by Babs Horton
The wobbly chapel still stood, silhouetted against a restless sky. The roof was a skeleton of rotten beams and a DANGER KEEP OUT sign was nailed to the wall.
The Pilchard Inn looked as it always had and through the glass of the porthole windows a light burned brightly and a radio blurted out the shipping news.
He reached out and took hold of the door handle.
The landlord of the Pilchard Inn looked up at the handsome young man with the rucksack who had just come in.
“What will you have, sir?”
“A pint of Best,” he said, “and a room for the night if you have one.”
“No trouble. We’ve only one other guest staying at the moment, and they’re up at the school most of the time. You planning on staying long?”
“A couple of nights.”
“On holiday, sir?”
“Kind of. I came into a small inheritance when I was twenty-one, wanted to see a bit of the world.”
“You’re not from round these parts then?”
“No, I’ve been most of my life in Italy. But I was here for a while as a kid. I lived in the house they called Bag End. And yourself?”
The man smiled. “Bit of a halfway house for me, mate. Strange story really, I was down on my uppers and met a chap who asked if I fancied running this place until I got on my feet.”
“Did you meet him round here?”
“No, in a funny little all-night cafe off the Edgware Road.”
Archie Grimble smiled and took a sip of his pint.
“Does much go on round here?” he asked.
“It’s very quiet in the winter but we get a lot of kids down staving at Hogwash House throughout the year. And quite a few of the staff from Killivray House come up for a drink evening times when they’re off duty.”
“From Killivray?”
“Big place up through the woods. It used to be privately owned, by posh folk. It’s a school now.”
“A school?”
“It’s a great place, sort of international school, run by the Chameleon Trust, same people as own Hogwash and most of what’s left of the Skallies. The kids come from all over the place. Bit like the United Nations, Chinese, Indian, French. They’ve a reunion on at the moment…”
Archie marvelled that Thomas Greswode’s legacy stretched far and wide; even after his death there was a network of people still working, still helping people down on their luck. He still had an awful lot to learn about Thomas Greswode.
“You wouldn’t know the name of the head teacher there?”
“Miss Fanthorpe; she used to be head of Nanskelly and came to Killivray when the school transferred. She was a regular here every Friday night her and Miss Thomas. One fish and prawn pie, one sea bass and three or four large gin and vermouths.”
“You said was, is she not there any more?”
“Just retired. There’s a new woman there now but I can’t remember her name. Miss Fanthorpe’s gone abroad to live.”
Archie looked disappointed. “So, Nanskelly’s not a school any more?”
“No, it’s an old folk’s home now, but the noise from that place makes you wonder what goes on half the time. A wild bunch of old codgers they are up there. Will you be wanting any food tonight?”
“I would, if that’s all right.”
“Wife’ll knock you up something. Fish and prawn pie, maybe? She makes a good pasty too; she found an old recipe book behind the dresser in the kitchen, belonging to a Mrs something or other.”
“Mrs Dennis,” Archie said.
“That’s right. Howti you know that?”
“I’m a student of history and I’ve been a bit of a detective in my time,” he said with a laugh but noticed the look of worry cross the man’s face.
“I’m not a policeman,” Archie said quickly.
The landlord relaxed. “Well, if it’s history you like we’ve unearthed all sorts of junk in this place, I can tell you. We found a box of old photographs that was salvaged after the Great Storms. We had them cleaned up and refrained, see,” he pointed at the walls.
Archie put down his drink and stepped up to a large photograph that hung to the left of the fireplace. His breathing quickened.
“Apparently it’s a photo of the family that used to live at Killivray House. Taken about the turn of the century, we reckon. Snooty lot of buggers some of them look.”
The picture was taken outside the front of Killivray House. A man and woman stood at the centre, stiff-lipped and unsmiling. A haughty-looking Mr Greswode and his sour-faced wife. On their right was a boy of about fourteen, stocky, buck-toothed and bullish-looking. Charles Greswode. On their left a young Thomas Greswode with a small dog at his feet a dog looking up lovingly at his young master.
