Ill at Ease

by Mark West

  Ill At Ease

  All material and artwork Copyright © Stephen Bacon, Mark West & Neil Williams 2011

  Waiting For Josh © Stephen Bacon 2011

  Come See My House In The Pretty Town © Mark West 2011

  Closer Than You Think © Neil Williams 2011

  This ebook edition © PenMan Press 2011

  eBook formatting by Tim C Taylor (www.greyhartpress.com)

  The rights of Stephen Bacon, Mark West & Neil Williams to be identified as Authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Published by PenMan Press, by arrangement with the Authors. All rights reserved by the Authors.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  PenMan Press

  penmanpress@hotmail.co.uk

  http://www.penmanpress.blogspot.com/

  For

  Andrea, Alison & Michelle

  Thank you for giving us the time to dream…

  and the children

  Adam & Matthew, Matthew and Tallis

  This is what Daddy’s on about, when he says he’s writing…

  Thanks to:

  Sarah Fowler, Kim Talbot Hoelzli, David Roberts, Simon Marshall-Jones, Sefton Disney, Sheri Jenkins White and Val Walmsley - good proof readers all - and Tim C Taylor, for making it work

  Table Of Contents

  Waiting For Josh, by Stephen Bacon

  Come See My House In The Pretty Town, by Mark West

  Closer Than You Think, by Neil Williams

  Afterwords

  Biographies

  Waiting For Josh

  by Stephen Bacon

  When I got the call from Dale’s mum, I could tell by her voice that I needed to hurry. When you’ve worked at a paper like the Evening Standard for 15 years, you get used to detecting bad news in the tone of someone’s voice. I called in a couple of days’ leave and took a deep breath. Then I drove 250 miles to see my childhood friend die.

  To be fair, it had been almost 20 years since I’d seen him. The last time I’d been back to Scarborough had been in 1996 for Dad’s funeral. I’d stayed all of four hours, just enough time to pay my respects to Dad and check that Mum was okay. Visiting my childhood haunts was like facing a part of my past I wasn’t ready to see, so I didn’t hang around long. By nightfall I was back home, prowling my Crouch End apartment, reminding myself that I was now a hot-shot reporter.

  It was a Wednesday morning when I left London for North Yorkshire. I’d called ahead to tell Mum that I was coming, and I could imagine the excited bustling that I’d triggered by the news. It was reassuring to see greenery as I sped up the M1. It was a reminder that life still existed outside of London.

  By evening the roads had thinned away and I was driving along a quiet track flanked by dense woods on either side. My journey was almost at its end and I found my thoughts returning to my old friend, Dale.

  We were both born in 1965, exactly one week apart. He was in my class at school, and from the age of 9 we were firm friends. By 11 we were almost inseparable. The usual boyhood events had coloured our lives – camping in the woods, swimming at the lake, hunting for crabs on the beachfront. We even had our own secret code - a pattern of symbols representing letters, and we would write each other cryptic messages and leave them at the pre-arranged drop-off points in our neighbourhood. Dale had his own library card and we read all the Hardy Boys mysteries and Three Investigators books, keen to start our own crime-solving gang. He’d always been far more outgoing than I had; confidence in abundance, always the one with suggestions and enthusiasm, always the one with the drive. It’s fair to say that he influenced me enough to broaden my horizons, giving me the ambition to look to a future beyond the borders of Scarborough. When I left for university to study journalism, it was fuelled with the confidence than Dale had instilled in me. And yet I’d learned that he’d spent the last 20 years in a derelict flat, drinking himself to death.

  How could such a thing happen? How could a fun-loving, friendly, generous, intelligent young man end up such a middle-aged wreck? I wanted to find out what had occurred in those intervening years, to try to come to terms with what had gone on and to understand his life. But most of all I just wanted to see my old pal before the end.

