Exit

by Belinda Bauer

  King nodded ruefully. ‘Someone will report her missing sooner or later.’

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘What was it she told you again?’

  ‘That people had let Albert down and she was trying to put things right.’

  ‘Did she seem lucid?’

  ‘She did . . .’ said Calvin, ‘but that was right before she collapsed and died, so . . .’ He shrugged and wound the fine gold chain through his fingers and studied the medallion. St Christopher brandished a key, and it felt like a teasing symbol for the mystery of Old Greybeard.

  He wished he’d known her better.

  Known her at all, really.

  Too late now.

  Calvin got up and switched off his computer and pulled on his jacket. He put Old Greybeard’s possessions into an evidence bag.

  Then, on impulse, he took the St Christopher out and looped it over his head.

  When he found Old Greybeard’s next of kin, he’d return it. Until then, he’d wear it. Calvin wasn’t religious. He felt no need for the protection of the patron saint of travellers. And he should be putting it with her other belongings in an evidence bag in a forgotten corridor of Bideford police station.

  But this just felt . . .

  Kinder.

  Chess

  Skipper Cann glared at Felix. ‘I told you, if you came here again I’d kill you.’

  Felix stayed near the bedroom door. Nearly backed out of it. But he didn’t.

  He’d prepared his opening gambit. Now he cleared his throat and delivered it. ‘I thought you might like to play chess.’

  ‘I don’t play chess.’

  Felix edged into the room. ‘I can teach you,’ he said. ‘You’ll love it.’

  He walked to a little wooden chair and pulled it over to the bed. Then he fetched the wastebasket that was behind the door, and started to clear the bedside table of used tissues and empty pill bottles and all sorts of bits and bobs: a barely nibbled sandwich, medications, a box of dog treats. All he left were Skipper’s teeth in a glass of water, another glass of water without any teeth in it, and various medications. Then he opened the board and set up the pieces.

  All the time he could feel Skipper Cann’s eyes burning into him.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘the aim is to protect your king—’

  ‘Din’t say I can’t play.’

  ‘Oh, good. You go first then. It’s only fair.’

  ‘Because you killed my son, I can go first?’

  Felix flushed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’

  Skipper Cann turned his head to look out of the window and the atmosphere chilled like low cloud sinking down the side of a mountain. Toff shivered as if he could feel it too. The walking stick lay along the shallow hump of Skipper’s leg and Felix eyed it warily, thinking of Margaret propping it in the corner of the hallway as they came in. Of him handing it to her as they went out. Of always asking, Got your stick, old girl? as he locked the front door behind them.

  Perhaps he should leave. But if he left now and Miss Knott asked him how it had gone, what could he say?

  ‘White goes first anyway,’ Skipper said, and banged a pawn down defiantly.

  Felix moved his own pawn.

  Skipper looked around the room as if for a waiter and muttered, ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘Shall I make some tea?’

  ‘Pfft!’

  Felix frowned at his watch. ‘It’s only just gone ten.’

  ‘I’ve got cancer, you know!’ said Skipper triumphantly.

  Felix demurred. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’

  At the end of the landing the back bedroom filled his vision – the solitary oxygen tank accusing him.

  He was pleased to wind around the banister and turn his back on Albert’s room.

  Toff and Mabel followed him downstairs and into the front room, where Felix looked around without success for a drinks cabinet. The room had very much reverted to the shambles it had been when he’d first spoken to the cleaner.

  All I want to do is cry and eat crisps.

  Poor girl. Still, she really ought to be doing the job for which she was being paid. Even the brick was still there, although now half hidden by a fresh onslaught of red bills and junk mail. Felix started to gather up the obvious rubbish, before an insistent banging overhead made him remember that Skipper was expecting something to drink. He hurriedly opened and closed cabinets and cupboards which only revealed more clutter.

  He went through to the kitchen, where Hayley was drying dishes.

  ‘Skipper wants a drink,’ he said tentatively, but she seemed unsurprised.

