by Babs Horton
The sun was rising above Bloater Row and the world was filling up with the colours of day. The sky was awash with pink and yellow streaks like a painting done with too much water on the brush. The dark roofs of the houses in Bloater Row were lightening from black to grey and the bright green moss that grew in the guttering glistened with dew. The worn-down cobbles were dappled with a syrupy light and the porthole windows of the Pilchard Inn glowed like eyes.
Outside the Galvinis’house the Virgin in her little case set into the wall peered out through the misted glass, the candle at her feet spluttering with the last of its life.
A bad-tempered crow called out from the roof of Cuckoo’s Nest where the Kellys still slept behind newspaper curtains. A cockerel crowed and silver-winged gulls keened and swooped through the wisps of smoke that drifted up from the chimney of the old Boathouse.
Archie hurried along Bloater Row, the door to Bag End was unlocked and with relief he crept inside. He stood in the hallway and listened out for any sounds. The fat porker was snoring away upstairs in the bedroom. He was safe! Archie climbed quietly up the steep staircase, tiptoed across the landing and made it thankfully into his own room. He slipped out of his filthy clothes, crawled beneath the thick eiderdown and slept.
Fleep hurried back along the coastal path. He was breathing heavily and the muscles in his legs ached from running. He climbed down the path that ran behind the old Boathouse leading down to Skilly Beach. He stopped for a moment and bent double to ease his stitch.
Then he made his way across the beach and up through the hole in the rocks. Hurriedly he opened the front door to the Grockles and let himself in.
“Filthy bastards!”
Fleep spun around in fear. From his perch the parrot eyed him balefully.
“You bloody thing, you’re enough to stop a man’s heart!”
“Tetch the tea!” the parrot squawked.
Fleep threw himself down onto the bed. What a time he’d had. Dear God, he’d almost died of embarrassment. If only he had! Hell, that moment when he’d looked up and seen a whole army of schoolgirls grinning down at him from the cliff top. And then that old woman screaming like a raving lunatic!
Christ! He was mortified.
He lay very still for a while, hands covering his flushed face.
He couldn’t get anything right, could he? If he’d managed to walk out into the sea as he’d planned then a bloody sailing ship would have come to his rescue! But to have your last swim in this world witnessed by an audience of hysterical schoolgirls and two middle-aged school mistresses. How was he to know that there was a bloody girls’ school perched up on the cliffs? God almighty! He began to laugh then, quietly at first and then louder. The parrot echoed him.
Haaaaaa! HAAAA!
Fleep laughed until the sparsely furnished room echoed and somebody next door banged loudly on the wall. Then, exhausted, he closed his eyes and drifted off, for the first time in many months, into an exhausted but welcome sleep.
Walter Grimble woke, sat up and stretched out a hand for his cigarettes. He tipped up the packet and grimaced when he found it empty. He checked his watch, it was just gone eleven and Martha wouldn’t be back from the market until late in the afternoon. He couldn’t wait that long for a smoke. Nan Abelson, God bless the frosty bint, kept a glass jar full of fags behind the bar in the Pilchard and sold them separately. If he could get his hands on Archie’s money tin he’d help himself to a couple of bob, maybe enough even for a couple of pints. A man was entitled to a few pleasures in life after all.
He sat up and listened. It was quiet in Bag End, just the tick of the clock down in the parlour and the drip of the scullery tap.
He pulled on his clothes, crossed the landing and opened the door to Archie’s room. He was put out to see the boy lying asleep in his bed.
Archie woke with a start, looked up and saw his father standing in the doorway. He flinched; he hadn’t heard him get up, if he had he’d have been out of the house like a shot.
Walter stepped into the room and spotted the pile of filthy clothes in the corner where Archie had left them. He lurched over to them, lifted them up with his big toe.
“Look at the bloody state on these!”
Archie sighed.
“And good God, boy, look at your face! You look like you’ve been licking a cow’s arse.”
