by Jane Jesmond
A knock on the door interrupted my whirling thoughts. Shit. I shut the bathroom door on the filthy clothes and tarpaulin. The knock again.
It was the woman who’d checked me in last night.
‘Ms Shaw?’
Her name came back to me – Vivian – and with it, a tremble of relief. My brain was working better.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a man in reception, asking for you. A Mr Crawford. Says you’ve got his car keys?’ She raised an enquiring eyebrow.
The second part of the night came back to me. The road. The car. The man. The umbrella. Him leaving me his car. Somehow that seemed even more unreal than the rest of it. He was here for his keys though, so it had happened.
I couldn’t find them. They weren’t on the bedside table. They weren’t among my wet clothes. I hunted among the ornaments cluttering the surfaces. All the time, Vivien stood at the entrance and watched me. With her tightly curled hair, tweed skirt and look of irritated patience, she reminded me of my friends’ mothers and it was doubly hard to think while she was there. A glint caught my eye and I saw the keys poking out from the empty teacup and saucer on the little table by the door. When I handed them to her she waited for a moment as though expecting something more.
‘Tell him thanks, will you? And…’ And what? Dribs and drabs of how I’d behaved to him last night floated into my mind. Shit, I’d been off my head. There was nothing, absolutely nothing I could ask her to say to him that would explain or excuse. ‘Just thanks.’ I shut the door and sat on the bed.
Time to think about last night. Drugs? It had to be. Nothing else explained it. But how? And why? I needed to think. That’s what they’d told me to do. In case of a relapse. They don’t like to talk about it. Not when you’re a new and shiny recovered addict. But it doesn’t take much to work out it happens. I only had to look at the people in rehab with me. Not many first-timers there.
Process the relapse, they’d told me. Work through it. Identify the motivating factors. And, above all, don’t be overcome by guilt and shame. Guilt and shame – ha!
I was pissed off. Deeply pissed off. With myself? Yes, I guess. Analyse the feeling, Jen. Stay with it. It’s a guide. Pissed off. Angry, if you like. Super-bloody-angry. Because I thought I had it nailed. Yup. In my heart of hearts all that time at the centre, I had thought I wasn’t a proper addict. I thought I could have stopped by myself, without the therapy and the strategies. They were just an insurance policy.
So I was wrong. The creature in my head had only been asleep, waiting for something to poke it awake so it could snake its fine tentacles through me again and grip me tight. One day out of rehab, one bloody day, and I’d relapsed. Because whatever had happened last night, one thing was certain: drugs had been involved.
One big problem, though. I had no idea what had woken the beast. I still couldn’t remember a thing between getting to the hotel and waking up on the lighthouse. The big rift in my memories was still there. And without a few hints I couldn’t see how to stop it happening again. For the first time I wondered if I might have gone too far and done my brain in for good. My palms sweated and I clenched my fingers into fists. No good for climbing, but good for fighting. And fighting was what I needed to do because the old longings were reaching out to me.
I needed tea. A hot cup of tea that I could wrap my fingers round and sip, feeling it chase the fluttering panic out of my stomach. I forced myself to focus on the tea. It would have to be very hot. That went without saying. And in a big mug. One made of thin china that clinked with a musical note when my teeth hit it. Fragrant Darjeeling or maybe an infusion. Camomile, with its grassy smell. Or mint – that made me remember camping in the hills outside Marrakech and sipping the tea the guides made at the end of the day, its faint scent of sweetness and mint cutting through the harsh grit of sand and wind. I concentrated on the memory and the feeling of softness that had swept through my body as the day’s heat subsided into dusk.
I mustn’t think of the things I wanted even more. Things I knew I couldn’t have. Like a quick hit of weed to soothe the sourness in my head. Or some Valium to calm the itch beneath my skin. Or even a swift breath of coke to make the inside of my head sparkle. Every time my mind started to consider them, I turned it back to the tea.