On the far right a smiling woman who looked like a cook stood next to a pretty, grinning parlour maid who was glancing surreptitiously along the line to where a tall, handsome black man stood, straight-backed and smiling shyly at the camera, his hand resting lovingly on Thomas’ shoulder.
Archie moved on to the next photograph. It was of a group of laughing boys outside the Pilchard Inn, holding a smaller boy aloft A boy with one hand clinging on to a silver cup and the other to a cricket bat.
Archie held back a tear as he looked at Thomas Greswode in his moment of triumph.
Then his eyes rested on another boy who was looking up at Thomas, a boy with a large bandage around his left hand.
Thomas had said in his diary, “Benj wasn’t in chapel…because he’d cut his hand badly and had to have it stitched…”
Archie looked at the proud face of Benjamin Tregantle, a man he’d never met. Sister Isabella had told Archie that Benjamin had worked with Il Camaleonte and had lost his life trying to get children out of France. He was wounded near Bizier but they’d managed to get him back to Santa Caterina where he was buried in the unmarked grave; a grave that bore his name now.
Thomas Greswode had returned to the Skallies as Benjamin Tregantle. There he had met Margot Greswode and learned of her miserable existence in Killivray House and he had planned her escape…and his own death…
Archie made his way over to the last photograph.
The barman looked up.
“That one wasn’t taken around here. If you look up close youll see a name over the gates…Convent of the Blessed Saints, Dungonally. Somewhere in Ireland, I reckon.”
Archie stepped closer. It was a black and white photograph taken looking through some wrought-iron gates. Beyond the gates was a garden almost entirely full of lines of washing.
It was a queer sort of photograph to take of a load of washing.
He put his hand to his head and closed his eyes…
He was being lifted up and his mammy was pointing in through the gates and whispering to him. The touch of the iron was cold on his small fingers and afterwards his fists tasted of tears and rust.
There was a strong smell of soapsuds and bleach; starch and scorched cotton…
He’d watched in fascination as rainbow-streaked bubbles drifted high into the air.
“Wave to Mammy, Archie, wave now, my darling boy, ifll be a long time until she’ll set eyes on you again…”
He remembered a young girl peeping out from behind a billowing sheet…
He blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked back at the photograph…
There, peeping out from a sheet that looked as if it was about to take off, was a young girl, no older than about sixteen, a girl waving sadly.
“Are you all right, sir?” the barman enquired.
“Yes, fine.”
“My wife is from Ireland, not far from Cork. She thinks it was one of them laundry places where they used to put the poor little girls who had babies before they were married. Cruel bloody way to treat people, if you ask me.”
Archie stood very still, his hand to his mouth…
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.
Maybe one day soon he’d make his way to Dungonally and make some enquiries. On the other hand he might not. Life hadn’t dealt him such a bad hand.
“Ill have another pint and one for yourself,” he said. “And I think I’ll go for the pasty, for old times’sake.”
Winston Clark lay on the bottom bunk bed and looked across at the framed sampler that hung on the whitewashed wall. It wasn’t like the ones they had at home in his house in Willesden. The ones that most grown-ups liked to put on the wall said GOD IS GOOD and BLESS THIS HOUSE. This one said SHUT MOUTH NEVER CATCH FLY.
He didn’t think that was from the Bible.
What did it mean though? Who would want to keep their mouth open and catch a fly in it?
That was mad. He’d have to think about that one.
He’d done a lot of thinking since he’d been here in the Skallies. He liked it here in this Hogwash House place. At first he hadn’t wanted to come, he’d rather have hung round with his mates all summer but he’d liked the bloke that came and gave the talk at school; Peejay was great.
