Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea

by Guy Sheppard

  ‘That’s just it, I’m already the talk of the town which is so embarrassing. The whole of Berkeley suddenly remembers I’m Jessica Kennedy’s daughter.’

  ‘So what? It’s not as if you were ever the criminal.’

  ‘That TV broadcast has brought it all back just when I thought I’d put it all behind me. Jeremy, my fiancé, is being quite good about it, but really, can I expect him to marry me now he knows I was born in prison?’

  ‘You hadn’t told him?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He should have sympathised. Had he not chosen to be known as Lyons instead of Kennedy, in order to live up to the notorious family legend?

  That tattoo on his neck, half woman and half dangerous water spirit, was like his father’s – it signified his honorary, if posthumous, membership of the Severn Sea Gang. It was his way of picturing what might have been.

  His much more sensible sister wished to forget all about it.

  ‘Of course you must go through with your wedding, Ellie. You owe it to your son, Randal. And me. This is a whole new beginning for us all.’

  ‘I thought that last time.’

  ‘You couldn’t predict that your first husband would die in a car accident.’

  ‘How do you know? You weren’t there. I was drunk, depressed. Having my loving brother in my life might have made all the difference.’

  ‘I very much doubt it.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t be there for me now, Luke.’

  ‘How many times must I say it – I will officiate at your wedding.’

  ‘We haven’t exactly been a proper brother and sister, have we?’

  ‘No, but that’s over now.’

  He could tolerate the awkward pause but not the underlying awkwardness.

  ‘You staying at grandma’s house?’ asked Ellie suddenly. ‘You’ll find the key in the greenhouse.’

  ‘Thanks but I have other plans.’

  ‘You’ll still need the keys.’

  ‘Fine with me.’

  ‘Jeremy says that if Gwendolen only appoints one attorney we won’t be able to sell Chapel Cottage over her head. Is that true?’

  ‘I’ll explain when I see you.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  Ellie abruptly announced that she was suffering from a headache and rang off. It was but a temporary reprieve. Even the most dysfunctional families had to sort out awkward things sooner or later.

  He turned off the M5 at a sign that pointed to Berkeley Castle. The coming of the motorway had redirected the bulk of the traffic elsewhere during his years away, until the wider world had ceased to impinge on this forgotten and sparsely populated hinterland.

  Now most people only came to see where King Edward II was murdered so horrifically with a red-hot poker?

  He was determined but truly this last turn proved daunting. The long straight road was littered with storm-tossed twigs that struck loud blows on his Land Rover’s rusty chassis.

  ‘Not to worry, Sash. We’re nearly there.’

  When a reformed person decided to return home, however diffidently, he should not have to creep along to the town where he was born like some sort of rat anxious to get back to its ship. He was looking ahead for the first signs of Sharpness Docks.

  Memory played tricks on him, however. In order to see all the way to the River Severn he first had to see over the brow of the next hill.

  Whatever else may have happened, no matter how many wrong turnings he had taken in the recent past, his real roots lay here.

  Besides, only a man of God had the right to claim might on his side and such a person alone could raise his avenging hand. That he could do so, now he was so morally armed, gave him the chance to reflect on the true nature of good and evil.

  He gave Sasha a pat even as he felt his heart pound. Surely that TV broadcast by his so-called mother wasn’t going to start a hare, ruin everything?

  7

  It was all a vile conspiracy, thought Jorge, as he paid a pound to cross Clifton Suspension Bridge into Bristol.

  A newspaper headline had just confirmed his deepest suspicions: Diet Health Drinks Warning.

  Ever since switching to sugar-free fizzy drinks he had begun to drink more because it was healthy.

  Nobody of his admirably impressive bulk should suffer from so many tasty choices that turned out to make things worse, not better, for the sake of someone’s else’s profits?

  He tossed his empty can into a box in the back of the van; rattled its pyramidal pile.