“I’m sorry for getting dirty and ruining my clothes.”
“Sorry! So you bloody well should be. Where the hell have you been to get in such a state?”
Archie fell silent, bit his lip. He wasn’t going to tell about the chapel.
Not even if he got belted.
“What have you been up to?”
“I…Id…don’t…”
“Don’t stammer, Archie, you know I can’t abide stammering!”
“I…I…If…f…fell in the sea.”
“Fell in the sea! Don’t make me laugh! You never get dose enough to the sea to fall in it!”
Archie stared down at the floor miserably.
Walter Grimble smiled, a cruel, thin-lipped smile.
“You’ve been up to your old tricks again, ain’t you, Arch? You been sleepwalking again. Tell the truth and shame the devil.”
There was no way out. Archie nodded slowly, averted his gaze.
“It ain’t natural, Archie. Normal people don’t get up in the middle of the night wim their eyes shut and wander about the place like bloody ghosts.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry my arse. Think I don’t know what goes on in my own house? Think I don’t know that the last few weeks your mother’s been washing the sheets out every morning and the stupid dot thinks I don’t realize! Always covering up for you, Archie, she is.”
Archie blushed.
His wetting the bed was a secret between him and Mammy.
Mammy said not to go worrying his head about it. It was probably to do with the shock of Benjamin dying. Worrying only made it worse. She said he’d grow out of it and that thousands of kids had the same problem.
“You piss the bed regular and you’re ten years of age. Bloody disgusting that is, Arch. She should rub your bloody nose in it!”
Archie flinched and brushed away a tear.
“I blame her, mind, always treating you like a bloody baby, mollycoddling you. She wants to let you harden up a bit, make a proper boy out of you.”
“I am a proper boy,” Archie mumbled.
Walter Grimble threw back his head, opened his mouth and laughed loudly, spraying spit all over the place.
“You’re an apology for a boy, Archie Grimble! A bleeding embarrassment as a son, that’s what you are. And let me tell you this, keep up the sleepwalking and pissing the bed and you’ll end up in a place where they take boys like you.”
Archie swallowed hard and said nothing.
“There’s homes, institutions for cripples and halfwits where they shut them up, keep them out of the way so normal folk can get on with their lives.”
Archie felt the tears stinging his eyes and his throat tightening until he could barely swallow.
“Tell you what, though, maybe I’ll let you off, Arch, this time. Don’t suppose you’ve a few bob saved up?”
Archie nodded and went slowly across to the cupboard and took down his savings tin. He took out a half-crown and held it out with a trembling hand.
Walter Grimble took the half-crown but kept his hand held out, waggling his filthy fingers.
Archie went back to the cupboard and took out his last half-crown and handed it over.
Walter Grimble winked at Archie and left the room, whistling cheerfully as he went down the stairs.
Archie threw himself down on the bed and punched the pillows with his clenched fists. He hated that bloody man. He was not going to let the bloody porker put him away, locked up in an asylum.
Eventually he calmed down. He went downstairs, washed his face and helped himself to a handful of biscuits from the tin in the scullery. Then he went back to h
is bedroom to read the letter from Benjamin. He opened the envelope carefully, lifted the pages up to his nose. He could almost smell the old man’s skin.
He’d never seen Benjamin’s handwriting until now.
Dear Archie, by the time you get this letter I will be long gone. I wanted to say goodbye to you in person but that wasn’t possible. I wonder if you ever will get into the wobbly chapel? Don’t worry, old son, if you can’t face it, I was a daft old bugger to ask you in the first place. It’s a queer old place—quite ancient—and built by the first settlers in the Skallies going back to the 1600s. The same fellow who built Killivray House built the chapel and the houses here in the Skallies.
Well, my son, I’ve lived a colourful old life, not proud of all of it but no man is perfect, that’s a fact. I’ve learned a lot as I’ve gone on and the biggest lesson I ever learned was to change, to keep on changing and never stand still in your thinking. People aren’t always what they seem—usually they’re a lot better, but not always. Trust your instincts, Archie, and you’ll be all right.
