinkle, the aspect of his appearance which I hadn’t been able to put my finger on. There had been something about the shape of his head, the ratio of its width to its depth, the bone structure and the positioning of the ears, which reminded me forcibly of the degraded photograph of “Miss Dawton.” I couldn’t believe that she actually looked like that, that I was seeing something other than the result of dark and badly reproduced tones blending into each other, but still the resemblance was there.
“It must be his daughter.”
When Susan spoke I turned to her, startled.
“It’s just the printing,” I said. “She can’t look like that.” Susan shook her head firmly.
“It’s his daughter.”
The door slid quietly open and I quickly slipped the leaflet to one side, trying to hide it. I don’t know why: it just seemed like a good idea. It didn’t work.
“Will you be staying for the Festival?” the old woman croaked, laying two cups of brick-red tea down on the table. She addressed her comment to Susan, who said no. Our plan, as discussed in the restaurant, was to rise early the next morning and get the hell back to London. I was loath to question her too closely on what the Festival might involve, because I was aware that I was enunciating my words very carefully to keep the drunkenness out of my voice. On the few occasions when Susan spoke I heard her doing the same thing.
As we sat there, sipping our tea and listening to her rustling voice, I began to feel a curious mixture of relaxation and unease. If the Festival was such a draw, why wouldn’t she tell us about it? And was it my imagination or did she cock her head slightly every now and then, as if listening for something?
A few moments later the second question at least seemed to be answered. We heard the sound of the front door being opened and then, after a long pause, being shut again. Still talking in her dry and uninformative voice the old crone slipped over towards the door to the sitting room and then, instead of going out, gently pushed it shut. She carried on talking for a few moments as Susan and I watched her, wondering what she was up to. Perhaps it was my tired mind, but her chatter seemed to lose cohesion for a while, as if her attention was elsewhere. After a couple of moments she came to herself again, and re-opened the door. Then, with surprising abruptness, she said goodnight and left the room.
; Coming at the end of a day which felt like it had lasted forever, the whole vignette was almost laughable: not because it was funny, but because it was odd in some intangible way that made you want to cover it with sound. Neither of us felt much like actually laughing, I suspect, as we levered ourselves out of the dreadfully uncomfortable chairs and made our way unsteadily upstairs.
I was especially quiet on the stairs, because I wasn’t wearing any shoes. Strange, perhaps, that the old woman had either not noticed this or had chosen not to make any comment.
***
My memories ofthe next hour or so are confused and very fragmentary. I wish they weren’t, because somewhere in them may be some key to what happened afterwards. I don’t know. This is what I remember.
We went upstairs to our room, passing doors under which lights shone brightly, and behind which low voices seemed to be murmuring. As we wove down the corridor I thought at first that a soft smoke was beginning to percolate down from the ceiling. It wasn’t, of course. I simply wasn’t seeing very well. I felt suddenly very drunk again: more drunk, in fact, than at any point in the evening. Susan, though only a pace or two in front of me, seemed a very long way ahead, and walking that short corridor seemed to take much longer than it should.
A sudden hissing noise behind one of the doors made me veer clumsily to the other side of the corridor, where I banged into an opposite door. It seemed to me that some sound stopped then, though I couldn’t remember what it had been. As I leaned my head on the door to our room and tried to remember how you used a key I found myself panting slightly, my shoulders slumped and weak. Another wave of vagueness surged into my head and I turned laboriously to Susan, who was standing weaving by my side, and asked her if she felt all right. She answered by suddenly clapping her hands over her mouth and stumbling away towards the toilet.
I leaned in the direction she’d gone, realised or decided that I wouldn’t be much help, and fell into our room instead. The light switch didn’t seem important, either because of the weak moonlight filtering into the room or because I couldn’t be bothered to find it. I flapped my way out of my coat with sluggish brutality and sat heavily on the bed. I started unbuttoning my shirt and then suddenly gave up. I simply couldn’t do it.
Shadows Over Innsmouth Page 41