by F. G. Cottam
It suited the climate, of course and it was a mode of transport still popular on the French Riviera and his had only had to travel the ninety miles or so from his home in Spain. It was a sturdy, simple vehicle and it suited what she imagined still remained her father’s image. He might not even drive the only Mini Moke in the coastal village he called home. He’d drive the only one, though, with a corn dolly dangling from its rear-view mirror.
A moment later his Moke’s silhouette came into view. He killed his lights and then switched off the engine and she stood, waiting for her eyes to find him, recovering from the bright headlamp glare with spots on her retinas that took a moment to fade. When her focus returned he was still there, seated at the wheel, studying her, white-haired and extravagantly bearded, weirdly like the image of Old Father Thames he’d done for the cover of King Lud, dragged from the riverbed, brought to reluctant life.
He climbed out of his seat stiffly and walked towards her with a decided limp. She saw him inventory the spilling ashtray and half-empty brandy bottle on the table with a quick glance from eyes alert despite his years. He held out his arms and they embraced and she was the girl she’d been nearly half a century ago, sniffing back tears and inhaling the lost, familiar scent of him in the same half-hitched breath.
‘You’ve been a very misguided girl, Freddie,’ he muttered into her neck, kissing her cheek.
Make it all OK, Daddy, she wanted to say. But she was a grown-up now and so it was far too late for that and anyway, she didn’t believe remotely that he could.
They went inside. She had earlier lit a fire. She’d had a wood-burning stove shipped from England not long after buying the villa because she liked the sight and smell of smouldering logs in the winter time and because collecting driftwood as fuel on the beach appealed to the thrifty side of her nature. It made the room look warm and homely. She had never held a séance here, had never communed with the dead. She shuddered, not cold, suddenly certain, however, that she had seen the inside of the Chiswick house for the last time. She would never willingly go back there.
Her visitor stood like someone waiting awkwardly for something to happen. He was deeply tanned and wore his abundant mane ponytailed by a leather thong. He was wearing a denim bib and brace and a faded collarless shirt and yellow Timberlands that looked like they hadn’t left his feet in a hundred years. There were bangles on his thick wrists. Jet and moonstone inlay sparkled in the orange firelight.
‘Sit down, Dad. I’ll fetch you a drink.’
‘I think you’ve had enough to drink.’
‘I opened the brandy bottle when I arrived here last night. That was when most of the damage was done. I’ve only had the one tonight.’
‘From what you told me on the phone, the serious damage was done in London.’
She got him a beer from the fridge in the kitchen and opened the bottle and poured it. She gave him the glass. He still hadn’t sat down. He did so, with a wince of pain on a hardback chair. Arthritis had been the reason for his departure for Spain. It was the reason he’d given, anyway, twenty years earlier. She pulled out a chair opposite his and he sipped beer and rested his glass on the table between them.
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m not the only medium to have claimed contact from beyond with Martin Mear. He’s like John Lennon and Michael Jackson and probably Elvis Presley too, in that regard.’
‘He isn’t like them at all and never was.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘People claim they’ve seen Elvis stacking shelves in branches of Walmart. Can you imagine anyone saying that about Martin?’
She smiled wanly. She said, ‘He’d scare the customers away.’
‘Alive or dead,’ her father said.
‘Will you tell me about him?’
‘It’s a bit late for that.’
‘Will you tell me anyway?’
Sebastian Daunt reached for his beer glass and drained it and put it back down on the table with an emphatic thump. He said, ‘Martin was fourteen when I met him. I was living at the commune where you were conceived. He was an adolescent with a gorgeous singing voice and a wonderful gift for playing the guitar. I was entranced by him, everyone was, practically spellbound, a pretty young folkie by the name of Julia Reed particularly so. But you know all this.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘He was a sweet-natured boy with dreams that seemed fantastical. Yet he fulfilled them, all of them. Have you ever wondered, Freddie, about the odds against his doing that?’
