Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea

by Guy Sheppard

  ‘Please, Gwendolen, come and sit down. You’re upsetting other people. That old gentleman over there is positively shaking. I’m afraid he might have a fit or something.’

  ‘Get your filthy hands off me.’

  ‘Stay calm. It’s all a mistake.’

  ‘Damn you, Sean Lyons.’

  She struck him in the face with her fist and screamed. The blow left him dazed, not because it stunned him – at her age she was not so strong – but because of its vehemence and anger.

  ‘Reverend Lyons!’ The voice sounded right behind him. ‘Whatever are you doing?’

  ‘Forgive me, I was just trying to…’

  The brisk, no-nonsense matron elbowed him aside in order to sit Gwendolen down with much gentle shushing and stroking.

  ‘Please leave immediately, reverend. This is the second time that you’ve upset everyone in Severnside House and I won’t have it.’

  ‘But no one has exactly told me what happened this morning. How is it my grandmother came to be wandering alone by the river? How many more times is this going to happen?’

  ‘She climbed out of a window.’

  ‘Why?’

  Matron rearranged two pens in her breast pocket.

  ‘We’re still investigating, reverend, I can assure you. It’s a lapse on our part for which I can only apologise, but one of our residents suffered a heart attack in the night. As you can imagine all staff were mightily distracted.’

  ‘My grandmother could be dead because of you.’

  ‘Not because of me, reverend, but because of her fits of dementia.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Listen to me, Reverend Lyons, it is pointless asking Gwendolen where she was a few hours ago. She doesn’t remember. Her short-term memory is virtually non-existent. Instead she relives events in great detail from years ago.’

  ‘You mean she talks utter nonsense?’

  ‘Whatever she recalls almost certainty did happen.’

  ‘Does that go for conversations, too?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Then why did she just try to claw my eyes out?’

  ‘Imagine how you would feel, reverend, if you were condemned to relive some traumatic event over and over. Wouldn’t you feel powerless and therefore frustrated? Wouldn’t you do the same if you could see no other way to escape? Wouldn’t you be that extreme?’

  The questions so caught him unawares that he felt the sudden need to redirect the conversation.

  ‘Or her disease has removed some inhibitions? What we are seeing is the real Gwendolen that, until now, she has kept a secret?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘That’s cruel.’

  ‘You speak as if it’s a burden reverend, but for her, right now, it’s who she is.’

  *

  There was something compelling about his grandmother’s one-track mind, about the pain she was reliving, thought Luke as he walked back to Sasha in his Land Rover. The more he heard, the more like the truth it sounded. She had become more coherent, not less?

  ‘Good grief, Sash, is it any wonder that gran was so angry? In 1981 she came face to face with Sean again after twenty-one years’ absence. He really did rise from the dead, but for how long? He vanished again .’

  With that, he took out his phone to tell Ellie, then changed his mind.

  The person blinded by loyalty or emotion too soon forgot what it was that they had to do next in this world of evil.

  He couldn’t afford to be one of those people.

  He had to stick to his plan.

  49

  That afternoon the stormy weather returned in earnest. Heavy rain lashed the vicarage’s loose sash windows while trees creaked and groaned throughout the garden. The wind sounded like surf in the gutters and downpipes to the point where the whole of Hill House was in danger of sliding downhill, feared Luke.

  He jumped up and went to the window. There could be no doubt about it, the river was rising.

  Like a silver thread in the otherwise black landscape, the black water lit up each time there came a fresh flash of lightning.

  It was that time of year when many eels chose to leave the Severn Sea – they crawled considerable distances to live on land whenever and wherever the soil was moist enough. They could slither from salt to fresh water along muddy ditches even though they were fish, not serpents.

  Already he could sense ten million wriggling creatures sliding and gliding uphill to where he was standing within the walls of his sanctuary. They were, he fancied, ready to drag him back to their den deep underwater.