  Sasha gave him a significant stare. Clearly she was not impressed. As a result, he drove straight ahead and said, ‘I’m entirely confident that I can lose a stone in a month. That’s the plan.’

  A silver ribbon of water flowed hundreds of feet below him. Some sensation of floating in the air naturally entered his head so high in the sky. He mentally signed himself with the figure of the cross, secretly urged cars in front of him to go faster.

  ‘Mother of God, why aren’t we moving?’

  Drivers began to leave their stationary vehicles. They stood about on the bridge’s decking. All looked one way.

  Jorge and Sasha did the same but first he donned his peaked cap with its white-diced band.

  Sasha’s head was high and her black ears were erect. She asked for more reassurance than he could possibly give her as they walked up to a taxi driver who was reaching urgently for his phone.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jorge. ‘Why have we stopped?’

  ‘There’s a jumper.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Sure enough, a distant figure was doing his best to scale the bridge’s safety barriers. Jorge looked down. Gnarled trees, thorny roses and rampant elder clung to the vertical sides of the gorge dug by feuding giants. This was an ancient place once revered by superstitious people where wolves, wild boar and bears had roamed many thousands of years ago at a bend in the river called the Coiled Dragon. The monster’s steamy breath still bubbled through the mud in the form of a spring just below them at Hotwell. It made the perfect place for people to worship wind, earth, fire and water. He could not describe the deadly chill that gripped his heart. It was a feeling of absolute dread.

  Another few feet and the climber would outdistance all his helpers – he was behaving like someone chased by devils.

  ‘How absurd is this? Must it really be me who has to talk him down?’

  Sasha stared at him quizzically, narrowed her eyes. She looked directly ahead without comment.

  He glanced at his watch. He could spare a minute.

  *

  Young men and women smiled, pointed and made kitten noises to exclaim what was to them almost an epiphany. Astonishment was no less infectious. The peculiarity of it all held them spell-bound. It was a base alloy of fascination, curiosity, jeopardy and joy. Like him, though, they still couldn’t quite believe their eyes.

  ‘Bet you he does it?’ cried a ginger-haired youth.

  ‘Shit,’ said another, inspecting his phone. ‘Would you believe it, my battery’s dying.’

  ‘Never thought I’d live to see the day this happens.’

  ‘Please stand aside,’ said Jorge firmly with a wave of his black leather glove.

  He cast his eye up and down the barriers that had been erected since 1998 to help stop this very scenario.

  From here he could see the climber’s shabby blue business suit.

  Already the would-be jumper resembled a fly in the sky. It was not all bad. In 1885 the billowing skirts of the young Sarah Ann Henley had acted as her parachute. She had jumped off the bridge and hit soft mud at low tide, only to survive to go on to live into her eighties.

  Or, to put it another way, what was it about bridges that so inspired people to do something so utterly stupid? He was mostly thinking about himself at this critical juncture. He hated heights.

  Sasha stopped to scratch her head. She was not so ignorant. There were all sorts of connectio
ns to things he’d never see.

  ‘Hi there, my name is Jorge Winter. What’s yours?’

  The frightened man had his back to him but he could see how much he was shaking.

  ‘You can’t help me. No one can.’

  ‘Please come down, you’re holding up a shitload of traffic.’

  Jorge began to climb. He clawed at the wire and dug at it with the slippery toes of his boots. Shifted his weight from hip to hip as well as shoulder to shoulder. Each step took him a little further up one side of the safety cage while the man clung to the other by his nails.

  He could feel the bridge’s decking move slightly beneath him in the strong wind, or he imagined it. But why should he worry? Such sideways play might shake a braver person’s faith in himself, but a good, sound bridge was the safest way to pass the otherwise impassable? People had used ropes, stones and logs to make this world their own ever since humankind had first colonised the Earth. Iron, steel and concrete had been but the natural developments of the same desire. In that way, one person relied on another to build them something that could be used without question. It was a matter of trust – people built bridges for each other and it was unbelievable that they should ever fail.