‘He was marvellously talented. He was physically beautiful.’
Her father laughed. ‘Lots of people are marvellously talented. Lots of people are beautiful. Or they were then, anyway, back in the ’60s. They all had dreams. They didn’t all become Martin Mear. They didn’t all write songs that became global anthems and dream up the biggest rock band in the world.’
‘What are you getting at?’
He was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘What have your dead novelist and deceased ballet dancer had to say about events? How have your familiars reacted to Martin’s comeback?’
‘Only witches have familiars. I’m not a witch.’
‘Answer the question.’
‘I haven’t attempted contact since what happened on Friday evening. I don’t think I will ever again.’
‘Then some good has come of all this.’
‘Do you think Martin means to hurt me?’
‘No, I don’t. I don’t think Martin’s spirit or ghost or revenant or whatever gave a shit about your claims to be in contact with him. He would have thought it funny, frankly. What he took exception to was you trying to deceive this researcher person.’
‘Ruthie Gillespie.’
‘I think Martin has plans for Ruthie Gillespie, God help her.’
‘Are you afraid of Martin Mear, Dad?’
This time the pause went on for so long that Frederica wondered had her father become hard of hearing since their last encounter. Then, eventually, he spoke.
‘I never met a boy with a sweeter nature, like I’ve said. But he didn’t just mature, Freddie, he changed. At some point, I think Martin struck some sort of bargain. That’s why he became so blessed, is my opinion. He was never less than civil to me and could be kind and courteous and enormously stimulating company. But by the end, yes, I was frightened of him. I was afraid of what he became. I was even more afraid of the price I suspected he paid to become it.’
‘I’ve been thinking about the Clamouring.’
‘You should leave that kind of thinking to Ruthie Gillespie. I’m sure she’s being well paid to ponder on all that stuff.’
‘Do you think there’s anything in it?’
Her father shook his head. ‘Too haphazard, way too flaky, dreamed up by a Legion fan or maybe a bunch of them after too much dope or a bad batch of acid, is my take on that. It’s the heavy rock version of a conspiracy theory. Look at Manson and Helter Skelter. Look at the bullshit people peddle about Jim Morrison and the Doors.’
‘So he made no plans to re-join the living?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘What do you think, Dad?’
He smiled at her. It wasn’t a straightforward smile. It looked contingent, almost pained, to her. He said, ‘Night driving has made me thirsty. And I’m not used to talking so much. Pour me another beer and I’ll tell you what I think.’
ELEVEN
It was late and Malcolm Stuart had a full schedule for the following day. The property market had picked up to the point where the office veterans had stopped talking lyrically about the mini-boom at the beginning of the millennium. They’d even stopped waxing nostalgic about the boom proper at the start of the 1990s. The good times were emphatically back. He knew that the sensible thing to do would be to get some sound sleep before a hectic Monday.
He couldn’t, though. He didn’t know when he’d met a more attractive woman less
aware of her own impact than Ruthie Gillespie had proven to be over a couple of enigmatic hours. There was a melancholy about her she carried like a weight and he was intrigued about where that burden had come from. She was slightly careworn and utterly stunning. He’d spent most of the late afternoon and evening wondering how he could overcome the obstacle of being a decade or so younger than she was.
And it was an obstacle. She had seemed to be single and straight, which meant that she was theoretically available. He had managed to establish that much about her during their conversation. But she didn’t take him seriously as a suitor, or wouldn’t, because she was in her mid-thirties and he had not long graduated from university. Calling her would be pointless. She’d be tactful, because she was courteous on top of all her other attributes. She’d be firm, though, because she knew her mind and the age difference would prevent him from being a credible romantic option.
He thought that he knew a way to impress her, despite this. He could help with at least one aspect of her research into Martin Mear. He’d done some oral-history recordings with a few of the old dock hands from Wapping and Shadwell. The recording themselves would not help, they were general reminiscences, the subjects of Martens and Degrue and their one-time clerk Max Askew had never come up. Why should they have?