  I could hear the roar of the sea on my right. Every so often the trees dropped away and I caught a glimpse of the ragged shoreline, imagining the spray on my face, recalling the stark elegance of the North East coastline. As I drew closer to Scarborough, the darkening sky began to glow with an approaching sea mist.

  The road into town almost floored me – nostalgia evoked by the view left me shivering with nerves. Shops and houses were just as I remembered. It felt almost as if the town had awaited my return.

  I drew up outside Mum’s house. The trees were higher than they once were, summer rendering the yard with a lush depth that corroborated my memories. I could even see the stickers on the glass of my old bedroom window. Despite my fatigue, I managed to appear bright as Mum met me at the door with a hug and ushered me inside. We spent the rest of the evening drinking tea and talking. I was moved by how happy she was to see me, surprised how the last decade had aged her. Nevertheless, her face was animated as she fussed around. The old house was an oasis of comfort; it had hardly changed since I’d left, and I was reminded again how alien my life in London had become.

  The only dark undercurrent of our conversation was my reason for returning. We touched on Dale’s condition tenderly. She was as shocked as I was by the news that he was seriously ill. Though Dale and I had been very close as kids, our parents didn’t actually know each other that well. We lived centrally, while the Campbell’s house stood out on the coast road. My memories that evening were gentle recollections. We shared laughter and tales of reminiscent warmth. By the time I’d slipped between the covers of my old bed my mind was exhausted. I drifted into a cosy sleep.

  Mum’s breakfast the next morning cut back the years. I sat at the table and basked in the sun that poured through the window. Then I kissed my Mum and drove to the hospital, trying to ignore the sourness that was beginning to gnaw at my stomach.

  I’d arranged to meet Mrs Campbell in the visitors’ lounge. As I rode the lift up to the fourth floor, I couldn’t stop my legs shaking.

  She met me in the corridor. Her face was gaunt, and it trembled as she spotted me. Her embrace was firmer than I’d imagined, probably fuelled by emotion. She led me into the pastel-coloured visitors’ room and we both took a seat. For several moments she wiped her eyes while I struggled to make placatory noises. She thanked me for coming, and I heard her voice strengthening as the words began to flow.

  Dale had left home in 1984 - the same year that I’d left to go to Uni. He’d landed a cleaner’s job in Whitby. She expressed her disappointment that he’d chosen not to attend Uni as I had, but instead decided to work at a nursing home for the elderly. For the next five or six years they’d seen him only once, and spoken to him on the phone three times. He’d never bothered with Christmas or birthdays. On one occasion they’d read in a local newspaper about his arrest for being drunk and disorderly.

  Then about a month ago a doctor called and explained that Dale was in hospital, and due to the nature of the illness it was unlikely he would come out. Mr and Mrs Campbell rushed to his bedside and made the necessary arrangements to transfer him here.

  He was suffering from severe liver failure - his organs had been ravaged by prolonged alcohol abuse. Transplants were too late; ther
e was nothing anyone could do for him. He may have months – or as little as days – to live. Three days before, he had croaked a request to his mother that he’d like to see me.

  My first thought upon entering the ITU of the hospital was that I’d visited the wrong room. The patient in the bed – sallow-faced and gaunt - was hooked up through various pipes to a huge respirator that pumped oxygen into his chest with a sombre hiss. Tubes snaked from his nose, while the oxygen mask rendered his face even more unrecognisable. The chair scraped as I hesitantly took a seat, the noise causing his eyes to flutter open.

  Instantly I recognised my old friend in that husk of a body. The icy blue of his eyes – though yellowed through illness – was unmistakeable. I smiled nervously and took his hand, and he impatiently motioned to a nearby table.

  I was struggling with the weight of expectancy; what words could cut through 30 years of absence? How would I tackle Dale’s knowledge of his imminent death? Thankfully I was saved from this.

  “Dale –“, I began, but his hand flexed, pointing to a pad and a pen on the table.