  ‘Now, sir, please listen to me carefully. I want you to look me in the eye and then do as I do. We’re going to descend together.’

  ‘Why should you care?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  Jorge learnt later that the fifty-year-old man had enjoyed a very good job until recently. He had travelled the world, been married twice and had a nineteen-year-old daughter from his first marriage. He had once driven a top of the range BMW, worked for foreign charities and co-authored a report on artesian wells in Africa where he witnessed the death of a friend in an ambush in Congo. Then, after the collapse of his second marriage he had returned to Bristol where he had suffered a total breakdown. Just after Christmas he had ended up homeless. It was a fact that he had been abused as a child. A place was found for him in a boarding house but in March he had moved into a hostel. By his own admission he had a drink problem and was prone to bouts of extreme violence to others and also self-harm, but they never got to talk about any of it.

  That man was gone.

  *

  There stood at ninety degrees to the Avon Gorge an impressive terrace of Georgian houses, Jorge discovered, as he checked the address on his piece of paper.

  House number one literally hung off the edge into the air but was massively constructed from great blocks of stone five floors high. Four tapered pillars at its front formed classical embellishments that enforced the verticality of the windows, all very elegant or otherwise proportionally disposed.

  However, a sign said SOLD on the railings that fenced off the house’s boarded up basement while internal white wooden shutters hid all its windows.

  This was not the sort of place in which he expected to find an ex-con like Cordell.

  ‘What the devil!’ he thought, suddenly afflicted by a feeling of uncertainty and disappointment.

  This time he left his cap in the van.

  Sasha raised her right paw to the front door of the house. Found it open. She vanished through the gap with a more or less instant wriggle.

  He, too, placed his gloved hand on the door and gave it a push, although he was overcome by a greater reluctance to follow.

  ‘Yeah, I mean, should I even be here?’ he wondered aloud.

  That instant he felt his reluctance turn to aversion as he examined the names on the bell-pushes. It was Cordell’s daughter’s door on which he expected to come banging and she had moved on?

  Caustic tiles led into the reception hall with its impressive old staircase.

  Fine paper hung on striped walls as Jorge prepared to tread in the footsteps of those elegant ladies and gentlemen who had once come to sample Clifton’s rival version of the spa at Bath.

  From one ceiling hung a great chandelier in the shape of a glassy octopus. He blinked and the gloriousness of it all disappeared.

  He was, in reality, standing in a building site earmarked for total renovation.

  ‘Cordell! Are you there? It’s Inspector Jorge Winter. I’m here on behalf of Rev. Luke Lyons.’

  He had always admired Luke. They had been on the same wavelength. The way of thinking that others so misunderstood.

  The reckless way. The ruleless way. The free way. The wild way.

  Cavernous spaces echoed to his footsteps and felt undeniably deserted and cold. It was the chilling effect of so much stone. Or he couldn’t stop thinking of the man who had just vanished off the bridge into the void. That broke all the rules, too.

  Sasha growled. She had neither person not object in sight but her nose remained pressed to the bare floorboards.

  Suddenly she whined and pawed the floor at his feet.

  ‘You got something?’ asked Jorge.

  Sasha turned her head. Watched him with her baleful eyes. Sighed.

  There could be no doubt. On the bare boards by the window lay a great many discarded cigarette butts. He gathered up all the crumpled remains in the palm of one hand and held them briefly to his nose. They smelt warm.

  ‘Come out Cordell! It’s me, Jorge Winter. Don’t be alarmed. I come alone.’

  As it happened, there was easy access to the roof from one of the bedrooms on the fifth floor.

  A crumbling stone balustrade ran right round the top of the house, Jorge discovered somewhat cautiously.

  Here elegant partygoers had once promenaded beneath the stars on balmy summer nights to behold the view of Bristol’s pretty red and brown roofs and its docks.

