The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  ‘Don’t get spooked.’

  And then the door swung shut behind me, and I was alone, with just the dim light entering through the frosted windows either side of the doorway to guide me.

  The air smelled old and musty. There was the sharp tang of damp, and of ancient wet bricks. As my pupils slowly adjusted, I made out sandy stone slabs on the floor and a curving ceiling overhead. I took a step forwards, narrowing my eyes to see the ground, and, from nowhere, loomed a bare foot.

  I stopped, my heart lurching. The bare foot continued upwards; it belonged to a leg abandoned just above the knee.

  I gasped, and as the rest of the tunnel lifted from the gloom I saw ten – no, twenty – bodies, some sprawled on the ground, others collapsed against each other. Glassy eyes stared; gashed mouths beseeched, and it took me three terrifying seconds to realize that the eyes were glassy because they were made of glass, and the gashed mouths had been painted on, and that I was, of course, in a storeroom of shop-floor mannequins.

  I breathed out heavily. My heart was still going like the clappers, and as I waited for it to calm down I saw the false moustaches and wigs, mildewed dresses and red nails. It looked as if the window displays of several boutiques had got together for an epic battle. Bodies lay across the width of the tunnel; others, somehow remaining upright, loomed at me from their positions against the slimy tunnel walls.

  I couldn’t see the end of the archway; the faint light from the windows didn’t reach that far, and so I took a ginger step forwards and nearly skidded on a black wig. ‘Dockie? It’s me, Rosie.’

  There was no answer. I continued onwards. I passed a bald dummy with the faint outlines of spidery lashes, clothed in mouldering rags, the flat shape of a guitar glued to her hands. There was another in what seemed to be the soggy serge of a Great War uniform.

  At the end of the tunnel to my right, a further tunnel doubled back towards the seafront. I turned into it. ‘Dockie!’ I called. ‘Where are you?’

  The windows at the end were almost obscured with nailed boards. I inched forwards, and stumbled on a body lying on the ground. My breath froze in my throat, but it was only another mannequin, this time in a dirty robe, its arms stuck straight out in front of it. A headdress lay trampled into the ground beside it. Its glass eyes were missing, and it gaped at me blindly.

  ‘Dockie?’

  I remained where I was, hardly able to see a thing but for dark outlines in the gloom. I had never wanted to be anywhere else quite so much as I had now. ‘Dockie?’ I said again, fearfully. Perhaps I had missed him; perhaps he was back in the other arch.

  ‘Rosie.’

  My name was a sob. I whirled around. There were bodies everywhere: on the floor, against the walls; there was even one slumped on the steps in front of the nailed-shut windows beside a boarded door.

  I narrowed my eyes at the body and then said tentatively, ‘Dockie?’

  ‘Rosie,’ it murmured, and I rushed towards him, the faint light picking him out, his face in his hands, rocking back and forth on the step. I cast aside a large piece of plasterboard and crouched on the ground below him. I held out my hand and he gripped it, hard. ‘Dockie,’ I whispered. ‘It’s okay. I’m here. It’s Rosie.’

  ‘Rosie.’ He squeezed the life from my fingers with his calloused hand.

  I breathed out. ‘You didn’t go back to Dublin.’

  He shook his head. In a cracked voice he said, ‘I walked along the beach. I saw the number above the arch, number 231. The lock was open. I came in, and … and I saw … I saw that.’

  He pointed with one flailing finger, and I looked around, expecting to see him indicating one of the silent bodies lining the walls. Instead, he was pointing at the plasterboard I’d just tossed aside.

  ‘What is it?’ I reached over, almost toppling, and picked up the board. It was half of a sign, its paint mostly worn away, faded and cracked by damp, but still readable. It said:

  SON & BRAY’S HALL O

  ‘I saw this,’ he said shakily, ‘and I remembered.’

  I frowned at the sign. Bray, I thought. ‘Remembered what?’

  He took a wheezy breath. ‘Everything. Everything returned, as if it had never been away.’

  ‘And now?’ I put the plasterboard down, but more reverently this time, leaning it against the wall.