  She nodded at a cupboard and said, ‘In there.’

  It wasn’t a drinks cupboard, it was a condiments cupboard. There was an old tin of mustard powder that reminded Felix he had to buy some to try to get the mascara out of his beige jacket. There was also a half-full bottle of Captain Morgan and two bottles of supermarket-brand gin.

  In consideration of Skipper’s name and presumed history, Felix chose the rum. He splashed a good inch of it into a tumbler from the drying rack and carried it carefully upstairs.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said, and put it on the windowsill within easy reach.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Is what it?’

  ‘That little dribble?’

  ‘I thought I’d been quite generous,’ said Felix. ‘Given the hour.’ He jumped his knight over his pawns.

  Skipper countered with another pawn, then downed the rum in one. He stared into the glass as if it might refill by magic.

  ‘Another?’ he said.

  Felix opened his mouth to protest, but then didn’t. He just went downstairs and fetched the bottle.

  ‘Thought you’d be back,’ laughed Hayley.

  Skipper poured another nip.

  ‘Join me?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Felix’s bishop swept across the board and Skipper parried with a pawn to block his queen.

  ‘Sun’s over the yardarm somewhere, you know.’

  Felix sighed. Fetched a glass. That was four times he’d been up and down the stairs now and his hip was starting to notice. He poured himself a drop and touched the liquid to his lips, feeling the burn. He’d never been much of a drinker and wasn’t keen on spirits, but the aroma of the rum made even this dingy room seem a little exotic, as if they were in a cabin in a worn-down old ship, with its creaking wooden floor and simple furniture, and its grizzled old captain surveying the sky – now with a bit more spark about him and some colour in his cheeks.

  He looked quite chipper for a man who should be dead.

  ‘Rain.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Rain,’ Skipper said again. ‘Can’t you smell it?’

  Felix followed his gaze. The sky was a bland white. ‘Really?’

  Skipper nodded at the clouds over the cliffs. ‘Them speaks of rain. And I’d tell you when exactly if I could only see the water.’ His pale blue eyes searched the clifftops keenly as if they might yet see over them and swoop down across the big grey pebbles to the ocean.

  ‘Did you work at sea?’

  ‘Near enough every day for seventy year,’ nodded Skipper, and his tone softened with memories. ‘Began when I were twelve on my father’s boat, the Megan. Till her went down off Hartland.’

  ‘She sunk? My goodness! Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘Only Duffy Braund.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Drowned.’

  Felix was aghast. ‘How awful.’

  But Skipper smiled, ‘No fisherman wants to die on land! Lost at sea – them’s the lucky ones. Like Manny Tithecott. Fishing off the rocks down Bude with his brother and a wave knocked him off. Warn’t even on a boat, but it were his time, so the sea come and found him. And Billy Col
e. Got a lobster line wrapped round his leg while the other bays on the Charmain was asleep. When ’em pulled in the line, there’s Billy halfway down, and two big old pinchers in the pot at the end of it!’ He laughed, then added respectfully, ‘Give ’em to Billy’s wife, o’ course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Felix said faintly.

  But Skipper was warming to his subject. ‘And there’s Chiggy Sleeman what fell out a dinghy over by Instow and he warn’t even over the bloody Bar!’

  ‘Which bar?’ asked Felix.

  ‘The Bar,’ said Skipper impatiently, as if everybody knew. ‘Sandbar between the river and the sea. Bideford Bar’s most dangerous in England, but Chiggy weren’t nowhere near it. He were only just off the beach. His wellies filled with water, they said, and that pulled him under, but I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What do you believe?’ asked Felix, enthralled.

  Skipper cocked an eye at him. ‘Had a maid with him, see? Noreen, from down the White Hart – you know Noreen?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Felix. He’d never been in the White Hart or any other Bideford pub.

  ‘Well, she’s a nice maid, but thin, see? And they’d gone through near enough a flagon of scrumpy before they set off, so I reckon that’s why he’s gone over the side, and what’s stopped him getting back in the boat. Chiggy were a vool, but even drunk, he knew enough to kick his boots off. I reckon Noreen were just too skinny to help him, and he were too squiffy to help himself!’