Life brings its share of knocks and losses but we have to get by and make the most.
I’ve had a feeling in my water these last weeks that things may start moving and changing in the Skailies. There’s a restlessness in the air and things don’t stay the same for evex. I’ve been real fond of the Skailies, Arch, it’s a quaint old place and I’ll be sorry to leave it all behind—it was a sanctuary to me for many years—kept me in touch with normal folk, folk down on their luck. A lot of people look down on the Skailies people but that’s just ignorance and fear. It’s a Halfway House of a place—but people need to move on. The tide washes over some secrets and covers them up but it throws up others, like flotsam and jetsam.
The truth is always the best option, I believe, however painful. So be sure to search for it and know what it is when you find it. Nan is a good old stick—tetchy but truthful. Someone you can trust.
You’ve hopefully got the keys by now—anything they open will be yours, remember that. Whether you find the right locks to open, well only fate will decide. Mayhap you’ll find out the secrets of the past and mayhap you won’t. Perhaps you don’t need to and I’m just being a silly old bugger!
Trust in yourself, though, Arch, and don’t let people put you down. Be sure to look after and respect that brave mother of yours, God knows she hasn’t had it easy. As for the porker, well who knows—maybe his ship will come in one of these days. I’ve put a few shillings away over the years and there’s a few bob for you when you’re twenty-one. Nan knows about this and if you move on you need to let her know where you’re going—best not for your mammy to know just yet. If you get in any difficulties, Arch, there’s a couple of old biddies over at Nanskelly School who would do you a good turn if you were in need: Miss Thomas and Miss Fanthorpe. And of course the Galvinis can be trusted. Watch out for them Kellys, though I don’t need to tell you that.
With love, old son, Benjamin
Archie folded the letter and hid it under the mattress. He’d read it again later when his eyes weren’t so watery. Now he needed to get out of the house. He had to get some air into his lungs and blow away the stench of his father.
Archie stepped out into Bloater Row and looked across at Hogwash House. It would never be the same to him now. Someday someone would turn up and move in and wipe all traces of Benjamin away. They couldn’t wipe Archie’s memories away; he’d got them to keep. He’d treasure the letter from Benjamin and keep it for ever.
In the Boathouse Gwennie filled the battered kettle from the tap and put it on the stove to make a brew. She was all of a quiver this morning. She’d been unable to get to sleep when she’d got back from Killivray House and when she had finally drifted off she’d been plagued by terrible dreams.
It had been daft of her to go back, silly bugger that she was. She’d sworn years ago that she’d never set a foot back inside that house ever again. Yet last night she’d felt drawn to the place, felt she had to step inside one more time.
It was just an old woman’s daftness, an old woman still mithering about revenge. Revenge for what? For her own stupidity?
There was no one left to blame except herself and fate. It did no good going back over what might have been. If, if…If only. What was it her mother used to say? “If stands stiff in a poor man’s pocket.”
She filled a tin mug with tea and wandered to the window.
She opened the curtains and looked across the beach to where the window of the wobbly chapel glinted in the sunlight.
She could have sworn that there’d been someone in there with a torch last night.
Why, though? Why the hell would someone want to get in there in the dead of night?
She wouldn’t go in there, not even if she was paid a King’s ransom. The sooner the wind took that place away the better.
The sea was calm now after the storm and yet she knew that something wasn’t right She’d felt it ever since Benjamin had been buried. There was a peculiar tension in the air all around, a wild spirit blowing in off the sea. And that always meant trouble in the Skallies.
She knew it from the way the smoke rose from the chimneys of the houses in Bloater Row, from the strange ripples in the sand that the sea left behind and the desperate keening of the gulls out past Skilly Point Things were out of kilter, that was for sure.