  ‘I still remember.’ He gripped my fingers harder. ‘But I am afraid, my dear Rosie, that when I leave this place I will forget again. Perhaps it is just being inside these walls that has brought it back. That’s why I need you here, do you understand? I will tell you who I am. You must be my memory, Rosie; you must give me back to myself, in case I forget.’

  ‘I thought you …’ I paused. ‘You told me you didn’t want to remember.’

  ‘When I was born on the docks …’ He sighed. ‘I wanted to forget. I wanted to begin again; a new life, if you will. Every flash of my past was ignored, every hint of my previous existence that I could have chased, that I could have worked on, I let rust away, until nothing was left.’

  ‘But Frank?’ I said. ‘You told me he betrayed you.’

  Dockie nodded. ‘A lonely man, Frank. No family, few friends. He wanted – no, he needed somebody to care for. And there I was, as vulnerable as a newborn baby, believing everything he chose to tell me. Or not tell me.’

  I breathed softly. ‘Do you mean he knew who you were all those years, and never told you? That’s awful.’

  ‘He saw the truth in the newspapers; he clipped the stories out, perhaps intending to show me one day, perhaps later putting them out of his mind. I think he convinced himself that it was best all round, that I really had wanted to escape my past. And you see, Rosie, in a way he was right, because I sensed, deep down, that I did not want to know who I was. It seemed easier, under the circumstances, to start anew.’

  I thought of myself, frantically packing a bag and running away to Castaway House. ‘I think I understand,’ I said quietly.

  ‘I have had a good life, Rosie. I want you to know that. I have been happy. Simple, uncomplicated. Perhaps that was all I’d been looking for.’

  ‘What about Frank?’ I asked.

  ‘Without Frank, I would have died.’ He shrugged. ‘He also allowed a great injustice to stand uncorrected, but he was not to know that. And now you must help me to apologize.’

  ‘What injustice? And who must you apologize to?’

  ‘To so many people.’ He shook his head. ‘But firstly, and most importantly, to my wife.’

  My brain whirred. ‘Your wife?’

  He nodded. ‘Clara, my wife.’ He gestured to the plasterboard. ‘My name – my real name, of course – is Alexander Bray.’

  ‘What?’

  He nodded again, surer this time. ‘My name is Alexander Bray, and Castaway House is my home.’

  I thought of two people standing in velvet, and I shook my head. ‘Alexander Bray’s dead.’

  ‘Not any more.’ Dockie creaked up to standing. ‘Not any more.’

  It couldn’t be true. Of course it wasn’t true. He was a mad old man, and he’d got hold of the name somehow and had convinced himself that a fantasy was the truth.

  ‘Maybe we should – um – talk to a doctor.’

  He whirled around and beetled his brows. ‘I thought you were my friend, Rosie.’

  ‘I am! I just meant … perhaps you’re not well. You’ve spent all night in this creepy old place, for a start.’

  ‘You said Clara was the landlady of Castaway.’ He jabbed a finger at me. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Er … er … Paris.’

  ‘Then I need you to help me. You must help me. Now, more than ever.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, holding up my palms. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘She will be on the telephone, no doubt. I need you to find her number, call her and inform her that her husband has returned. I shall reimburse you, of course.’

  He walked past me through the tunnel, stepping over the body on its
back, its robes adrift. I hurried after him.

  ‘You might forget,’ I said hopefully. ‘You know, tomorrow. Or in five minutes. All of this … memory stuff, it might go.’

  ‘That is why I need you. You are to be my memory. You will tell me who I am. Agreed?’

  He was still shuffling down the tunnel, wincing and coughing. ‘I will,’ I said, already deciding that I wouldn’t. I wondered where on earth he’d got the idea he was Mrs Bray’s husband.

  I followed him through the forest of mannequins, up one tunnel and down the next, and finally we emerged, squinting in the chilly sunlight, beside the beach. The man from the council gave Dockie a ticking off, to which he listened not one jot. I spotted Star standing on the beach, facing the sea; Dockie, I realized, was claiming to be her grandfather.

  ‘I have to talk to my friend,’ I said in a breathy rush. ‘Before we do anything else, I must talk to her.’

  He nodded and tapped his head while muttering, ‘I am Alexander Bray. Alexander Bray.’ He eyed me. ‘Speak to your friend, my dear. Go.’