A shadowy image came into my brain. Me sitting on the bed last night, not long after I arrived, feeling the tufty counterpane rub against the tips of my fingers. I’d wanted something then. Something to soften the spikes in my mind. The longing for it had etched a trail in the debris of my memories. Had I given in to the urge? Gone out into the night? I forced my brain to relive the last clear moments but nothing of what I’d done afterwards came back to me.
I went down to breakfast in the hotel bar. Drank tea and ignored Vivian’s curious glances, which was difficult as I was the only person there.
The bar looked familiar in the way all bars do. Had I been here last night? I liked bars. I liked the warm sparkle of lights reflected in bottles and the clinking noise of glasses and money. Maybe I’d come here. Maybe I’d met someone. An old friend from way back. Maybe the evening had developed into something else.
‘Some hot water?’ Vivian’s voice broke into my thoughts.
‘Thanks.’
I wanted to ask her about last night but it was hard to find a question that didn’t sound stupid. Quite tricky to ask someone ‘Do you know what I did last night?’
‘Did you get badly caught in the storm?’ she asked. I stared at her stupidly. ‘Lucky for you Mr Crawford was passing. I did try and warn you there was bad weather on its way when you said you were going out.’
‘Going out?’ I said, pouncing on her words. ‘Yesterday evening?’
‘Yes. But you went anyway. I guess you got caught in it.’
I nodded. A vague memory of wanting fresh air came back.
‘I thought you might miss the worst but obviously not.’
‘Do you know what time I went out? I didn’t have my watch and I wondered… um.’ What the fuck could I be wondering? Nothing came to mind. It didn’t seem to bother her, though.
‘Oh, I couldn’t say. You arrived around four-thirty. So sometime after that. Maybe five-ish.’
I had no memory of it but I was sure she was right. It was another strategy they’d suggested in rehab. If you’re desperate for a hit, go for a walk. A brisk walk. Exercise wakens your endorphins, the hormones that make you feel happy naturally – the ones that cocaine shuts down.
No point sitting here any longer hoping for memories to return. Forget the convenient scenario of friends turning up in the hotel bar. It was off season. The bar wouldn’t have been open. I’d gone for a walk. I didn’t have a clue what had happened next but, fuck it, I was going to find out.
Kit came back into my thoughts. Shit. I should go to Tregonna. Find out what lay behind his plea for help. I’d put it off long enough. But I hesitated. My head wasn’t right. My brain still stuttered and trains of thought evaporated before I’d reached the end of them. I’d go back to the lighthouse, I thought. That was the thing to do. Maybe something there would pierce the mist and help me remember. Besides, it was on the way to Tregonna. I could go there afterwards.
It was dark grey outside. A dour sort of day. The kind that glares at you over its cup of coffee in the morning, willing you to leave it alone. A hangover from last night’s storm, which instead of clearing the air had left it full of weariness. And my feet hurt. Shit, my feet hurt. I’d lost my old suede boots last night, with the soft lining that bagged and stretched in every direction. Instead I was wearing trainers, which were new and stiff and rubbed my cut and grazed skin.
I slipped out the back way to the hotel car park, praying my car would be there. Worried I’d driven it last night and left it somewhere unremembered. Thankfully it was still in the corner by the gate, red and shiny and parked slightly askew. My lovely ca
r. Again it hit me how kind Nick Crawford had been. I’d never let anyone drive my car and certainly not a half-crazed waif in a storm. He was awesomely nice. Or just mad.
I drove slowly down the main street – if you could call it that. Two pubs. The hotel. Three shops selling tourist tat and a small convenience-store-cum-post-office. Not even a takeaway any more. It had been driven out of business when the takeaways in the nearest town started delivering. Whatever I’d taken last night, I must have got it here. It didn’t seem very likely. Only the pubs would have been open. And probably only one of them – the older one that catered for the sullen men who stomped in for a drink and a grunt at each other most nights. The other one shut early once the holiday season was over. A half pint of cider, a packet of crisps and a grumble about the Parish Council was the most you’d get on an average winter night in Craighston.
The lighthouse reared up at me as I drove round the last corner. A huge chess piece on a grey slope and in the dark light it looked as flat and fantastical as an illustration in a child’s storybook. I shivered.