  He suddenly slammed shut the shutters not just against the storm but on himself. It was as if the creaturely river, sensing its hold on him to be almost complete, had begun to work the greatest of its siren wiles. Would have him imagine the unimaginable.

  Next minute his phone rang.

  ‘Hi. It’s me, Ellie. You seen the news?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘Remember that severed foot that Eva Greene told you about?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, the police just stopped by my farm. They’re checking anyone who might be related to missing people. Get this: they say that the steel-capped boot might even belong to our grandfather Sean Lyons. They literally hope to be able to identify the remains.’

  ‘But is that even remotely possible? The boot must have been in the water for ages.’

  ‘Its mixture of steel and leather has mummified a toe, apparently. Forensics have found a greyish, fatty substance that is generated by dead bodies subjected to moisture. They’re calling it adipocere. They want my DNA to run some comparisons. Get this, too. They’ll be investigating whether his death was an accident or not.’

  Luke leaned into his phone.

  ‘What are the chances?’

  ‘It’s daft, really. Everyone knows that Sean died trying to rescue drowning sailors when the railway bridge collapsed in 1960.’

  ‘May I speak freely?’

  ‘Gladly.’

  ‘All this might come as a bit of a surprise.’

  ‘All this what?’

  ‘I went to see Gwendolen in Severnside House. I know you warned me against it, but the sight of Sean’s pocket watch on my waistcoat triggered something in her. I didn’t take much notice before, but now I’m sure.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Fact is, she already knew about its existence.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself. Grandma would have told me.’

  ‘Ian Grey paid her a visit, I reckon. He must have gone out of his way to tell her that he found her husband’s watch in full working condition by the river. In 1981. She may not be the only one he told.’

  ‘But Ian didn’t want the watch for himself and now he’s left town. So what’s going on?’

  ‘Since 1981 he has been waiting for the right moment for the truth to resurface.’

  ‘Why not give it to Gwendolen years ago?’

  ‘Perhaps he tried?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Seriously, is she to be trusted?’

  ‘Now you’re the one being silly.’

  ‘Open your eyes, Ellie. In 1981 Sean visited his son in prison. Rex told him where to find the stolen antiques. But Sean came back to Berkeley to trade the treasure in exchange for his baby grandson. Only Gwendolen refused. So did he simply take the loot and vanish? What does someone do with £80 million anyway? Do you even spend it without attracting attention? Or did someone stop him? Did she? That would mean the treasure is still close by, as Gwendolen knows full well?’

  Ellie fell silent for a moment.

  He could hear her trying to work out the significance of what he was implying.

  ‘You don’t want to say that, Luke. Believe me. That’s a wicked idea.’

  ‘Is it? Is it, really?’

  *

  Luke walked all that evening along country lanes in the vicinity of the vicarage, unable to rest.

  There came
into his heart the desire to redress a great wrong.

  The vindictive feeling grew and grew. For years had not God been trying to show him the way? Show him how to follow some secret current. Dive deeper, like a submarine?

  Now he must change tack, not by any deviation of any compass, but according to some more moral purpose. He must plot a TRUE course through the darkest water.

  Sasha’s eyes shone with incredulity. Suddenly the uncanny stillness in the paths and lanes began to shiver and shake. Clouds of uneasy rooks and crows flew up from the fields. She was on guard immediately, Luke noticed, as she halted to sniff and listen.

  Very soon the object of her alarm presented itself only half a field away. Someone was riding flat out along a bridle path past Appleridge Farm; they were racing towards Whitcliff Deer Park even as the sun slipped low below the horizon.

  Rider and mount crossed a gap in the hedge. With all four feet briefly off the ground, the gleaming black thoroughbred leapt a ditch. Thundering hooves sent clods of mud flying.

  ‘Stay, Sash. Stay.’

  Flaming red hair streamed from the rider’s hatless head.

  She leaned low on the horse’s neck as she made it gallop faster and faster with the urgent rhythm of her heels.

