Broke Deep (Porthkennack Book 3)

by Charlie Cochrane

  “Maybe that nightmare runs in your family alongside the storytelling. Or because of it. You heard about your mother’s dream when you were too young to remember it, but it stuck somewhere in your brain. Like with her.” Christine tipped her head in the direction of his mother, who’d laid down her knitting and was slumbering peacefully. “Memories must be still in her brain somewhere, but they don’t come out in the right order or at the right time.”

  “Hm. Maybe.”

  “You don’t think that’s the explanation?”

  “I have no idea. A . . . a friend suggested something similar, but it doesn’t ring true.”

  “Why not? It seems the simplest explanation, rather than any old mumbo-jumbo.” She snorted. “What did your mother say when you had your nightmare?”

  “Nothing. I mean, only the normal comfort for someone who’s had a bad dream. I didn’t want to go into the details at the time—I was young and scared, and I couldn’t think logically.” He wasn’t thinking a lot more logically as an adult. “I wish now I had spoken about it. Maybe I’d be able to understand what’s going on. But she clearly didn’t want to tell me about her dream, did she? Despite telling Harry.”

  “Harry?”

  “That friend I mentioned.”

  “Ah.” Christine nodded again. “She must have been protecting you, in case you started worrying too much. Are you a worrier?”

  Morgan had to laugh. “Guilty as charged. Although maybe I’m worrying about it because I don’t know.”

  “Then nobody could win with you, could they?” Christine eased out of her chair, Morgan following suit. “I’m afraid I have jobs to do. Sorry I couldn’t be of further help.”

  “You’ve helped a lot, honestly.” At least to clarify things if not to make them better. “And thanks for all you do with Mum. You connect with her when I can’t.”

  “That’s years of practice.” She peered out into the garden again. “Go and kiss her before you leave. Don’t wake her if you don’t want to. She’s happy for the moment, and we should be grateful for these times.”

  “We should. I’ll try to be.” Morgan fiddled in his pockets. “Thank you. For listening to me. It helps.”

  “No worries.” Christine patted his arm. “See you again soon.”

  “Yep. I’m like the proverbial bad penny. Always turning up.” He took a final look at his mother; he’d go and give her that kiss, careful not to wake her when she seemed so content, in case it upset her again.

  Once in his car, he stared at the steering wheel, unseeing and with that tight knot of pain back in his stomach, turning over the conversation in his mind. If his mother’s account could be trusted, the thing he’d dreaded—that all the women who’d become prematurely senile had experienced the same nightmare—appeared to be true.

  So where did that leave him?

  Back at the house, Morgan wandered into the kitchen, wandered out again, went into the lounge, decided to flick on the telly, but couldn’t settle. Not even the schadenfreude engendered by the travel news and the thought of all the grockles stuck in traffic jams made him feel any better. He was at the loosest of loose ends, hovering at the point where he needed to occupy his brain with something other than dread, and stop him hitting another bottle or six of beer. Getting smashed the night before had done no harm to his balance, but he might not be so lucky next time.

  That reminded him about his upcoming appointment with his GP; he saw no reason now why he should keep his promise to Dominic to go through with it, but he guessed he owed it to himself. Either his worst fears might be justified, or his mind could be put at rest, although the thought of the first outcome made him feel physically sick. That bloody dream had blighted his life for so long, and it seemed determined to keep on blighting it.

  He stretched out on the settee, flicking onto an old episode of Poirot, and settled down for a doze. He didn’t need to make a decision about seeing the doctor until the day itself.

  The unmistakable sound of a bosun’s whistle followed by a broadside going off roused him from sleep in a cold sweat. Had he been having the nightmare again, somehow without being aware of it? His relief of seeing that yet another repeat of Hornblower was being aired, following on from the murder mystery, was unbelievable. He turned the television off, not wanting to be reminded of ships, then went to make a cup of tea, although he couldn’t keep his thoughts away from Midshipman Lawson and Mary Lusmoore.

