The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  I followed her around the corner to the line of huts. She took a key from her bag and fiddled with the padlock on the door. ‘I expect this will be the first thing to go,’ she said breezily as the lock gave and she pulled open the door. ‘Once the new regime kicks in.’

  I watched her climb the step and shut herself inside. I took a few paces back, watching the moonlight wash in over the sea. Nobody was on the beach; even as I turned towards the prom, I saw nobody about on the seafront road. I thought of Alec and wished him far away.

  Clara emerged in a navy swimsuit with white piping that accentuated her waist and hips. I took in the curve of her thighs, the soft swell of her knees, all in a second’s glance, as she said, as if seeing her almost naked was an everyday occurrence, ‘I laid Alec’s out for you. It might be a little snug.’

  I went into the hut and closed the door, shutting out all light except for slivers that crept in round the edges. It was very snug in here too; in fact I worked out that I had approximately three feet of space to manoeuvre myself in. Towels, draped on a line suspended from the ceiling, flapped round my head as I groped about and felt the straw lines of the wicker chairs Alec and Bump had reclined on, stacked one above the other with, on top, a woolly mesh of material I took to be Alec’s swimsuit.

  There was also a narrow dresser upon which paints and brushes had been thrown carelessly, Clara’s underclothes flung provocatively on top of it and my aunt Viviane’s gold locket placed carefully to the side. I risked picking her garments up and holding them to my face, inhaling as much of her scent as I could, before I worried that I had taken far too long already, and hurriedly pulled off my clothes, bundling them beside hers in place of my own body.

  Alec’s costume was tight, and I had to stretch the material considerably to pull the straps over my shoulders. I thought I probably looked an idiot, but when I emerged from the hut Clara was already by the shoreline, her toes touching the waves. When I joined her she was lost in a world of her own, but jumped back into a smile when she saw me.

  ‘Ready?’ she said.

  ‘We mustn’t go far out,’ I warned. ‘Besides, I’m not a strong swimmer.’

  ‘And your health. I know, I know.’ She held out her hand. ‘We’ll go together.’

  I took her hand, and although I had felt her hand more than a few times tonight, there was something intimate in this holding, facing the wash of the sea and its wildness together.

  It was colder than I’d expected. Clara gasped, and I squeezed her hand.

  ‘We should run,’ she squeaked. ‘It’s better if you run.’

  ‘I’m not …’ I began, but she was pulling away from me, and in order to keep up I quickened my pace. The water splashed over my calves, my thighs, and then I heard Clara scream gently as it lapped her stomach.

  ‘After three,’ she said. ‘One, two, thr—’

  The end of her word was lost as her hand left mine and she launched herself into the sea, thrashing her arms, swearing at the cold. I took a breath and joined her.

  The shock of it on my chest, my groin, my lungs and stomach took my breath away. I remembered strokes from Briggs, the teacher at Whitemere Baths and pounded on, cutting into the rolling waves and kicking hard until finally the cold released and I drifted on a tide of the warm licks of the sea.

  Clara joined me, her face wide with delight. ‘Tell me this wasn’t the most brilliant idea,’ she said, bobbing in the water.

  ‘We mustn’t go too far out,’ I said. ‘Make sure we can still touch the seabed.’

  She gave me an exasperated look. ‘Robert …’

  I gave in. I smiled. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was the most brilliant idea.’

  She laughed delightedly and flung herself on to her back, arcing her arms left and right over her head. She was a strong swimmer, much stronger than me, and I allowed myself to gently float, watching her swim away from and towards me, just as we’d danced in the night club a few hours earlier, and I knew I would never forget this, that perhaps this, here, was the pinnacle of my life, of the reason for my having stayed alive throughout the attacks, the air gasped for and found, all to watch Clara Bray swim in a moonlit sea.

  Her voice was sudden in my ear; I had not even noticed she was beside me. ‘The first time I ever saw Castaway House,’ she said, dancing in the water, her eyes bright, ‘I knew it was meant to be mine.’

  I kicked my toes and turned to look where she was pointing, towards the ghost of the pier, a dark grey against the black night.