  Star sensed me coming, and turned to watch me padding across the sand. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, with a fake cheerful tone plastered over her deathly pale face. ‘Let’s just forget what I said. You know. Totally hungover, talking nonsense … I mean, we’re still friends, right?’

  My head was spinning with Dockie’s fantastical claim. ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said distractedly, and she looked rather taken aback. ‘But listen, something else has cropped up.’

  ‘What’s that?’ She frowned, flummoxed.

  I indicated Dockie, still pacing the area outside the arch and tapping his head. ‘See that man over there?’

  ‘Yes, the crazy old chap who called me Clara. What about him?’

  ‘You know I told you he’d lost his memory? Well, it’s returned.’ I bit my lip. ‘The only thing is, he’s insisting that his name is Alexander Bray.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at me. ‘It can’t be. That’s my grandfather’s name.’

  ‘I know. He’s saying that Clara – your grandmother – is his wife, and that he owns Castaway House.’

  She shook her head. ‘My grandfather’s dead. He died before I was born.’

  ‘Well, I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Then he really is crazy.’ She puffed out air with her lips. ‘But he knows Granny? How could he know her?’

  ‘Perhaps a fan? You know, from your grandmother’s actress days?’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’ She nodded slowly. ‘I ought to tell her. She might know who he is, if he’s been … God, following her or something.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s deposit him somewhere and then you can talk to her.’

  ‘You’re on.’ As we walked back across the sand I felt her relax, perhaps in the knowledge that I hadn’t flounced off at her revelation. But there was something else here too, and it was only as we reached the concrete walkway and shook sand from our shoes that I realized what it was: the balance of power had shifted between us.

  ‘Incredible,’ Dockie was murmuring to Star as we approached. ‘You look so like my wife.’

  ‘Not that much,’ I said, and then added rapidly, ‘I mean – that is – maybe she did, once. But Mrs – I mean, your wife … she must be much older.’

  He frowned at the sea-rippled sand. ‘Ah. I hadn’t thought of that.’ He brightened and smiled at us. ‘And now, back to Castaway House so you can make that telephone call.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, glancing at Star. ‘I was wondering: it might be better for you to wait for us somewhere.’ I looked about the beach, as if the answer might be under the shadow of the broken pier.

  ‘I shall wait at the house.’ He limped ahead of us towards the steps that led up to the promenade. ‘I still have that little room. I will stay there while you telephone my wife, and you shall tell me what she says in consequence.’

  ‘Of course, she probably won’t be in,’ I said to his back, as he wheezed up the steps. ‘Or – I don’t know – she’ll be ex-directory, or something.’

  ‘I know you will do your best, Rosie. I trust you.’

  ‘I will,’ I said weakly, turning to pull a face at Star.

  At the top, Dockie gripped the rail and looked over the seafront. ‘It must be over forty years. I remember all this, you know. A penny to go on to the pier, the Punch and Judy man in his striped booth. Oh, those shows were a treat.’ He chuckled, and then turned towards the huge climb of Gaunt’s Cliff.

  We walked slowly up the hill, Dockie having to pause for breath every so often. Star walked behind, not wanting to get involved. I wondered how this was going to end. No doubt there were authorities who dealt with this sort of thing. I hoped there wouldn’t be straitjackets or injections. I didn’t like the thought of Dockie in a pea-green room with nurses in masks holding him down as a doctor in glinting spectacles approached, telling him this wouldn’t hurt a bit.

  Suddenly he said, ‘Her name – is it still Bray?’

  ‘Um …’ I glanced at Star, who shrugged. ‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Then she has not remarried. I imagined she would have. That would be bigamy, I suppose. Or have I been declared officially dead?’ He shook his head and, as if musing on this for the first time, murmured, ‘I suppose this will be rather a shock for her, after forty years.’

  Star rolled her eyes. We crossed the road opposite the Bella Vista. Dr Feathers was back in position sitting by the window; next to him was Lizzie, talking volubly at her father, who appeared not to be listening. As we approached he pointed a trembling finger in our direction, and I smiled and waved.