I stopped in the little car park along the cliff from the lighthouse and pressed my knuckles into my temples as though they might stick my broken memories back together. Nothing came. Even when I walked over to the lighthouse, last night remained as blank as its hard white walls. A few paces away, something brown and soft caught my eye. A small rabbit, huddling in a scrape? No, my boot. One of them. Sodden now from all the rain.
I stared up at the ramparts circling the top of the viewing platform. The boot must have come off as I hung above. I hunted all around the base but the other was nowhere to be seen.
Someone had shut the lighthouse door. Or what remained of it. It was little more than a few planks hanging at an angle off the top hinge. There was a hole where the lock had been, its edges showing splinters of fresh wood under the peeling blue paint. Someone had broken in. It wouldn’t have been hard. The wood was rotten. It had needed renewing for ages, except why bother when it only led to the inside of an empty lighthouse? The door that accessed the lantern room and the lamp mechanism was steel and triple-locked.
I stared at the door for a while. The ‘someone’ who had broken it down might well be me. Shit. Would I have done that? I realised I might have. It grated over the doorstep as I dragged it towards me, then shot open, hit my toes and startled a couple of gulls that were stabbing the grass for worms. They flew off with angry shrieks and the man mopping the red quarry tiles inside looked over his shoulder.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re back home, are you?’
He went back to his cleaning, moving the mop across the floor with the care of a painter stroking his brush over a blank canvas. I bent over and massaged my toes.
‘Gregory,’ I said.
He turned around to face me, leaning on the mop and I was shocked at the change. He’d always seemed old but the years since I’d last seen him had collapsed his body into a hunch so his head was like a tortoise’s poking out from his curved shoulders.
‘I’ve got that one’s pair,’ he said, nodding at the boot in my hands.
Even his voice was a croak of what it had once been.
I looked for the Jack Russell that was always at his feet. An annoying little dog that wouldn’t play with us when Pa visited Gregory in his bare stone cottage. It was cramped and dark so Kit and I stayed outside but Gregory liked it. He’d been lighthouse keeper for years until automation made him redundant and Pa said it made him prefer small spaces.
‘Where’s Pip?’ I asked.
Gregory ignored me and shuffled the bucket onto a patch of damp floor. The stairs, as far up as I could see, bore traces of water.
‘You’ve not mopped all the way up?’
‘Ay. All the way down, you might say. What’d be the point of mopping all the way up? You’d have to wait on top ’till it dried. Could be a long time in this weather.’
He painstakingly cleaned the last few square feet and poured the water down a grating outside the door. It splashed onto his boots, leaving dark marks where the sole was peeling away from the leather.
‘Dirty today,’ he said and I looked at the sky. ‘Not the weather, the floor.’ He pointed down the drain. ‘Some buggers broke in last night. Left mud everywhere. Police are on their way.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh.’ He echoed my careful tone. ‘Oh, indeed. Would be just like you and that brother of yours.’
‘I’m grown up now, Gregory. And Kit… wouldn’t.’ The last of the water slid down the drain with a faint gurgle and I remembered why I’d come. ‘Can I go up? Is it open?’ He looked at my trainers. ‘They’re clean. I won’t dirty your floors.’
I didn’t run up like I remembered doing as a child. Racing Kit to see who could get to the top first. My muscles wouldn’t move fast enough and I had to stop for breath on the second landing. I brushed the damp fringe from out of my eyes and wondered at how unfit I was. Seven months without climbing, eight weeks sitting in rehab and last night’s efforts had turned my legs to jelly.
At the top, I leaned over the edge and waited for the shaking behind my knees to go. Gregory’s cottage was below me on the opposite side of the lighthouse from the broken door, tucked up to it as though sheltering beneath its bulk. I watched Gregory trudge back and forth returning the mop, bucket and other cleaning paraphernalia to his cottage. If I’d fallen the night before, I would have landed in front of his window and he would have had more than a bit of mud to clean up this morning. I shuddered and looked around to see if anything might help me remember. The viewing platform was small, only half a circle in fact. The other half was walled off and used to access the lantern room above, where the working bits of the lighthouse were housed.