She closed the curtains, moved around the cramped room, running her hand along the rusted anchor, sidestepping the figurehead from an old ship, a sly-eyed monster of a woman with enormous breasts carved from wood. She opened the warped drawer of an old chest, took out a small metal box and lifted out a pair of tiny mittens. She held them in her gnarled hand, clenched them between her fingers, then she lifted them up to her face.
There was no smell to them that mattered any more. Just ageing wool and mildew but once they had smelled of him.
She dosed her eyes and remembered the small fingers grasping her own, oh so tightly. She’d thought that he would cling on to her for ever and nobody would be able to part them.
She recalled the flicker of his eyelashes as he opened his milky blue eyes. The smell of his brow and the pulse of first mother’s milk filling her breasts…
Then the tiny ringers being forcefully peeled away from her own and the sound of crying, sharp as glass on the freezing air. There was nothing left of him now, just this box of mementoes slowly turning to dust.
Outside the wind was fresh after the storm and the sky lightening. Archie made his way thoughtfully along Bloater Row and as he stepped through the hole in the rock he came face to face with the two eldest Kelly boys.
Donald and Kevin.
Archie stepped backwards in alarm.
They’d be bound to notice he’d been crying and poke fun at him.
Donald Kelly punched him playfully on the arm. “All right, Archie?”
He smiled a horrible, filthy-toothed smile.
Kevin smiled too; smiling didn’t suit the Kelly brothers one little bit.
“Can’t stop, Archie, got to go, haven’t we, Kevin? We’re going fishing with the old man.”
Archie stiffened, any minute now and they’d whack him.
But to his amazement they didn’t, they edged carefully past him. Donald winked at him and then they raced down Bloater Row and in through the door of Cuckoo’s Nest.
Archie shook his head in disbelief; someone must have cast a spell on them both.
Archie climbed carefully down to the beach.
He stood looking out to sea, the cold wind ruffling his fine hair and adding a brushstroke of colour to his pale cheeks.
He looked up at the round window of the wobbly chapel. From outside the window was nothing special but the colours when the light shone through it were wonderful.
He could hardly believe now that he’d been inside the chapel. He’d have to be brave again and go back in there, he was sure there was more that Benjamin had meant him to find, something that he had missed in the terror of last
night.
He glanced warily across at the Boathouse perched on the rocks at the opposite side of the beach. The door was shut and the curtains closed, a thin wreath of smoke like a question mark rising from the lopsided chimney.
He limped down towards the water’s edge, knelt down and dipped his fingers in the water. It was icy. It was a miracle to him that he had, only last night, been in the sea, touched the bottom and lived to tell the tale. It was a miracle! For a moment he thought he heard stifled laughter. He stood up and turned around quickly. The beach was empty, just the wind rustling through the reedy grass of the sand dunes.
Then he saw it.
A bottle lying half buried in the sand.
Archie gasped. He’d always hoped that this would happen one day, that he’d find a message in a bottle that would add some excitement to his dull life.
He took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes, put them on and looked again.
It was an old green bottle, frosted with age, a rough cork stuffed into the top. Through the misted glass he could see that there was something inside the bottle. He knelt down awkwardly; his legs were stiff and sore from his battering last night. He stretched out his trembling hand…
The cork eased out with a gentle pop. He tilted the bottle and shook it but the piece of paper would not come out. He scrabbled around in the sand until he found a thin twig. Then he sat down, jiggled the twig around in the bottle, gently easing the piece of dirty paper towards the neck of the bottle.
Easy, easy. Damn and blast.
This time, this time. Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.
He pinched the protruding end of grubby paper between finger and thumb and drew it out from the bottle. He unfolded it carefully, his breath scratchy with excitement.
With astonishment he saw his own name written at the top of the scrap of paper. He adjusted his spectacles and read on excitedly.
TO ARCHIE GRIMBLE
Archie Grimble has a spotty arse.
He threw down the paper, screwed up his eyes, turned around and with utter dismay saw the Kelly brothers racing down the beach towards him, whooping and shrieking like Red Indians after scalps.