The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I heard her say, ‘but you can never be too sure, can you? One doesn’t want to be arrested.’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘I’m so glad we’re friends now, Robert. God, this water’s cold. You know, I do feel as if we have a sibling-like connection. Right, all done.’

  I felt the towel pulled from my grip, and when I turned she was wrapping herself in it, her costume slung on the tap like a victory flag. ‘Do you want a go?’ she said. ‘It’s very refreshing. I’ll grab you the other towel.’

  We reversed our roles. She held the towel high over her head, so high I could see her calves and ankles. As I pulled off Alec’s swimsuit, I heard the rumble of a motor car overhead and realized how much closer we were to the seafront road up here, compared to our idyll at the shore. I felt awkward and stupid, rinsing myself in freezing water, and the only positive effect, apart from ridding myself of sand, was that it also rid me of any latent desire. We were two silly kids, playing on the beach in the early hours of the morning, drunk and tired, and that was perfectly all right.

  She thrust the towel at me when I had finished and then, shivering and giggling, we ran into the hut. I pulled the door closed, murmured, ‘I’m frozen solid,’ and turned to her. I could barely see her in the darkness, but I heard the squeak of the stacked wicker chairs and I thought she must have pulled herself on to them. Her leg banged into my shin. I stumbled forwards and brushed against her hair as I righted myself.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she breathed.

  The space between us was changing. It had changed the moment that the door closed on us, but I was only just beginning to realize. The musty air in the hut crackled. I heard her short, high breaths. I bent down before I properly knew what I was doing and placed my lips on her forehead.

  She lifted her face. My lips found the tip of her nose and then her mouth. I kissed her, tugging at her bottom lip with mine, and, just as Lizzie had done to me, I pushed my tongue between her lips and Clara parted for me with a gasp.

  I could not hold my balance. I sank to my knees. She bent her head towards me; her hair brushed my face and we kissed and then, when she released me, I said, as though possessed, ‘I worship you.’

  She breathed heavily. ‘Then worship me,’ she whispered, and took my hand and traced it across her neck and down over her breasts. I felt her nipples and kissed them, and cursed that I could see nothing of her except a shadowy outline filtering through the wooden slats in the beach-hut door. The damp towel was rough about her sides; I kissed her stomach and she moaned. ‘Worship me,’ she said, and pushed my head lower, in towards the dark, salty heart of her. I felt my way, not even knowing what I was doing, guided by her hand and her whimpers, and, when I found the nub of her, caressed it with my tongue, over and over. She moaned louder and the wicker chairs squeaked and trembled, their legs rattling, and my knees grew numb on the gritty rug on the hard wooden floor. Sand on her thighs scraped my face, sand that she had missed, and her ankles crossed behind my neck, pulling me closer, and as I held on to the wooden struts of the hut to keep me stable, she bucked once, twice and again, and the wicker chairs creaked dangerously, and the beach hut shook, and she called out in a voice I’d never heard from her, ‘Oh bleedin’ fuckin’ fuck,’ and then all was still.

  I gasped for breath. I kissed her thigh, found sand plastered to my wet cheeks. In all my dreams I had never … and the smell … and I was overwhelmed … and I sank down to sitting, gulping in the sweat-drenched air.

  Then the chairs creaked again, and she knelt over me, pushing me backwards on to the rug. I felt my feet catching in the legs of the chairs, and my head knocked against the tip of a shoe as her hand felt for me, guiding me into her, and as she sank herself down around me all the stars illuminated inside my head and I thought, Not yet, not yet, not yet, and she moved up and down and up and down, and it was the dance and the swim and everything, and now I knew why I was alive, it was this, and it was so, so sweet.

  I exploded in a confusion of sound and light and the chairs collapsing into the side of the hut and the shoe bruising my face, and then Clara was bending over me, our sweat sliding together, whispering something I could not hear, and I was barely aware of anything any more. She pulled herself away from me, her breaths hot and heavy, and the hem of her dress brushed my chest.