  ‘Dad had taken me and Billy on to the pier,’ she continued, in a voice changed by the darkness into something grainier, huskier, rawer, ‘to get us out from under Mum’s feet – because she was dying, you know. I saw the tip of it, all buttermilk yellow, and I asked him who lived there. He said, “Viviane Devereau,” and I thought that was the most beautiful name I’d ever heard. Then he told me she was Mrs Bray now, with a husband and a son, and do you know what I thought, Robert? I thought to myself, One day, Clare my girl, that house is going to be yours.’

  I shivered suddenly and swam a few strokes back and forth to warm up. ‘So you had ambition.’

  ‘I was a little mercenary, is what I was.’ She spread her arms wide in the water.

  ‘You were only a child,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Just listen.’

  And I listened, as we drifted on the spangled sea, to the tale of her mother dying, and then Billy, and her dad out all the time drinking. She told me how she’d find herself walking up the hill just to look at Castaway House and imagine the lives going on within it. How she’d finally spotted Viviane Devereau and thought the woman matched the name, with her lined velvet coats, her fur wraps, her laced boots.

  Clare Tutt, on the other hand, was barely brought up at all: she took herself to school when she felt like it, ate tea at the neighbours in rotation, let the house turn nasty with filth. Occasionally her father would come home and cling to her, telling her he loved her, say he was going to look out for her, that good times were just round the corner. In the meantime, she hatched a plan to get to know Viviane Devereau. She never called her Mrs Bray, her real name. For Clare, she existed without husband and son, floating in her own sea of perfection.

  The house was a holiday home, used at weekends and in the summer, and so Clare learned the family’s rhythm to perfection. She waited until Viviane came down alone one weekend, and followed her on the Saturday as she went into town; lurked in her shadow across all the floors of Bradley’s and then, on the route to her home, raced along the back streets, emerging at the head of the cliff to collapse on the road, just a few yards from the house, claiming to be faint from hunger.

  Most women on that street would have sidestepped the little girl and carried on, but Viviane was kind and got one of the male servants to take her down to the kitchen and feed her on leftovers from lunch. She then asked for the little girl to be sent up to the drawing room to see her benefactress.

  Clare, who everyone knew as a foul-mouthed, slummy tearaway, who ruled the kids of Princes Street with a sharp tongue and a hobnailed boot, transformed herself that day. She became a poor little motherless child, a wide-eyed girl who loved school but was unable to go, beaten by her inebriate father, scorned by her neighbours. Viviane drank it all in like a mother’s milk, and in return talked to Clare, told her of her husband with his important City job she did not quite understand, and her naughty son whom they were hoping school would straighten out.

  She invited Clare to visit again another day, and Clare, who had secreted a silver teaspoon in her pinafore pocket before she left, nodded shyly and said that that would be wonderful. When she got home, she squirrelled the teaspoon away in her private box of treasures and vowed that she would be a better fake daughter to Viviane Devereau than her real son had ever been.

  Over the next two years she made a habit of Castaway. She would start in the basement, where the servants would feed her, and she charme
d them with her wit and innocence, and the breath of outside air she brought into the dark space. She would then go up for tea with Viviane, and they would discuss the book Viviane had lent her the week before, or Clare would show a bruise she had received fighting with the Princes Street boys and tell her it was from her father’s fist, and Viviane would press a coin into her hand and tell her to buy meat or some other wholesome comestible.

  When war was declared, Clare shared Viviane’s fear for her male relatives who had signed up, and when the first casualty lists were announced, she held her hand as Viviane went through them and shuddered with relief when all the names were unknown, and comforted her at the deaths of distant nephews and cousins three times removed.

  In all this time, she never met Alexander Bray, the golden disappointment of his parents, expelled from school after school for misbehaviour, the child who had shown such intelligent promise but was now wasting it in his associations with undesirable friends. Sometimes she would arrive to tales of what Master Bray had got up to the night before, but it seemed that he stayed away from the drawing room, perhaps aware of the cuckoo in its midst.

  And then, one day, everything changed.