  I passed them over and he wrote something in shaky writing – LANDSMOOR – before clutching my hand in a frail grip. He slumped back and closed his eyes. I sat for a moment, hesitant of what to say, how to begin, unsure even whether he recognised me. Then a frantic beeping emitted from the machinery. I leapt in panic and peered at the digits. A nurse hurried in and smiled reassuringly, ushering me into the corridor.

  I felt nervous and somewhat anti-climaxed. Blindly, I wandered back to the visitors’ reception where Mrs Campbell was waiting. I kept my face as calm as possible and explained that I thought he was tired and the nurses had asked me to leave while they attended to him. She was rather upset for all the trouble I had gone to getting here, but I reassured her and left with the promise of returning the following morning.

  The warmth of the sun relaxed me as I headed back to the car. I sat for several minutes, contemplating what had happened, trying to suppress the guilt I felt in avoiding speaking to Dale. And then, out of the blue, the name Landsmoor clicked into a slot in my brain. Spurred by an increasing ball of excitement, I started the engine and drove out of the car park.

  Part of my mind was exploring the possibility that I was doing anything to avoid confronting Dale’s illness, yet I was excited by the prospect of seeking out some tiny moment from my past, an event that I had not thought about for many years. Soon I was out on the coast road, heading south. To my left, the surf looked white and stark against the horizon. The road curved along the seafront, occasionally veering inland between the trees before settling onto a straight lane parallel with the beach.

  I remembered the name Landsmoor from when we were kids. I had an urge to satisfy my curiosity - an image that seemed bizarre to me all those years ago, and one that intrigued me once more.

  A bumpy track led off the main road, bisecting a wavy expanse of field.

  I followed it for a few hundred yards, feeling strangely suffocated by the grass which stood over four feet high. When we were kids these fields were full of cattle but they had obviously not contained livestock for many years. I wasn’t even sure if the Landsmoors still lived here, but as my car drew up outside the ramshackle farmhouse at the end of the lane I had a strong feeling that they’d remained.

  Once it had been a grand residence. The two front bedrooms sported balconies; there had been a modest swimming pool round the back. But neglect had hit the farmhouse in a way that amazed me. The roof appeared to sag in embarrassment; some of the wood panelling was faded and missing. Huge sections of the brickwork needed attention, and the windows were misted with grime. The roof of the outbuilding was missing several tiles. As I climbed out of the car and slammed the door, the noise startled a flock of birds into the air. I approached the house.

  It looked deserted. The back door was ajar. There was something about this that concerned me. I cautiously knocked on the door. For a minute or two the only sounds were the wind through the fields and the ticking of a refrigerator just inside the open door.

  “Hello?” My voice seemed to invade the silence.

  After a minute without response I gathered some courage and pushed open the door, stepping hesitantly into the darkness and shade of the house.

  The place was an absolute wreck. Dishes crowded the worktops; the floor was gritty with filth and cobwebs, and my movement stirred dust motes into the air. There was an unpleasant smell beneath the stagnant atmosphere. I paused at the foot of the stairs, stumbling briefly over the threadbare carpet. The place appeared to have been uninhabited for years, though there was the odd sign of recent life – a three-month old newspaper on the table, two or three Christmas cards pinned up.

  “Mrs Landsmoor?” I followed the echo of my voice up the stairs.

  There was an open door directly at the top and I could see straight into the empty bedroom. It was in a similar state of disarray as the rest of the house. Net curtains at the windows filtered out much of the sunlight. There was another door to my left - this one almost closed. I opened it and peered into the room.

  Spiderman and Darth Vader stared down from posters. The wallpaper was a vortex of browns and yellows, the seventies style almost unsettling me with its detail. I entered the room, wrinkling my nose at the stale air. Everything was neat and tidy, almost as if the bedroom was a museum exhibit. Dust coated the bedside table, furring the 1976 Beano annual and the old-fashioned LED alarm clock. There was an array of faded photographs in various frames on the drawers, all of the same ruddy-faced boy – a child I vaguely remembered from school – but the plethora of eyes unnerved me, as if I was being watched by a crowd. In one he was wearing a Bruce Lee t-shirt, smiling at something off camera. Uncomfortable thoughts urged me back onto the landing.