  ‘You’d better get dressed,’ she said, and, feeling as if I was a being landed from another planet, I extricated my legs from those of the collapsed chairs and staggered to my feet. Clara turned her back as I dressed, unsteadily, breathing hard. The hut stank of our act of love; I could hardly stand upright in it.

  She turned to me as I was doing up the buttons on my shirt. She shook her head. ‘Let’s hope Scone went to bed as I told him to,’ she said, looking at me, and I mumbled, ‘I love you.’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet.’ She touched my nose.

  She opened the door of the hut and looked out. I saw the pale silver of sunrise tinting the eastern sky. ‘I love you,’ I said once more, to her back.

  She looked at the ruined chairs. ‘I’ll have to damage the lock. Kids are always breaking into the huts.’ She shook her head. ‘And you’re not going to tell me you love me again, all right?’

  ‘But I do love you,’ I said dumbly. ‘I worship you.’

  She sighed. ‘This has been lovely,’ she said. ‘But it’s not going to happen again. Do you understand that?’

  I nodded.

  She smiled, and looked at my shirt and refastened my buttons. I felt her fingers at my throat and my spirit soared.

  ‘You’ve a wonderful girl in Lizzie,’ she said. ‘And I want you to think about her. Will you do that? For me?’

  ‘All right.’ I could think about Lizzie. Thinking about Lizzie meant nothing to me any more.

  ‘Good. Then we’ll go up the hill, you’ll go to your bedroom, sleep, and in the morning we’ll have breakfast as normal. All right?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. In a few hours I would see her again. I hardly cared under what circumstances.

  ‘Then I’ll remember this night with great pleasure,’ she said, smiling. ‘Now, will you be a dear and break the lock on the door?’

  I did as she asked. I was her pack animal, her beast of burden; I would have done anything for her. Together, we walked up the steps towards the seafront road, she slightly behind me, cautiously looking left and right.

  ‘Wait.’

  Her fingers touched my back. I stopped, just below the level of the road, and peered along the street. I saw, in the distance, a figure shambling along towards us. His gait was unmistakable, and my soaring spirit splattered into a muddy puddle.

  We hovered, my heart pounding, as Alec approached our hiding place. He was drunk; that much could be seen even from so far away, but it did not mean he would not see us. I felt sordid now, and idiotic, abusive of my cousin, who had never shown me anything but love and friendship. Clara had had her own reasons for making her husband a cuckold; I had none but my own witless desire.

  Alec appeared to be shouting at some unknown adversary. ‘… I was never good enough for you, eh?’ came the tail end of his cry, carried on the breeze towards us.

  Clara’s shame radiated from the bent top of her head. I wondered if we could explain ourselves away, but then I thought of the broken lock on the beach-hut door, and the collapsed wicker chairs, and the stench that must still permeate the tiny room. I shuddered, seeing Alec’s hurt and my disgrace and, worse, what would happen to Clara if she was found out; and I knew she was right and that this must be the only time, and if we escaped with this I vowed I would not even look at her again. Perhaps, I thought, we could creep down the steps now, but he was almost upon us and he might catch some movement with the corner of his eye. In fact, were he just to cast his glance a little over, he would see us in plain view: two cringing lovers biting their lips.

  As he got closer I realized that Alec’s opponent existed only
in his inebriate mind. ‘Can’t bear it … Mother …’ I heard him say, banging his fist on the rail. A sob broke from his throat. ‘… Not my fault … Castaway … It’s not …’

  He was upon us now, and I held my breath. ‘Not Sally …’ he slurred. ‘… Mustn’t mention Sally. I’m not listening, Mother, d’you hear? Not listening.’

  And then he was moving past us and was gone.

  We waited, without moving, for a long time. When Clara did look up at me, her face was cold and set. I knew that when we did finally start to walk towards the house, when we could be quite sure Alec was lying unconscious on his bed, we would not talk about this. We would not talk about anything.

  Her flinty, coal-edged eyes pierced mine, and their message was clear: that even though she may have allowed me to love her, briefly, I was only at the threshold of understanding Clara Bray. I also knew that if she had her way, I never would get to know her at all.

  13

  1965

  I was dreaming, I thought.