He was thinking about one particular witness to the great days of the docks, however, and hoping that the man was still alive and that he had not succumbed to Alzheimer’s or to a stroke or just the memory loss associated with old age. He’d interviewed this character at a sheltered housing block, in the pristine flat he occupied there, in Bethnal Green at the time he was researching his thesis.
And Ginger McCabe was a character. In his early eighties, ramrod-straight, the habitual wearer of a smart three-piece suit even indoors, even in his own home. In the 1960s he’d been a bare-knuckle boxing champion. He’d been an extra in a couple of British feature films, the kitchen-sink dramas shot in real locations in the days when the big stars had been Tom Courtney and Lawrence Harvey and Albert Finney. He’d had a small speaking part in the Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon. He’d been on drinking terms with Oliver Reed and Anthony Newley.
Ginger had been a union activist, an organizer of strikes and a formidable human barricade against scab workers on any picket line back when the dockers were, with the miners, the most militant workers in the country when it came to protecting their hard-won rights. Malcolm thought that Ginger, with his perfect recall and his cockney rasp, would remember both Max Askew and the firm that had employed him until his retirement. He’d know all about the mysterious Martens and Degrue.
Malcolm still had Ginger McCabe’s contact details. What he didn’t have was a legitimate reason for questioning the old man about stuff that might provoke unpleasant memories. As Ruthie Gillespie had pointed out, an exorcism was an extreme measure at the time two had been performed in a Shadwell dockside warehouse all those years ago. Ginger would have been in his late thirties back then, wouldn’t he, a big-shot on the quays, a union rep with keen eyes and his ear to the ground.
Things didn’t generally go bump in Malcolm Stuart’s night. He had never entertained the idea of the paranormal before taking his estate agent job. But since he’d taken the job, he’d encountered 77 Proctor Court and developed a perspective slightly different from the one he’d had before. This new outlook was somewhat less carefree and more cautious. It was less inclined to the bombastic certainties he’d held to back in his student days.
He’d gone back there, after saying goodbye to Ruthie outside the door of the pub. She’d raised the collar of her coat and smiled slightly wistfully and turned away from him and headed towards the tube. He’d had to leave his car where he’d parked it because the two pints of lager he’d drunk put him slightly over the limit if he got stopped and breath-tested. He’d parked where there were no restrictions on a Sunday so that aspect of things was OK.
He thought the two pints were probably the reason he went back. It was sufficient Dutch courage to get him over the Proctor Court threshold in daylight. Ruthie had been vague about whatever her experience had been once past Max Askew’s old front door. It had been out of kilter in some subtle, disturbing way, but she hadn’t heard a banshee wail or encountered a screaming demon. She would have said so, if she had.
Malcolm was wrong, though. The rain had strengthened while they chatted in the Prospect and he got to Proctor Court cold and damp-shouldered wearing the weight of his sodden raincoat like some sartorial defeat. His feet felt wet inside his shoes. They were almost wet enough to squelch. The stairwell echoed as he climbed the rain-slicked steps and when he reached the door and fumbled for the key a shiver wracked him more akin to dread than just a chill.
He stared at the Green Man door knocker and it stared back at him, gnarled and dripping, grinning and secretive, sly-eyed and antic and not welcoming at all. And through the frosted array of small glass panes above the knocker, he thought he saw a flicker of movement disturb the gloom within.
In Malcolm Stuart’s stomach, dismay lurched into dread. He swallowed. The key was shaking in his fist. ‘Sod it,’ he whispered, turning away.
Now, he yawned and looked at his wristwatch. Home was a Hoxton studio flat he’d got on a two-year lease at a cut-rate rent care of a former colleague. It was small and secure and comfortable. It was warm and well-lit and he was sprawled on the sofa with Ellie Goulding turned down so low it was like she was whispering the songs personally to him. He would wait for lunchtime tomorrow and then give Ginger McCabe a call. He might even call him in the morning before work, aware of the habit the elderly had of rising earlier than they needed to.