  Skipper cackled so hard that Felix laughed too, even though it was terrible. But he couldn’t help it. Being terrible only made it funnier. He could imagine it. The shock of the water. The giggles at first – at the silliness of it all. At Chiggy’s comical struggle to haul himself over the side. The growing concern when it was clear he couldn’t. Then the creeping fear . . . Felix wondered what they’d said to each other; whether either had acknowledged what was happening. Or if they were too drunk to work it out until it was too late. Maybe that would be the best way to go – drunk and stupid.

  So he laughed, and Skipper laughed until it turned to coughing and Felix looked at him anxiously as he thumped his own chest. But the coughing slowed and stopped in a wheeze.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘If I’m not sleeping, I’m corking,’ snorted Skipper dismissively and wiped his eyes, took a gulp of rum and went on.

  ‘What happened after the Megan sunk?’ said Felix, who was starting to feel the way he had as a child at suppertime, thrilling to tales of his big brother’s athletic exploits. The starting gun, and the cheering crowds and the breaking tape and the handshakes. All the more romantic for having been missed.

  ‘After that my father had the Megan II for nigh on twenty year before he died.’

  ‘Lost at sea?’ ventured Felix.

  ‘In bed.’ Skipper tapped his heart. ‘Ticker. Give my mother the shock of her life. Thing is, a fisherman’s expected to die at sea. That’s why he names his boat for his lover, so they’re together at the end, see? Then when it comes, she knows what to do. How to be. But this . . . ? Right besides her?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And then all the stirrage with the doctor and the undertaker and the funeral with some blasted vicar going on and on, when all a man wants is a bit about Jonah and off to the pub!’ He flapped a hand at all the fuss that not being lost at sea occasioned.

  ‘What did you do after that?’ said Felix.

  ‘Worked the Megan II for a year or so,’ he said. ‘Got married. Had Albert. Then came Susanna . . .’

  He stopped talking and got a faraway look in his eyes.

  ‘Did that sink too?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Did the Susanna sink too?’

  ‘Not yet – far’s I know, anyway. Han’t seen her for a year. She’d still be there, I reckon. Tied up down the Quay. Rotting, most likely. Last time I seen her was before I got sick . . .’ He twisted around and pointed at the wall next to his bed.

  ‘That’s her,’ he said tenderly.

  Felix got up to look. It was one of the few photos that had been professionally framed, and a calligraphic hand had inscribed the boat’s name on a faint pencil line on the pale green mount. The Susanna hardly deserved the attention. She was a stout little trawler like dozens he’d seen over the years, tied up at Barnstaple, Bideford and Ilfracombe, with a bright-white-painted deck and a hull of sky blue.

  ‘You ever been to sea?’

  Felix shook his head. ‘I got sick once on a pedalo,’ he said ruefully. ‘Shaped like a swan.’

  Skipper laughed again and Felix joined him, although the truth was that the ocean scared him. The water was too deep; too dark. He’d lived by the sea all his life and never been more than knee-deep at Westward Ho!

  He refilled their glasses. Took Skipper’s rook. ‘Check.’

  Skipper huffed at the board, then sacrificed a knight to escape. ‘I fished till I were eighty-two year old. Always feared if I stopped it would be the end of us both. Me and the Susanna. And I were right.’ He swirled the rum around his glass. ‘Nobody wants her. There’s no living in it now. Not here. Not for small boats. Them’s just for grockles and history now.’

  The chessmen observed a minute’s silence, while the past kept watch from the wall. Felix looked at all the pictures of people and places and dogs and boats and boats and boats. None was hung straight, and all in different frames. Next to the Susanna was a sepia couple in their Sunday best; then a print of St Peter wading to Christ across the waves; a boy in a dinghy. Probably Albert, Felix thought with a pang. Then the same child alone on a dodgem car. Not smiling, and looking abandoned in a sea of happy people and bright lights.