  Luke heard how hard the gelding snorted as it outran the dying sun’s all-devouring light – it was carrying Sabrina as quickly as possible back to Berkeley Castle.

  Her two black Elkhounds seemed to float behind her, each one a silent shadow as they bounded along.

  Soon, from beyond the deer park, troubled hounds uttered baleful howls. They grew doubly restless in their castle kennels.

  Sabrina didn’t fully realise it yet but she was to be his ticket of leave from this living hell.

  50

  The further Luke steeled himself to advance along the tidal inlet, the more reason he had to feel his heart might burst. A loud drumbeat beat in his head. Feet were heavier than lead. Hands turned cold and clammy.

  He had to remind himself to breathe when he saw Berkeley Pill’s steep banks and oxbow bends turn pink in the sun’s delicate afterglow.

  He was following the tributary that medieval boats once sailed from the river to the castle with their cargoes of cloth and wine.

  Sasha ran ahead of him, sniffing the grass. The days when she would have disturbed a mink or two were long gone, but he could remember the excitement of seeing hounds hunt them down in the 1980s.

  Suddenly he halted. Having snaked for nearly one third of a mile along the Pill, they were at the formidable dam that now blocked the inlet.

  His ears could already detect the roar of water as the fast flowing tributary poured through the regulating weir.

  Thus the freshwater stream could flow into the salty Severn but high tides were blocked by the one-way valve which prevented flooding.

  Beyond that, the Little Avon River joined the Pill at Floodgates Farm, not twenty minutes’ walk further on.

  ‘Not far now, Sash.’

  As a boy of no more than seven or eight, he had first come here to fish for eels, trout, roach and chub. Gudgeon and flounder, too. He had fond memories of this watery byway when the world was a settled, peaceful place and Friesians grazed happily in the neighbouring fields. He could still smell the sweet scent of hay in summer or the strong taint of silage fed to dairy cows in winter while the twin edifices of Berkeley Power Station and Berkeley Castle stood guard over the land all around. Then one day he met Slim Jim.

  Luke took another deep breath and his knees almost gave way when, with his next step, he set eyes on the object of his dread.

  They were at the old wooden boathouse almost too soon. Before the dam was built, Sean Lyons had used the tide to sail right up to the shed like those Tudor boats of old. After the dam’s erection and the tides were tamed this far inland, the shack was abandoned and forgotten.

  ‘Anyone there?’ cried Luke.

  He forced open a wooden door on rusty hinges. He struck a match and ignited the cobwebby wick of an old oil lamp. Its yellow flame soon revealed a few tools gathering dust on a nearby bench.

  One of them was a large wooden mallet.

  It was in this shed that Slim Jim had shown him how to bait traps, some of which still lay about on the floor. It had been his job to put earthworms through the door in the roof of converted lobster pots. That way the eels were lured into a tapering funnel of wire netting that led them into the cage. It took about eight hours to make one trap but cost next-to-nothing if made from stolen osiers. In addition, Slim Jim had known how to braid his own nets. Had been very keen to pass his knowledge on. Here was one of the spears that they had used to go hunting eels in shallow water, Luke discovered and weighed it in his hand. It was Slim Jim who’d taught him how to spot a fish as it lay half buried in mud and silt.

  Thanks to him he knew how to look for the gleam of sun on fin or tail.

  He relived the thrill of doing something bold and heroic as he sat for a moment on a pile of boxes. It was in these crates that the eels had been kept alive for up to two weeks in order to rid them of their muddy flavour and to clear their guts of any food. At the time he had greatly appreciated Slim Jim’s interest, patience, apparent respect and attention to detail.

  He pulled his grandfather’s pocket watch from his waistcoat and opened its gold cover. Checked its Roman numerals. Eight o’clock.

  It was time.

  *

  The first thing Luke did was to pick up the mallet.

  If it was one thing that Slim Jim had instilled into him, it was that to spring a trap you had to be patient.