  As he caught sight of the family picture on the wall, a flood of memories returned. Dad was interested in local history. He did all that stuff on Porthkennack bloodlines, remember? Morgan could recite the names: the Edes, the Quicks, the Roscarrocks, and all the rest, from the highly respectable to those you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Most of them had lived in the area since Noah came out of the ark, preserving the family genome away from outside influence.

  Why couldn’t he have remembered his dad’s hobby sooner? Instead of legging it all round Porthkennack in search of the Lusmoores, they might have been able to turn something up in this very house. Was that oversight further evidence of Morgan losing it?

  He’d try not to pursue that line of thought, not in the bleak mental state he already inhabited. He should do something practical; maybe poking about in the stuff his dad had left would be exactly the mindless pastime he was in need of.

  And while Morgan couldn’t remember his father mentioning the Lusmoores as one of his targets, it was entirely possible he’d been on their trail, at least peripherally. All the old local families were interconnected. The only stumbling block was locating the research itself, because Morgan wasn’t sure where all Dad’s material had gone after his death.

  He remembered having to go up into the loft to root out that stash of money his mother had told him about. There’d been a load of other stuff up there, mainly the typical debris of old carpets, suitcases, boxes, and the like. What if Dad’s old books and papers had been stuffed away up there? Not only would going through them give Morgan something positive to concentrate on, but clearing that old rubbish while he was about it would make him feel better. Nothing like slinging out a pile of physical crap to make the emotional crap sit more easily.

  The loft proved pleasantly cool on an afternoon that had turned horribly clammy; unless the sweatiness of Morgan’s palms came from the state he was in. The electric light was bright enough to see but not read by, so the torch Morgan had taken up with him would be invaluable. The first suitcase he opened contained nothing but old clothes, possibly his grandparents’. That could go straight out to a charity shop or the local welfare project, preferably tomorrow morning, so it didn’t hang around making him think of his grandmother.

  The second case was empty, apart from a collection of insects which had wormed their way in, as was the third. They’d be best sent straight to the dump, while he was en route to the charity shop—his thoughts turned to bats or deathwatch beetles and the many other nasty things he could find hidden away in forgotten places. He shone his torch up at the roof beams, but they seemed to be a flying-mammal-free zone.

  The old handbag he’d found his mother’s stash of money in lay next to some old packing crates, but he wasn’t too eager to dispose of that bag while she was still alive; he couldn’t be that heartless. The packing crates themselves could be hopeful, though. The first was half filled with books, which was unusual given that there were several bookshelves round the house with gaps on them, so lack of storage space couldn’t have been the reason these volumes had been consigned to the loft. The most obvious explanation seemed to be that they were related to the serial hobbies Dad had indulged in, and been put away when his interest had changed. With a pang of sadness, Morgan found a history of the church he and Dominic had visited, probably the same book the bloke had been shown by the verger. After staring at it blankly, thinking of some old song about having something and losing it going through his mind, he placed the book carefully to one side of the stuff he was getting rid of. He could decide w
hat to do with it later.

  The second crate had no lid, only an old curtain laid across it, but on lifting it, he seemed to have struck gold. Dusty, dirty ring binders, a whole colony of them, all full of neatly filed, ring-reinforced pieces of paper. Paper which, on inspection, bore the unmistakably spidery handwriting of his father. Each binder was marked up with the name of one of the usual suspects—Ede, Roscarrock, all the boys in the band. If he really had struck gold, there’d be a Lusmoore file somewhere, and minutes later, in what felt an inevitable course of events, it turned up right at the bottom of the box, just as he was giving up hope.

  Morgan pored through the pages, some sticking together due to the weight of the other families’ histories. He felt the same, crushed under the weight of stories and experiences, unable to pick apart the important from the irrelevant. Time to get back to his dad’s researches.