  Although the River Avon bypassed the Floating Harbour in a very unprepossessing, muddy ditch at low tide, there was something about it that still enthralled with a sense of legend. That was because it had taken its name from a Wiltshire-born merry belle called Avona. Thus had ancient people invested dangerous but life-giving waters with a human name that was an embodiment of the inexplicable mystery of their lives.

  The vista inspired a new dizziness in him, something akin to a sour dismissal of all things mythical.

  Within the docks floated a tall ship, half lost in shimmer and appearing like some Fata Morgana, so like an illusion did it seem on the sunlit water. Something else about it appealed to him – a dangerously fascinating allurement whose siren call he would have done well to resist.

  Jorge could admire the vessel’s elegant lines but not her colour. It was entirely black. The three-masted schooner struck him as incongruous and a trifle sinister. Its whole presence he could recognise only as somehow disturbingly ominous.

  Suddenly Jorge became aware of a frightening turmoil in his stomach, a sort of vertigo, barely worthy of notice at first but making him feel sicker and sicker. He looked away from the view and it passed.

  It was what he had felt when trying to save the suicide.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he said aloud and gazed back into space.

  The gorge plunged before him with its healing steam from its dragon’s nostrils. The river’s serpentine strip of mercurial liquid lapped the mud on its way out to the Atlantic Ocean. He had, from up here, a god-like vista, he was Vincent the giant as he hewed out the gorge with his pick-axe while his rival Goram slept off the effects of strong ale. Poor Goram. After he had failed to win the hand of fair Avona he had run like a mad dog to Weston-super-Mare; he had thrown himself down in the mud at Whorle Down ever since when the water of the Severn had recoiled twice a day with a roar. Terrified witnesses called the portent the bore.

  Next moment all thought of a giant hitting the ground with a splat took on special significance.

  His increasing giddiness was difficult to deny since at first his eyes did their upmost to deceive him.

  As he dared to lean over the parapet, he observed far below him several smashed terracotta pots which lay in a little, paved garden that was fenced on three sides by black railings.

  A sack hung off the wr
ought iron spears.

  Not long, though, could he deny what he saw.

  That was no sack, it was human.

  8

  ‘The devil!’ cried Luke.

  He braked hard to bring his Land Rover to a slippery stop just in time to see two elegant black horses turn across the road right in front of him.

  Whoever made very stately progress did so as if they owned the entire road out of Berkeley. He felt the blood rush to his head. They blocked his path as they pulled a boat-shaped coffin through the gate that led to the nearby castle.

  Sasha leapt back on to her seat. She placed her front paws on her cushion. Looked to see what was happening.

  ‘Sorry, Sash. Not my fault.’

  Black roses spelt the name STEPHEN inside the hearse’s glass sides, but otherwise he had no idea who the deceased was or how he’d come to die.

  Never one for delays, Luke gave everyone a quick toot on his horn. The leading mourner, a tall, thin, red-haired woman in a long black gown turned very slightly his way and lifted her papery veil.

  She wore broad black lipstick while at her throat hung avian claws in a necklace strung with blue crystals and black beads on baroque swirls. Below the claws hung three large pearls from some distant ocean.

  Her face disappeared again, with a slow turn of her head, behind her wide brimmed, black lace fedora. The hat was topped by a felt fascinator with waxed satin ribbons that had been cut and sewn, sprayed and stiffened to create a conch or shell-trumpet of a Triton. It resembled some witty, surrealist cocktail hat of the 1930s.

  Or it was the sort of thing worn by Lady Gaga at MTV Video Music Awards – think steak hats and telephones, he decided.

  He admitted defeat and switched off the Land Rover’s engine.

  There walked beside the redhead a younger, dark-haired woman also in mourning. Small but athletic, she wore ‘widow faux fur’ on her coat as well as square, cat-eye sunglasses and black crosses for earrings.

  The fascinator on her large black hat had been fashioned into some immoderate but appropriately marine shape, too. Serpentine ribbons and beads resembled a black seahorse round which had been woven the lilac funnel-shaped flowers of sea-lavender.