  The longer he sat in the darkness, the greater the variety of odours: pungent, disgusting, peculiar.

  Next minute there came the sound of voices.

  Steadily, undoubtedly, Luke made out the rhythmic footfall of someone approaching the boathouse along the riverbank.

  Each heavy step resonated inside his skull as if those same smells that he was inhaling – mud, brine, eel – conjured up some hideous revenant.

  Through the boathouse’s walls and its covering of ivy came a few intelligible words.

  ‘You see anyone yet?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You with me, or what?’

  ‘Suppose it’s a trap, Slim?’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare. We have the boy.’

  ‘Are you okay with this?’

  ‘Listen to me, Mel, if you want to get rich, which I do, frankly, then you’ll catch up.’

  ‘It’s all right for you, you don’t have to keep hold of him. He’s like a blinking eel.’

  ‘This is the place, all right.’

  ‘Got any ideas?’

  ‘Take the boy inside.’

  ‘What if Luke won’t do us a deal?’

  ‘I’ve told you a hundred times, he will.’

  ‘I’m just not sure there’s any way we can trust him.’

  ‘Just do as I say, will you.’

  Next moment the door burst open into the shed.

  With the clatter came a cry. Mel followed. He flashed his torch at all sorts of discarded fish traps from kypes to putchers in a hurry.

  ‘All clear, Slim.’

  Luke’s hand rose high. It fouled a few cobwebs in the eaves. Crashed down on the silhouette in the doorway.

  The mallet’s heavy wooden block met human skull with a resounding crack.

  Mel groaned as much from shock as pain. He sank down. His wire spectacles went flying. His long camel coat became entangled with the live boxes; the glass bauble in his ear was shorn from his earlobe with the same blow.

  ‘What the hell?’ cried Slim Jim. ‘Mel, you stupid fucker. Get up! Can’t you look where you’re going?’

  Mel’s torch hit the ground and lit a crimson bubble that ballooned from his skull. He wasn’t dead, but he wouldn’t wake up too soon.

  ‘What the f…?’ Slim Jim rushed to take hold of a shocked Randal as he retreated to the door. ‘Who’s there? Show yourself right now!’
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br />   Luke went to land him one in the eye, but his aim was off in the confined space of the cluttered doorway. Slim Jim ducked. The mallet bounced off the end of a putcher and buried itself in its tangle of split willow staves. Suddenly he reeled beneath successive hard blows to nose and chin. Slim was whipping him with something hard and metallic. It had to be a gun. He crashed backwards. Seized hold of some fish traps to stop his fall.

  That light from Mel’s spinning torch on the floor lit the pallid, terrified face of Randal; caused his blond hair to light up with a strange frizzy halo. He was still in his school jacket. His almond eyes, wild and strong, revealed in them a terror too great for a young boy to comprehend. Lips went to scream. Voice froze. It could have been himself, thought Luke, twenty-five years ago.

  ‘Run Randal! Run!’

  Slim levelled his pistol at the door.

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere, lad.’

  No sooner had he spoken than Sasha leapt at Slim’s arm. She sank her teeth into his wrist and bit hard. He let out a scream but her jaws locked on. Twice he fired as they both spun round but she was above the gun, not below. She might only have come up to his knee in height but she had sufficient weight – scissored her bite to the bone. This was the person who had kicked her into Gloucester Docks to drown. She hadn’t forgotten.

  Deafened by shots Luke saw his chance.

  ‘Quick, Randal. With me. Now!’

  Placing himself before the distracted Jim, he seized the boy by the arm. Bundled him bodily through the hut’s open doorway.

  ‘Run Randal! Run for your life. Follow the stream to Floodgates Farm. Tell your mother. Raise the alarm.’

  Randal stood there too confused, shocked and cold to respond. Then, blinking tears, he began to mumble. Suddenly Sasha appeared beside him.

  This time Luke issued commands more calmly.

  ‘Go Sash. Quick. Take Randal home.’