  However, he did not smile or wave back. He turned, and appeared to be speaking to someone in the room behind him. Lizzie switched her gaze to the window, and a second later Mrs Hale’s dim face appeared behind her. They were all looking in our direction. Mrs Hale leaned in between her father and her sister, knocked on the window and motioned for us to stay where we were.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Star, arriving beside me on the pavement.

  ‘I have no idea.’ I looked at Dockie, who was standing, transfixed, staring into the window.

  Mrs Hale appeared in the doorway to the guest house. She hurried down the steps and along the path. There, she clung on to the rotting pillar beside the empty gateway, stared at Dockie and said in a hoarse whisper, ‘Tell me it’s not you.’

  I flicked a glance at Star. Dockie was still staring in through the window, but finally he tore his eyes away, looked at Mrs Hale and said, ‘I beg your pardon, my memory is not what it was. Do I know you?’

  She shook her head faintly, one hand to her mouth. ‘You can’t be,’ she croaked. ‘You can’t be.’

  Dockie pointed towards the window. ‘I recognize him,’ he said, indicating Dr Feathers, who was still peering out, talking wildly to Lizzie, who was also staring. ‘But for the life of me I cannot remember who he is.’

  ‘It’s D—’ I began, but Dockie cut me off with a wagging finger.

  ‘No, Rosie, do not inform me. It will be better if I remember alone. And I shall. I shall remember.’ He turned and walked towards Castaway House, shaking his head and muttering.

  Mrs Hale was backing up the path. ‘I must …’ she began. ‘I have to …’ And she turned and went up the steps to the guest house, still glancing back.

  I looked at Star and she looked at me, and, silently, we followed Dockie up the steps of Castaway and on to the covered porch. He pointed up at the stained glass over the door. ‘Art nouveau,’ he said wonderingly. ‘Her name was Viviane. Long white hands. A frail voice. I suppose – yes, I suppose she was my mother.’

  ‘Let’s go in,’ I said, unlocking the door.

  ‘Absolutely.’ He clapped his hands. ‘I loved Castaway, you know. More than anyone else, I think. Here we are. The hallway. Oh yes. Here we are.’

  As he strode ahead of us into the hall I turned to Star, who shrugged at me helplessly. He stopped at the telephone p
linth and shook a pile of coins into his hand. Placing them on top of the A/B box, he said, ‘That should be enough. Paris, you said? International Directory Enquiries. Clara Bray, that is her name. I shall await your answer downstairs.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said guiltily, hoping Mrs Bray would not come out of her flat at this particular moment.

  He put a calloused hand on mine. ‘I know you will.’ He walked slowly, painfully, towards the end of the hallway and turned to go down the stairs, lifting his hand in a wave.

  I looked at the coins he’d left, scattered untidily below the phone, and then, like some haunted animal, I unwillingly lifted my eyes to the blackboard above.

  There was no message. My shoulders sank, and at the same time I felt oddly disappointed – as if maybe, after all this time, Mum had decided I wasn’t worth the effort.

  ‘Will you come with me?’ Star indicated the door to the ground-floor flat, that same uncertain quaver on her lips. ‘Tell Granny together; then we’ll have done our duty, after all.’

  ‘Yes.’ I shook myself free of the looming dread that blank blackboard gave me. ‘Of course.’

  Star knocked, and Mrs Bray answered promptly, in full make-up, a dogtooth jacket and the stilettos of yesterday. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Have you sorted out whatever unholy mess you promised to untangle?’

  This was directed at Star, who simply said, ‘We need to talk to you.’

  Mrs Bray raised an eyebrow, stood back from the door and said, ‘I’m in the garden. I telephoned Bradley’s earlier for some groceries. Perhaps you could bring some tea out to the terrace.’

  Without waiting for a reply, she turned and marched through the open French windows into the conservatory and from there disappeared into the garden. Star turned to me. ‘That’s Granny,’ she said. ‘On her terms or not at all.’

  I followed Star into the sitting room, where she went to the kitchenette and filled the kettle at the sink. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I can manage.’

  ‘I just wanted to …’ She looked up at me as I spoke, and I took her hand. ‘I don’t know, say that everything’s going to be all right.’