  ‘Is this Albert?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Skipper. ‘Poor kid. Always sad . . . My wife left me when he were just a nipper, see . . .’ The old man chewed his gums.

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your wife. Susanna.’

  ‘My wife died a while back,’ said Skipper carefully, ‘but her name was not Susanna.’

  Felix was flustered. ‘Oh, pardon me—’

  Skipper sighed his apology away. ‘I were a shitty husband and a shitty father and so were Albert. One follows the other, I reckon. My father were too free with his fists and his favours . . .’

  He looked at the sky and stroked Toff. ‘But people change, don’t they? Otherwise what’s the point? I always tried to do right by Reggie, but by the time I come to my senses it were too late for Albert.

  ‘So when I bin sick for a while and he says I might like to . . . hurry things along . . . I couldn’t hold it against him, could I? He were only being the man I made him.’

  Skipper glanced at Felix, as if to gauge his opinion, but Felix stayed silent.

  ‘It’s a hard thing . . .’ Skipper’s voice wavered. ‘To live long enough to know all the hurt you done.’

  Felix looked down at the man’s big hand on the silky fur of the dog, then put out his own hand and stroked the dog too.

  ‘It’s your move,’ he said quietly, and Skipper sniffed and sat up straight and took a bishop. Felix slid his rook into position. ‘Check.’

  Skipper stared at the board for so long that Felix thought he might have fallen asleep, and ducked his head a little to see his face, but Skipper’s eyes were open, so he gave him time to make his move.

  But Skipper didn’t move, and instead he said, ‘I’m sorry about your boy.’

  Felix was surprised. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What were his name?’

  ‘James,’ said Felix. ‘Jamie—’

  He’d been going to say he was twenty-one. He’d been going to say he was our only child. So funny, so kind, so handsome. He’d been going to say he learned to play chess on this very set – but finally just left it at that. Jamie was all that was required.

  And Sk
ipper nodded as if he knew exactly what Jamie was, and didn’t need to be told.

  He raised his glass at Felix and they clinked and drank in silent toast to their sons. One because of all he’d been, and the other in spite of it.

  Felix cleared his throat. ‘Is this your grandson?’

  The photo of Reggie Cann next to his red car was new, and tucked into the frame of a much older one.

  Skipper nodded. ‘That’s Reggie. Albert bought him that car last Christmas. Also getting old enough to try to put things right, I s’pose.’

  Felix tried to sound casual. ‘Does Reggie have a girlfriend?’

  ‘If he has he’s not told me. Why?’

  Felix spoke tentatively. ‘I saw him the other day with this girl. I think her name’s Amanda. Do you know her? That might not be her name. Short dark hair. Sensible eyebrows?’

  ‘No. What of it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Felix, and then paused for a long time while he decided how to go on. Whether to go on.

  But he’d promised Miss Knott, so finally he said, ‘She’s an Exiteer.’

  Skipper looked steadily into his eyes.

  ‘She was with me . . .’ Felix stopped talking. He didn’t know what more to say.

  Skipper turned to stare out of the window. The knuckles of his hand had gone white and shiny around the glass.

  ‘I don’t mean to—’

  But Skipper cut across him. ‘Reggie wouldn’t hurt me.’

  ‘Skipper—’

  ‘Wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘But he—’

  ‘No!’ Skipper’s sudden vehemence made him cough. And cough and cough and cough – and this time he didn’t stop. This time it got worse and worse, until he was doubled over his own knees, pink drool swinging from his lips, gasping for air and pressing his chest with an open hand.

  ‘Hayley!’ shouted Felix.

  Skipper waved at the bedside table and Felix found the bottle of morphine pills.

  Skipper grimaced and nodded and held up two fingers.

  Felix opened the bottle and tipped out three pills – then frowned and checked the label. Morphine Sulphate ER 100mg. But these pills were not like Jamie’s. These were round, yellow compressed powder – not the capsules he remembered – and the number on them was 30, not 100.