It wasn’t hard to identify the block that I’d hung from. A few strands of cord had caught in the stone and I stroked them as though they might transfer their memories to me.
Think, Jen, think. Travel back in time from huddling under the tarpaulin, to finding it, to the desperate lunge up and over the wall. Remember hanging there. Watch the girl wake up. What had she done before? How had she got there? Where had she been?
I squeezed my brain tight as though I could force the gap in my memories to reveal its secrets, but it was a wall of obsidian. Black volcanic glass, reflecting images of before and after, but impenetrable. My thoughts slid and bounced off it.
Two cars arrived in the car park by the road. One was a police car. Shit. I should have questioned Gregory before I came up here.
They parked either side of my car, so no chance of slipping away unnoticed. Double shit. I looked round for any evidence of my presence last night. I really didn’t want to be arrested for breaking in. In between the wall and the tiled map for the tourists showing the names of the rocks and islands out at sea, I caught sight of the frayed and torn cord. I stuffed it in my pocket and pulled all its remnants off the wall, rolled them into a ball between my thumb and forefinger and shoved it in my pocket too. Nothing else broke the grey of the stone, apart from a few flecks of blue paint. I guessed they’d come from the broken door. I guessed they were the same as the ones in my hair and clothes. I guessed I’d broken the door down. It was a depressing thought.
When I came down, Gregory was waiting, sitting on the bench outside. I sat beside him and waved away the smoke of his roll-up.
‘Not stopped yet?’ I said.
‘Ay. I know.’ He wrinkled his lips round the thin roll and sucked. ‘Mebbe next year.’
‘Sure. Make it your New Year’s resolution.’
He grunted.
‘You see anything last night then?’ I asked quickly.
‘No.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No. I saw nothing.’
We sat in silence, apart from the noise of Gregory sipping the smoke of his cigarette. The sound of car doors slamming travelled from the car park. The police
would be here in a minute. I tried once more.
‘You slept through the storm, then?’
‘Didn’t say that.’
I waited.
‘Didn’t see anything,’ he said. ‘But I was awake. Bloody seagull wailing. Woke me up. Thought it was someone screaming until I saw there was a storm coming in. Couldn’t sleep after that. Sat up and listened to the radio.’
I thought about it. Had I screamed? It was possible. Anything was possible.
‘It was definitely seagulls, was it? Not…’
‘Kids, you mean? Larking about? No. Anyway I came out and looked up. There was nobody on the lighthouse that I could see. The rain had started and the gulls were coming off the sea.’
I knew what he meant about the seagulls. When there was a big storm coming they swooped and looped along the cliffs, calling a warning before they dived off to shelter inland. Gregory’s words stirred something in my brain. Seagulls. It was a memory, sure, but from when? I’d watched the seagulls circling so many times. They were part of my childhood. So it could be a memory from then. Or it could be a memory from last night.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel path. The police. I leant back and tried to look relaxed. I was Jen Shaw, visiting an old family friend. Not a druggie nutter one day out of rehab with a police record for trespass and vandalism. Jen Shaw, daughter of Morwenna Hammett, famous author, and Charlie Shaw, equally famous mountaineer. Local heroes. Although the shine might have worn off since Ma stopped paying her bills and Pa left and never came back.
Five
It wasn’t the police. Nick Crawford crunched down the gravel path towards us and spoke to Gregory. I felt a bit sick.
‘He’s ringing Trinity House to see if they want to send someone down,’ he said.
Shit. He was talking about the police. He must have come with them. I stayed where I was, half hidden by Gregory, trying to think myself invisible. Something told me it wouldn’t be a great idea for the police to know I’d been wandering the coast road last night. I’d recognised Nick instantly, but then I’d studied his face hard last night. With luck he wouldn’t recognise me. It had been dark and I’d been wrapped in the tarpaulin during most of our strange encounter.