  She arrived at the house to see an ambulance pulling away, and went down to the basement to find the servants grouped round Cook’s deal table, the girls white-faced and trembling, the men cupping glasses of brandy. It seemed that sharp, lively Gina Scott had killed herself the previous night, and nobody could understand why.

  Rumours flew round the table. She had a condition – nobody explained this to Clare, but as a Princes Street child she knew exactly what that meant. She had been let down by a man, they said; had family trouble from back home in Shanker; perhaps she’d always been touched in the head but had never let on. The other girls asserted they would leave – said nobody would take a position in a house where such a thing had occurred. Mrs Bray should have known, they said. She’d been too involved in her own life to worry about the servants.

  And here they stared at Clare, as if she had been the cause of Viviane’s distraction. Clare faced them out, declared her sorrow at Gina’s death – which was genuine, because she’d been her favourite of the female servants, and if any one of them should have killed themselves she would rather it had been dumpy Maggie, with her pockmarked face – and asked to be taken to Viviane.

  It was a mistake. She should have left and returned on another day, not allowed her presence to be associated with Gina’s death. But she was young and lacked empathy, and could not understand why Viviane would be so upset. Yet she was – almost hysterical in fact, and her husband had arrived from London to comfort her, and Clare’s presence in the drawing room as a witness to this was extremely unwelcome.

  ‘Oh, Clare,’ sobbed Viviane when she saw her. ‘It’s too awful. It’s all my fault.’

  This was typical of soft-hearted Viviane. Clare took a step forward, discomfited by Mr Bray’s hand on his wife’s shoulder. ‘Of course it’s not,’ she said, worldly wise at her grand age of fourteen. ‘You couldn’t have known this would happen.’

  ‘I should have,’ she cried. ‘I could have stopped it all.’

  Clare thought she was being silly, in her usual Viviane-like way. ‘Please don’t be upset,’ she said, holding out a hand; a rather dirty little hand, she saw now.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t touch my wife,’ said Mr Bray stiffly, and Clare took her hand back as if she had been shot.

  ‘I – I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Should I go?’

  ‘Yes, go,’ he said. ‘Go and don’t come back.’

  Clare looked from him to Viviane, whose shoulders were still shaking, but who said, in between bursts, ‘Oh, Edward, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does matter. It matters a great deal. We know you’ve been stealing from us, you ungrateful little girl.’

  ‘I …’ She wanted to tell them it had only been one teaspoon, two years ago, but then she wondered if she should admit even that.

  ‘Taking money from my wife’s purse. You knew where it was kept.’ He indicated the drawer where Viviane did, indeed, keep her purse. Clare knew this because Viviane drew it out every week to hand over a few shiny coins.

  ‘She – she gave it to me.’ She saw Viviane shaking her head desperately. ‘I don’t steal.’

  ‘The teaspoon,’ Viviane croaked. ‘It all started then.’

  And now Clare understood Viviane’s treachery: the handing out of money, unsanctioned by the bullying husband, and when he had found out, perhaps today, she had lied – undone by the discovery of Gina’s body and its implications, but lied nevertheless – and implicated Clare in crimes she had not committed.

  ‘You’re lucky my wife doesn’t want to call the police,’ he said. ‘I’d have you thrown in gaol, minor or not.’

  She left then, still protesting her innocence, dragged out by the same male servant who’d carried her in on the first day. This time his hand was on the scruff of her neck, and as he tossed her on to the front steps she shouted, loud enough for Viviane to hear through the first-floor windows, ‘I’ll get you back! You’ll see! You can’t get away with this!’

  The money had never been spent; it had been hoarded in the box of treasures. She went home that night and counted it all up into wavering columns. In the morning she dressed, rolled the money inside a change of underwear, tied the whole thing into a shoddy-looking parcel and told Dotty to say goodbye to her father when he staggered home later. She took the first train to London and went to visit an old Princes Street friend of hers, Lil, who was seventeen and making her way on the stage. Lil took her in and fed and watered her, taught her how to dress and make herself up, changed her name and shoved her on stage in baby-doll clothes in a grubby revue. She encouraged her to take lessons in elocution, deportment and the classics. Clara Fortescue found she had a talent for the stage, and as she got older the theatres became smarter and the men who pursued her became wealthier. By the time she caught the eye of Alec Bray she had already received three proposals of marriage.