Every year his school brought a group of kids to stay, kids who’d had a bad time of it, like he had losing his dad. It was free too, paid for by some toffee-nosed charity people or other. Just as well, though, otherwise there was no way he could’ve come, not with being one of seven and his mum working all hours just to put some food on the table and all that.
When he was older he was going to get a job here like Peejay. That was a great job being out of doors most of the time, telling the kids all about the history and that and taking them down to the rock pools and showing them things. Blennies and shrimps; anemones and cuttle fish; things he’d never heard of back in London. He’d been swimming every day and climbed the rocks and his asthma hadn’t given him no gyp at all.
And tomorrow they were going to help Peejay clean out that dirty old Boathouse down on the beach. It was dead spooky, that place. Once a mad woman had lived there and sometimes they said you could hear music playing in the middle of the night. Ghost music…
Peejay said there was all kinds of things in there that needed to be sorted out. Old-fashioned gramophones and the records they called seventy-eights that broke real easy. He couldn’t wait.
He sat up and took the little capsule from his pocket He’d found it buried deep in the sand down below the place they called the wobbly chapel. You could unscrew the capsule and inside there was a tiny silver saint. It was magic.
He stood up and fetched his jumper; it got cold down on the beach in the evening. It was getting dark now and soon Peejay would be lighting the bonfire and there was going to be hot dogs and beefburgers. He opened his door and called out to Clive. He was another boy who’d had bad luck: both his folks got killed in a car crash on the North Circular.
“Come on, Clive, is time for the bonfire.”
“I’m in the shower. Go down without me and I’ll catch you up in a bit.”
“Nah, is okay, I’ll wait.”
He wasn’t going to walk down Bloater Row on his own, man, there was supposed to be ghosts mat walked there after dark. One of the girls said she’d seen one, it was naked and it had no head and chains around its ankles.
There was a Spanish pirate too, with one eye and hooks where his hands should have been.
But the worst one of all was the Killivray ghost Some Rastafarian guy who came wandering around moaning and sobbing and wringing his hands.
“Hurry up, Clive, you going to miss the food.”
“You afraid to go down on your own or somethink?”
“No way! I ain’t afraid of nuthin’.”
He sighed, ran down the stairs, and stood for a moment in the porch. He sniffed; he could smell tobacco, the kind of old-fashioned stuff that his grandpa used to stuff down into a pipe. It had a rude name: Old Shag.
He peeped out of the porch and looked warily up and down Bloater Row.
The wind rocked the dilapidated upside-down boat that lay to the left of the house as if someone was under there, and trying to get out.
He put the little silver saint in his pocket. For good hick. Then he pegged it down to Skilly Beach without stopping once.
Archie Grimble woke at first light It was raining and a rough wind rattled the windows. In the room next door a radio was playing quietly and he heard the sound of a window opening-He rubbed a dear patch in the misted window and looked out into Bloater Row. The rain was hammering down and he watched as it bounced off the cobbles, and listened to the splash as the gutters of Skibbereen overflowed. The door to the pub opened and he heard a squeal as someone stepped out into Bloater Row. He looked down and saw a young woman, head down, umbrella pointed like a shield at the wind. She hurried along Bloater Row, rain splashing up and spattering the back of her legs, her coat billowing out like a sail. He could hear her laughter as she battled her way along and then she disappeared down onto the beach.
He made his way down to the bar for breakfast. There was a lingering hint of perfume in the air and a half-drunk cup of coffee and a hurriedly nibbled piece of toast left on the table.
“Thought you might have had company but the lady wanted to be up at the school early,” explained the landlord. “Shame you won’t meet her, she’s off today, back to London.”
Archie was relieved to eat alone. He didn’t want company at the moment.
The rain had stopped and the cobbles of Bloater Row steamed. Above the chimneys of Killivray House a rainbow melted away. He walked slowly down to Skilly Beach where he stood among the sand dunes listening to the breeze as it whispered through the long spiky grass. Smoke spiralled up from the chimneys of Killivray House and the sound of children at play drifted over the tree tops. He turned and looked across at the Boathouse. The door was opened and the sound of cracked gramophone music reached him.