  I couldn’t be sure. I was in the sea, with the full moon turning the waves from black to white. My face was sticky from dried salt, my hair was stuck tight to my head, and there, a short distance away, a girl was drifting, lifting an arm to wave.

  It was Star, of course. I swam towards her, the tide pushing against me, but I knew I was a strong swimmer, that I could beat the crush of the sea, and so I forced myself onwards. ‘Come here!’ she was calling. ‘It’s lovely. It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Wait for me,’ I said, my voice odd, enclosed as if I were in a cupboard. Her white arm was beside me, and I grasped at it, lifting her clear.

  It wasn’t Star. It was Mrs Bray – a younger Mrs Bray, an image from a photograph, with sharp dark hair and all-seeing eyes, a tilted chin and a beaded dress. She was wrapped in a velvet curtain, which was dragging her down under the surface of the sea.

  I made a huge effort and pulled her shoulders up towards mine, freeing her of the velvet cage. I thought I heard her laughing, but when I finally brought her near to me, her neck lolled back and I realized that the eyes were seeing nothing at all, because she was dead. She’d been long dead: her face had that green, sour look, and her limbs were withered from the relentless pound of the salt in the sea.

  A great sense of desolation overcame me. It was horrible, awful. ‘It’s all gone wrong,’ I tried to cry, but my lips were gummed closed by the water, and the more I tried to move them, the more they stuck fast.

  And then there came a great battering, clanging sound, on and on and on, and I groped my way out of murderous sleep into the dim half-light of a strange room, and the sound of my alarm clock’s hammer bashing the bell over and over again.

  My limbs were as mummified as my lips had been in my dream. The blankets seemed to be pressing down on me, restricting even the tiniest movement. I creaked an elbow upwards, pushed aside the top sheet, freed my hand, groped along the floor towards the demented sound, found the switch and, at last, stilled the awful noise.

  I lay for a while, coming to, remembering where I was: Mrs Bray’s sitting room, flat on a thin mattress, the steel coils underneath poking up and misshaping my flesh. I gazed at the unfamiliar shapes of the furniture and finally remembered what had happened last night: the slam of the chest cracking open, the whistling in my ear, and the sleeping pill I’d taken from her bottle by the bed that had dragged me down into the groggy sleep I was now trying to wake up from.

  My tongue felt thick with fur, my throat was parched, and there was another hammer in my head using my brain as a bell. I supposed this was what people meant by a hangover. My eyes were sandy with grit; I felt sleep struggling to claim me again. With a huge effort, I padded my hand on the floor, found the clock and pulled it upright.

  It was half past six.

  Bugger, said the voice in my pounded brain. I had exactly zero minutes before I was supposed to be at work, and Mrs Hale had been talking yesterday about letting me go. I threw back the suffocating covers, collapsed on to the floor, pulled myself upright once more and staggered towards the bathroom.

  Mrs Bray was still asleep, breathing lightly. Unlike me, she seemed perfectly at ease inside the cocoon of her drug; make-up-less, her face had taken on an innocent look. She had a certain resemblance to those sculptures of royal ladies I’d seen on cathedral tombs, lying in marble over their casket, serene in death, as unlike the lolling body of my dream as could be.

  I dressed in the grey light whispering over the tops of the curtains, my hangover creasing out any fear of the shadows. I fumbled my way into stockings and dress, switched my greasy hair into a ponytail and gulped down a cup of tepid water from the sink. I picked up the Bradley’s bag that I’d crammed my belongings into last night, and it tore, sending the scrappy, oddly yellowing receipts from inside fluttering across the floor. I sighed, kicked the bag under the bed and heaped my clothes on top of the covers, intending to pick them up later.

  As I stood there, a voice behind me whispered in my ear,

  ‘Rosie.’

  My guts vaulted. I turned, and there was Star behind me, still in her clothes of last night, as pale as a drowned girl flung up by the sea. She put a hand out and supported herself on the counter of the kitchenette.

  ‘Huh,’ she added, and I turned back in silent fury to pick up my handbag as she mumbled, ‘I’ve been chucking up for hours. I want to die.’