  ‘And how could I say no to him?’ she said, looking up at the stars. ‘He’d already promised me Castaway, without knowing I was a Helmstone girl. He said his mother was dying, and leaving it to him. He said it would be our home, that he was fed up with London, that all he wanted was a quiet, seaside sort of a life.’

  We had drifted back to shore now and were lying half in, half out of the waves. Occasionally the water would unplug us from the sand, forcing us to dig our toes in and push ourselves back up again. Goosebumps speckled my arms, but I felt none of the cold.

  I traced her profile with my eyes. ‘So you married him for Castaway.’

  She shrugged. ‘He was attractive, naturally. He could be charming. Back when he was still wooing me, he brought me to Helmstone for the day. We were both a dreadful pair of liars, of course. I pretended I’d never been before, and he pretended the house was rented out. Didn’t want to let his parents know he was pursuing an actress. So we bought day tickets on the train and came down here, and it was lovely.’ She sighed. ‘We went looking for crabs over by the rock pools, and I found a little shell with a mother-of-pearl inlay. I scratched our initials on to it and gave it to him, said it would bring us good luck. He promised to wear it next to his heart for ever.’

  ‘And does he?’ I asked, suddenly nervous of the answer.

  She snorted. ‘The very next day he told me he’d lost it. Said not to worry, he’d buy me a diamond ring instead.’ She shook her head. ‘That was when I knew I’d be a fool to lose my head over him. I accepted his proposal the week after. You know, with clear eyes and the conscience of a gold-digger.’

  My heart was leaping inside my chest. She did not love Alec. Perhaps she’d never loved him. She’d married him for his house, and the security that came along with it. Possibilities lapped my feet with the incoming tide.

  Clara propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at me. ‘It’s so nice to talk to you,’ she said. ‘It’s
like talking to a brother.’

  ‘Like Billy?’ I mumbled, crushed.

  ‘Of course. You can be Billy.’ She smiled. ‘We’re sort of similar, aren’t we?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I mean, neither of us fit in. We always have to play the part.’ She sat up and hugged her knees. ‘And now Princes Street won’t have me either, so I’m sort of stuck. Nobody wants me, you see.’

  I do, I thought. I held out my hand and said, ‘Brother and sister, loyal to the end.’

  She wrapped a fist round my little finger and smiled at me sadly. ‘Absolutely.’ She glanced down and grimaced. ‘Lord, there’s sand everywhere.’

  She jumped to her feet and attempted to brush herself off, showering me with grit.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, standing up too.

  ‘Sorry.’

  In the thick moonlight, I saw that she was plastered with the stuff. We both were; I felt it in my hair, under Alec’s swimsuit, at the backs of my knees.

  She looked away from the beach and frowned. ‘I’ll have to rinse off.’

  I looked about. ‘How …?’ I began, and then saw that she was darting up the slope towards the beach hut, shouting, ‘I’ll only be a minute!’

  I waited for her, brushing off sand, until I heard her voice in the dark call, ‘Up this way, Robert.’

  I made my way up the slope to where the beach huts hulked darkly before their wooden boards. ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Here – at the end of the huts.’

  Now I saw her, silhouetted against the furthest hut. Beside it, a tap jutted out of the ground, with a bucket below it. She held out a towel, and I took it.

  ‘I need you to do me a favour,’ she said. ‘I want to clean up, but I need somebody to guard my privacy. Would you do that?’

  ‘Of – of course,’ I said, not really sure what she meant.

  ‘Thank you.’ Her face was in darkness, but I thought I saw her smile as she began peeling off the straps of her costume.

  Now I understood and, alarmed, I spread out the towel and turned my head away, towards the high, blank sea wall where, in a few hours, fishermen would start hoisting out their trolleys to display their catches of the morning. I heard water gushing, and resisted, hard, the temptation to look round.