It still bothered him that he had no legitimate reason to question the old man in this way, beyond trying to access information that would aid his bid to be taken seriously as a romantic proposition by Ruthie Gillespie. Against that, though, was the fact that Ginger liked to reminisce. He was proud of his own fairly flamboyant history as one of the district’s faces.
‘It was my manor,’ he would say with an indignant flush, slapping a big fist into a still meaty palm for emphasis.
Malcolm would take him for a drink. It wasn’t a dry academic exercise, this. He’d buy him a few beers and make a social event of it. And if it looked like trying to recall Max Askew and Martens and Degrue was distressing him in any way, he’d simply change the subject, move on to something else, like the time Ginger drank Richard Harris under the table on a film set; or the time he fought the Irish King of the Gypsies to a bloodied standstill in an Epsom meadow on Derby Day.
He looked at his watch again. It was almost eleven o’clock. He was pleased now he had a plan of sorts in place. More of a scheme than a plan, but he felt he had to do something. He couldn’t just let Ms Gillespie slip out of his life carelessly, without some attempt to influence matters to the contrary.
He met a lot of women. It was inevitable in his line of work. They tended to be ambitious and forceful, of a type, on the up, acquisitive and slightly flashy and a bit vacuous and almost inevitably blonde. Ruthie was raven-haired and clever and serious and though she’d turned practically every male head in the pub on their arrival at the Prospect, she’d been completely unaware of the fact. She was probably out of his league, but he had to try, didn’t he?
He thought about his sister. He knew that Ursula would still be up. She’d been christened Bernadette, but had become Ursula at art school when, in common with most of her friends, she’d been more creative working on herself than on her courses. She’d still be up because Goths were essentially nocturnal creatures.
She wasn’t quite a Goth. She wasn’t quite a hippie, either, which is how he’d described her in the pub to Ruthie. She was somewhere between the two. She didn’t drink cider in cemeteries or make Whitby Bay pilgrimages but she mostly wore black and a great deal of mascara and her lipstick was always red. She read a huge amount of horror fiction and of course she listened to Martin Mears’ old band and banged on about hi
m never having actually died to anyone who’d listen.
He called her. She answered at the tenth ring. He said, ‘Tell me about Ghost Legion.’
She said, ‘It’s a pretty huge subject, Mal. Heavy, too, for a Sunday night.’
‘I’m a captive audience,’ he said.
On the Portuguese coast, it was very late and Frederica Daunt was either on the cusp of drunkenness or the cusp of sobriety, depending upon a person’s outlook. Her father was seated in the armchair opposite hers on the other side of the wood-burner. There was a slight smell of salt and tar from the driftwood she gathered from the shore to fuel her fires and to her this mingled scent had a nostalgic quality. Or that could just have been her father’s company, she thought, slightly dozily. She hadn’t enjoyed that for a long time and his presence was largely something she associated with her childhood.
Now, she looked at her dad and something in his expression made her say, ‘What?’
‘I think you might have imagined the figure in the garden. I think it might have been only a projection. I suspect you saw it because you expected to.’
Frederica thought about this. She said, ‘I wouldn’t have expected to see his fingernails as grotesquely long as they were. As though they’d grown in his coffin after his death. That was a detail too far.’
Sebastian Daunt raised an eyebrow. There was a beer bottle beaded with moisture in his right fist. In the firelight, the bottle looked bejewelled. He took a sip and said, ‘That happens in life. It’s a detail your subconscious provided. You’d been dwelling on the subject of Martin. Flight was already on your mind. You needed a tipping point and your imagination cooperated in providing one. You need him to look scary and so he did.’
‘It’s a seductive theory,’ Frederica said.
‘Really?’
‘Of course. It would be reassuring to think that’s what happened. It’s less disturbing than the alternative.’