  ‘Good.’ Her words of last night bounced from floor to ceiling and back into my head. Disgusting dyke. Tried to touch me up. Pervert.

  She seemed too gone even to comprehend what I was saying. She trudged towards the bed, kicking her shoes off, and climbed under the covers, my belongings on top rippling under the wave of her body. She curled up against the pillow.

  ‘I never want to see you again,’ I hissed, and was rewarded with slow, heavy snores.

  I was in an even fouler mood now, as I left her sleeping and marched past Mrs Bray into the hallway. Not only that, but I could see she wouldn’t wake for anything, not a slammed-back chest or an eerie whistling. Bitch.

  Outside, I shivered under the frosty blue sky and hurried up the entrance towards the Bella Vista.

  ‘You’re fifteen minutes late,’ snapped Josie as I walked, feeling like death, towards the basement stairs. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t give you the old heave-ho.’

  ‘I’ve had a bad night.’

  ‘You’re young. You wouldn’t know a bad night if it slapped you round the face.’ She sucked archly on the end of her cigarette. ‘Tell you about my back trouble, did I?’

  I grunted, and went down the stairs to the kitchen. There were already a couple of guests sitting in the breakfast room when I arrived, the commercial traveller sort, one filling in his newspaper crossword in pencil, the other smoking an unfiltered cigarette and staring at the ancient, Riviera-type poster of Helmstone in a dazed sort of gloom.

  I knew Mrs Hale was going to skin the hide off me; it was now twelve minutes to seven, and I opened my mouth as I pushed aside the beaded curtain, ready with my tale of the demanding landlady and the truckle bed, the spooky occurrences, the sleeping pill still trudging through my brain.

  ‘Rosie!’ Mrs Hale turned from the stove. ‘Thank goodness you’re here.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve had a terrible night,’ I began, pulling my apron from the hook before she could tell me not to bother.

  ‘Mmm. Now then.’ She headed past me towards the curtain. ‘You’re going to have to run the ship until I get back.’

  ‘What?’ I paused, in the midst of tying my apron strings.

  ‘I have to go and see Father. He’s in a terrible state. You’ll be all right, won’t you? Both the gentlemen just want the regular breakfast with tea; you know where everything is by now. You can leave the washing-up until after I come back.’ She frowned. ‘Although I don’t think we’ve enough cups, so you’re going to have to do those as you go. Well then, I’ll see you in a while.’

  And before I even had ti
me to breathe out, she was gone.

  ‘What?’ I said to the empty space. ‘What?’ But there was only the rattle of chairs being pulled out, and when I peeked through the beaded curtain I saw that there were more people in the breakfast room: a retired couple looking round expectantly, bright with morning. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the teapot shelf, the world still swirling merrily from behind my shut lids. Through the other side of the curtain I heard a woman call out, ‘Excuse me! Is anyone coming to take our order? We’ve a train to catch, you know.’

  I opened my eyes, switched on the electric grill, pulled the frying pan from its hook, set it on the stove and reached for Mrs Hale’s tub of lard. I had a feeling it was going to be a long morning.

  Sometime later Mrs Hale came back to quell the angry chorus of hotel guests demanding their breakfasts. She found me in the kitchen, slapping broken fried eggs on to two plates. ‘I’ll take those out,’ she said, swooping down. I heard her trilling to the guests about the ‘new girl’ and how she, Mrs Hale, had had to tend to her aged father, and, as I smelled the aroma of burned toast yet again, and pulled out the grill pan to throw the charred squares into the pig bin, I heard the guests laughing themselves into being good sports about the whole thing. Then I realized the hot-water urn had run out of water, so I ran to the sink to fill jug after jug to pour into it, and I knew it was going to be another fifteen minutes before we had hot water for tea, so I set the kettle to boil as well and looked around at the bomb crater of the kitchen – plates tipped into the sink, still covered in bacon rind and baked beans; used teacups precariously balanced on top of each other; two broken eggs splattered on to the floor with a dish cloth dropped on top so I wouldn’t slip up on them; the cutlery tray running dangerously low – and I saw it was only eight o’clock, and wanted to burst into tears.