  There was a fair amount of stuff that was no use to him, being far too recent in the Lusmoore timeline, but a large piece of yellowed paper, meticulously folded, caught his eye. A family tree, neatly written in old-fashioned ink, showed the line of the Lusmoores going back to where he wanted it. There was Mary and her parents: she was shown as being without husband or issue, although a pencilled-in question mark next to her name and something else next to that, indecipherable in this light, intrigued him.

  If there was something about the Lusmoores, was there also something to be found about Lawson? He put the paper back in the file, preparatory to taking it downstairs for a proper going over.

  Before doing that, he checked the other two packing cases: one contained nothing but watercolour painting stuff—Dad’s previous interest before getting the family-history bug—and the second seemed equally unpromising, being half full of football and theatre programmes. Morgan turned the top layer over, then realised the collection was much more eclectic. Among the souvenirs from Wembley and the London Palladium were tourist guides, local interest books, and oddities, like a brochure from Porthkennack’s celebration of the queen’s coronation. Should he keep them or add them to the pile of stuff for charity? The Oxfam bookshop liked to sell this type of stuff, but would making these breaks with the past make him feel any better or simply add to his burden of guilt?

  Decisive for once, he tipped them out and began to sort, in case there was a gem among the dross. Among the old tourist guides and local interest books was a small, evidently self-published pamphlet by a Reverend George Morrison. It was dog-eared and faded, but the title was plain enough to read despite the dim light—The Unlucky Midshipman: a story of imprudent love and heinous treachery. That title, with the dramatic and likely inaccurate etching of a young ship’s officer below it on the cover, made Morgan grin. If Dominic were to write a book, he’d probably call it something similarly archaic and pompous.

  Dominic. After all those bloody hours and days of trying not to think of James; now he’d got to stop thinking of him. Although wasn’t rummaging about in search of a midshipman—their midshipman as Morgan had so fatefully referred to him that evening they went out for a meal—keeping Dominic right in the forefront of his mind?

  He packed the leaflet up inside the Lusmoore file, dumped the rest of the stuff back in the box, jumbling it all up again, then took his trophies downstairs, unsettled and no longer able to take pleasure in his rummaging. If it turned out he had found something relevant to Lawson, would he let Dominic know or would he sit smugly on the information, trying to keep his indignation warm? An indignation that had become decidedly tepid, anyway? If there was anybody he should be cross at, it was himself, for being such a bloody idiot all round.

  That bottle of wine was calling, and a glass wouldn’t hurt so long as he resisted the temptation to put the whole bottle away. Maybe it would clear his head, hair of the dog and all that, although probably best to grab something to eat first. He transferred an instant meal from freezer to microwave, then laid a tray of cutlery and crockery on autopilot, trying not to think of how bleak such an always-catering-for-one existence would be for him if it became permanent.

  He gazed out of the kitchen window, catching a glimpse of the Devil’s Anvil, the rocks appearing to form a great jagged smile to taunt him. Sod the rocks. Sod ships. Sod everything. He turned his back and got on with making his dinner, because that seemed about the only worthwhile thing he had to do at present.

  A plate of food and a glass of wine later, his mood hadn’t improved. He’d had another dizzy spell, not as bad as the one in the graveyard but enough to remind him that he was still on the road to recovery and claret wasn’t helping.

  Then the ridiculous oversight about his father’s family-history research started nagging at him, upsetting him more than the story of the recurring dream. How long was it going to be before he became so forgetful he ended up like his mother, barely able to organise his thoughts? Thank God it was likely she’d be gone by the time he turned completely gaga.

  He contemplated the pile of stuff from the loft, had a “what’s the bloody point?” moment before deciding he might as well sort it, because he couldn’t face work at the moment and didn’t have anything else pressing to occupy himself with. Except the bottle of wine and that would only make him feel worse. He had to fetch an old rag to go over the hoard; he hadn’t realised in the poor light up there just how filthy and flyblown the books were. He flicked in a desultory way through the book about the church, but there was nothing he hadn’t seen in Dominic’s photocopy.