  From this angle I could see through the open doorway into the first bedroom. My body froze as I spotted a figure standing on the shade of the balcony. In that instant I experienced a shock so intense that it conjured up an extremely long-forgotten childhood memory. Curiously, I approached.

  “Mr Landsmoor?”

  The full-length glass door between the bedroom and the balcony was thick with dust and I stepped hesitantly through.

  The view was captivating. To one side, the fields rose and fell like a green eternity, smooth and relentless. The opposing view looked out across the sea, all blue and white speckles of surf.

  “Mr Landsmoor?” I tilted my head to peer at his face. For another moment I had the bizarre feeling that I was having an out-of-the-body experience, watching a scene from two alternative perspectives. My scalp prickled as the figure turned vaguely.

  We would ride our bikes over the back road, crossing the river on those summer nights when it barely got dark, even late at night. We would creep across the woods to the edge of the trees where I would take out my Dad’s binoculars and peer through them in awe at the solitary man on the balcony of the farmhouse. Day and night he was there, eternally watchful. On the nights when we camped out, we’d dare each other to go alone, to feel the frisson of fear that shivered our bodies as we picked out his silhouette. By day we would examine the intensity of his face through the lenses, amazed by the restlessness of his eyes as they searched the horizon. Den-tales told by flashlight - suggestions as to the reason for his sentinel obsession.

  As I peered at that same face – now wrinkled and sagging through 33 years of weather and time – I felt almost as if I had slipped into the future from 1978.

  “Josh?” His voice was alien with phlegm.

  Instantly I remembered.

  Remembered the anger and the aggression of the boy in the photographs, understood the suspicion that surrounded his disappearance back in 1978, and realised that what I thought was an abandoned bedroom was actually a shrine. The photograph of him in that Bruce Lee shirt had adorned lampposts and featured in the local news for months.

  Mr Landsmoor’s eyes searched my face in desperate hope. “Josh?”

  “No.�
�� I swallowed audibly. “What are you doing up here?”

  He turned back to stare out across the fields. “Waiting for Josh,” he said quietly. I could hear the waves on the beach, was aware of the insects in the grass below.

  I left him alone with his thoughts, respectfully departing the house without disturbance. As I started the car engine I glanced up to the balcony. The old man remained in his usual spot, staring out across the fields, his eyes searching the tree-line for his son’s return.

  It felt like I had just dropped a pebble into a pond. I paused for a minute while the ripples subsided. Then I gunned the accelerator and drove down the bumpy track, watching the dust cloud disperse in my rear view mirror like a ghost.

  The coast road was still quiet at that time of morning and I felt my mind returning to Dale’s life over the past 30 years. I was curious to find out what had drawn him to the pit of misery that he had fallen into. As a kid he’d been intelligent and articulate, and I was having a hard time imagining what must have been tormenting him all these years.

  I headed back into town. There was a bar that we used to visit as older teenagers. I was curious to see if it was still there, and maybe get a bite of lunch. The sights of Scarborough evoked a strange nostalgia; a yearning for a simpler existence. I felt uncomfortable thinking about my life in London. The bar had been refurbished, though it was similar enough to its predecessor to tempt me into a meal. Reasonable food, great price, and I ate in an atmosphere of cautious optimism. Little did I know that the hope was very badly misplaced.

  As soon as I arrived home, I sensed something had shifted. Mum was hovering near the door; her face a guarded mask. From behind her, a figure rose and I recognised in alarm that it was Mrs Campbell. As soon as her eyes met mine she collapsed into tears. I ushered her to a chair and Mum went to make some tea. For a while I let her cry while I searched for things to say.