There’sa song in the air
But the fair senorita
Doesn’t seem, to care for the song in the air…
Sñorita donkeysita, not so fleet as a mosquito,
Butso sweet like my Chiquita,
You’re the one for me.
Ole!
Hell, he’d been terrified of the Boathouse when he was a kid. The very sight of a candle flickering behind the salt-caked windows had been enough to turn his legs to jelly.
All the tales people used to tell about Gwennie; that when she was hungry she went on the hunt for hens like a fox, bit off their heads and squeezed out their blood and drank it down in one gurgling gulp.
He’d believed all that nonsense too. God, he used to be afraid of his own shadow.
He sat down on a rock and watched in fascination as a man about his own age came out onto the steps of the Boathouse. He put down a box full of old newspapers, looked across at Archie and said, “God, ifs like Miss Havisham’s junk room in there.”
Four lads came out laughing and gasping, carrying what looked like the figurehead from an ancient boat They carried it unsteadily down to the beach and put it down on the sand.
“Peejay, that is disgustin’, all her thingies are on show, that’s porn, that is.”
“Well, it’s sixteenth-century porn by the look of it and that makes it history. Hell, when the museum folk pitch up they’ll be doing cartwheels. Now get your backsides back up here.”
A red-headed girl came out next wrinkling her freckled nose up in disgust carrying a broken lobster pot another girl behind her with what looked like the bleached ribs of a giant whale.
“Then a black boy came running out excitedly. This looks like one of them hand grenade things from the war…”
Archie turned and looked at the thing in his hand.
He ran towards the boy.
“Stand still! Don’t touch the pin. It’ll blow you to buggery!”
He snatched at the grenade, knocking the surprised child off his feet and lobbed it as far as he could. There was an enormous explosion and a shower of sand rained down upon them.
“To buggery and back again!” Archie said spitting out a mouthful of sand.
He looked across at the boy who was spreadeagled in the sand, eyes enormous with shock.
The needle on the gramophone was stuck and grated and screeched.
Peejay appeared in the doorway, white with fear, the rest of the teenagers behind him.
“You okay, Winston?”
The boy nodded silently.
“I wouldn’t touch anything else in there, if I were you,” Archie said, getting unsteadily to his feet.
“Jesus! What was it?” Peejay said, racing down the steps.
“Hand grenade. Live!”
“He saved my life,” Winston Clark suddenly realized the close shave he’d had. “And there’s a whole box of them in the cupboard,” the boy said, scrabbling to his knees.
“Thank you so much,” Peejay said. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he added, peering at Archie. The record jumped, the music started up again.
Sñorita donkeysita, not so fleet as a mosquito,
But so sweet like my Chiquita,
You’rethe one for me.
Ole!
“You’re Archie Grimble from Bag End!”
Archie looked up, batting sand from his hair.
“Peejay Kelly. Peter. I used to live in Cuckoo’s Nest. My brothers used to be bastards to you. My God, they wouldn’t now, though, look at the size on you.”
Archie Grimble put out his hand and shook Peter Kelly’s.
“What in the name of God are you doing back here, Peter?”
“Well, we left, as you know, rather suddenly as I remember.”
“I know, Nan came to tell us. We didn’t have a clue where you’d gone.”
“To a pub in Ireland. The Kilpenny Arms. My folks inherited it from some distant relative they’d never heard of. They loved the pub life, did well enough for themselves, but I hated it. I had a stroke of luck, though, and got a letter about a scholarship to a school near Dublin and then when I left I came here to work. I love it And where’ve you been?”
“Italy.”
“Well fancy that! Do you know, we had bugger all when we were here as kids and yet we haven’t done bad, have we? Well, I’d better go and make sure that this lot don’t blow up what’s left of the Skallies. Are you staying here?”