  The Lusmoore timeline proved intriguing. The pencilled scribble next to Mary’s name looked like it read Lawson followed by something else, although that might have been wishful thinking. It could equally have been “laundry” or any other of a dozen words. But when he took the document over to peruse in the better light from the standard lamp, his dad’s familiar handwriting, which he recognised with a pang of renewed sorrow, was plain.

  Lawson. No grave. The note in his fingers began shaking—Morgan steadied both it and his hand against the window.

  See other note. Other note? Where the hell was that to be found? Dad had always kept his papers in good order, and there hadn’t been anything like a random note stuffed among the contents of the crates.

  Morgan crossed the room, picked up the Lusmoore file, and then shook it in order to coax out any loose pieces of paper which might have been hidden there. Nothing emerged, no matter how much he flicked the pages. If the note still existed, it was probably with the other stuff in the loft, and he had no desire to clamber back up there. He was about to shut the file, when he noticed pieces of yellowed Sellotape sticking over the top of some of the pages, attaching pictures, paper cuttings, and the like. Working through the file again, he found the note he wanted about halfway.

  Lawson survived the wreck? Plenty of coincidental evidence that he did. (Local gossip, uniform, book.)

  So Dad had reached the same conclusion as he and Dominic, based on the similar information. Had he found anything definitive, though?

  Mary Lusmoore said to have helped save him, only to tip him over the cliff. Evidence? Ballad.

  Nothing new there.

  The medallion found in the rock cleft. Need to research the story.

  What medallion in what rock cleft? Morgan went through the Lusmoore file again, then the book about the church, but there were no further notes, no evidence of any of these researches, if his father had ever completed them, and he hadn’t lost interest when he’d moved on to his next pastime. Dominic would have a field day over that medallion story.

  Only Dominic wasn’t going to hear about it, was he?

  Morgan put the Lusmoore stuff into a bag. Maybe he should simply parcel it all up and post it, with a businesslike note mentioning the medallion but no apology or expectation of a reply. Something cool and cursory might be a particularly effective way of bringing things between him and Dominic to an end than a continued radio silence.

  Morgan recalled that conversation they’d had on the sand, about how people didn’t talk to each
other enough. Ironic that they should have ended up in the same position, when they seemed to have spent hours on end gassing to each other about things both trivial and important. Perhaps they’d expended all they had to say.

  Or perhaps Dominic would feel the need to say sorry one final time, and would be on the phone in the morning. Morgan could imagine how such a conversation might go.

  “I’m scared.” He’d say. “Apologies can’t make that go away.”

  “So get proper help, like I’ve said a dozen times.”

  “What’s the point? It’s not like a broken leg you can stick in plaster until it sets or your back, that’s going to get better of its own accord. There’s no cure, nothing to stop it. You either end up fading away like Mum or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “You throw yourself over the cliff. Might as well make an end of it rather than turning into a vegetable.”

  He knew what Dominic’s response to that would be. Checking if Morgan was serious—or even halfway serious. Threatening that if there was a grain of truth in what Morgan said then he’d be coming straight round, irrespective of whether he was still in Cornwall or halfway across the country. Saying he’d tie Morgan to the front door or the bed or the kitchen table until he’d talked some sense into him.

  The thought of the imaginary conversation lifted his spirits more than a real one might have done at this point. Make-believe Dominic was much easier to deal with; make-believe Dominic couldn’t be hurt. And if Morgan really intended throwing himself off a cliff, why didn’t he get up, go off, and do it? Why live with the anguish? Was it only the thought that it might finish his mother off entirely that stopped him, or was there still some light in the darkness that wasn’t a wrecker luring ships onto the rocks?

  Catching sight of the pile of things he’d brought downstairs, Morgan felt again the urge to chuck the lot away. He scooped everything up, ready to consign it all to the dustbin; halfway to the kitchen, he turned so woozy he had to drop the lot and steady himself on the back of a chair. Definitely no more claret for the foreseeable future. One of the older books, spine and binding cracked and kept together by mere luck, had fragmented, and among the loose pages strewing the carpet lay a little book which had been slipped among them.