Brodmaw Bay (26 page)

‘Adam Gleason wasn’t the bay’s only volunteer,’ Richard said. ‘Others answered Kitchener’s call. A handful more were conscripted. Some of them perished as he did. But some returned and they brought the infection back with them.’

‘Of course,’ James said, nodding.

‘It was very virulent, as I said. Thank God it resulted here in only a few fatalities. But it hit this house hard, I’m afraid.’

Lillian looked around her. They were in the kitchen. She did not think there was anything sinister about the house, nor any lingering sadness. It was too brightly and lambently lit. Its proportions were far too generous. Many people had lived there very contentedly in the ninety years since the sad events Richard Penmarrick recounted. Devoid of a stick of furniture or a scrap of carpeting, the house did not even look empty in the hollow, negative sense. It looked instead like its exciting potential; like a vibrant domestic project waiting to begin.

She thought Richard quite extraordinary. He was picturesque, with his mane of hair, in his baubles and bangles, with the tattoo of his snakeskin boots on the bare floors of Topper’s Reach. But he had an impact well beyond the calculation of his dandified accessories.

His physical presence seemed a rude affront to space. She supposed that the word to describe him would be charismatic, but did not think it adequate. He actually possessed something she had always derided in her mind as an exhibitionist’s cliché. Richard Penmarrick had star quality. He has even more of it than Robert O’Brien has, she thought guiltily. Then a thought came into her mind that made her laugh out loud.

Both men looked at her, bemused.

‘I was just thinking,’ she said, ‘that you, Richard, must be the least likely person to be taken for an estate agent in the entire history of property sales.’

James frowned. Richard appeared to process what he had just heard. Lillian feared that she had just made a terribly tactless mistake. And then Richard threw back his head and laughed a generous, genuine laugh of pure amusement.

‘The question is,’ he said when he stopped laughing, ‘do I have a sale, madam?’

They agreed the deal verbally there and then. They shook hands on it. Richard embraced James in a manly hug and then kissed Lillian on the cheek. She recognised his aftershave as one her father had worn back in the late
1970
s when she had been a very young child. It was Eau Sauvage. She hadn’t thought it was manufactured any longer.

He asked if they had arranged to eat that evening at the Leeward and they told him they had not. He said that should they wish to celebrate deciding on their new home with a decent dinner, he could recommend the very place, ‘Assuming you are both of you carnivores.’

‘We are,’ Lillian said. She could not remember having felt more excited. All her happiest personal memories were connected to the children. This was different. The children were fundamental to what they were planning, but for the moment it was a grown-up adventure and she was savouring every moment of it.

‘Good. The place I’d like to recommend is the Lodestone. I’d advise only against the crustacean element of the menu.’

He led the way. They twisted and turned down several cobbled lanes before arriving outside a whitewashed building embellished with a row of painted wheels from old horse-drawn wagons. They paused and James looked the place over and said, ‘Surely the crab and lobster will be good here, won’t they?’

Richard said, ‘There’s an event tomorrow night on the east beach. It is a custom here going back centuries. If you can attend, I suggest you stay away from the crab and lobster at the Lodestone. I won’t tell you any more because it will spoil the surprise.’

‘We’ll be there,’ Lillian said.

‘Fantastic,’ Richard said. He clapped his hands together and rocked slightly on his heels and the trinkets hung against his bare chest glimmered and chinked in the descending sunlight. ‘I’d recommend the lamb. The beef is equally good and the rabbit casserole simply to die for.’

‘We can’t thank you enough,’ James said.

Music was playing from inside the restaurant. It was Sandy Denny. The song was ‘The Sea’.

‘We can’t,’ Lillian said. ‘We can’t thank you adequately for what you have done for us.’

‘Nonsense,’ Richard said. He turned and began to walk away. ‘See you tomorrow night, people,’ he said, with a backward wave of his hand.

Uncle Mark had gone to fetch them a late supper of fish and chips. Their regular dinner time had come and gone. He was not as domesticated or as health-conscious as their dad was. The idea of him cooking was actually pretty ridiculous, Jack thought. Jack’s money would have been on pizza, since the pizzeria was closer than the fish and chip shop and Uncle Mark was on foot. The kebab shop was even closer than the pizzeria but even Uncle Mark wouldn’t have dared flout their mum’s well-known food fascism with kebabs. Jack could keep a secret. Olivia could not. Treated to something as exotic as a large doner with all the trimmings, come Monday, Olivia would have split on him.

They were in their dad’s study. Jack was there because the study computer was the most powerful and therefore the quickest in the house. Olivia was there because something had spooked her and she would be pretty much glued to him until Uncle Mark returned. He didn’t mind, really. He was in a very good mood. He had played tennis with Uncle Mark in the afternoon before his uncle had to go and fetch Livs from school. And all his fears about his sight and balance and hand-eye generally had proven to be worries over nothing.

He had actually taken a set off Uncle Mark, which he had never done before. They had played on the public courts around the corner from the house on Tanner Street. His footwork had been nimble, his volleying solid and he’d seen the ball as early as he’d ever done. Uncle Mark did not take prisoners on the court and there was no way he tanked in the set Jack took. Jack earned it and Uncle Mark said afterwards the difference was the six inches Jack had grown since the last time they had played. It had given his serve more penetration and it had a lot more kick.

‘What’s spooking you this time, Livs?’

‘Huh, like you’ve never been spooked.’

‘I have occasionally, I admit it. But not like you. You’re the spookmeister.’

‘What are you doing? It looks really boring. Can I go on Facebook?’

‘In a minute, you can.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m rating Robert O’Brien’s books on review sites. I’m giving them all one star.’

‘One star isn’t very much. I thought you liked him. You read all those Casey Shoals books.’

‘Well, I don’t like him any more. I’d give him no stars if I could. But one is the lowest rating they have.’

‘If I was the spookmeister, that would mean I was the one doing the spooking, wouldn’t it?’

‘Nobody likes a smartarse, Livs.’

‘I’ll tell Mum you called me that.’

‘The only thing worse is a smartarse snitch.’

‘I’ll tell Dad you looked at girls’ boobies on his computer.’

Jack wondered what story he could make up about Olivia that was worse. He couldn’t think of one. So he said, ‘What are you scared of?’

‘The spookmeister,’ she said slowly, looking out of the window as dusk gathered shadows in the tiny garden beyond.

She raised her arm slowly from her side and pointed a finger towards the glass.

Jack frowned and looked up from the screen to where she was pointing. He could see nothing buts shadows and leaves. He shrugged. ‘You’re weird, Livs,’ he said.

‘It’s not my fault,’ Olivia said. ‘I can’t help it. I’d like it all to stop.’

‘Now you’re freaking me out.’

Olivia dropped her arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. But she did not shift an inch from her brother’s side.

Uncle Mark returned with a bundle of fried and battered food wrapped in rolls of cream paper. He was slightly breathless and he smelled, when he exhaled, sweetly of fresh beer. He had stopped on the way to the fish and chip shop for what Jack remembered his dad termed a swift one. Maybe he had enjoyed a swift two. His cheeks were pink and his eyes slightly moist, but that might have been smarting from the vinegar in which his own portion of chips had been drenched.

They ate in the kitchen. Uncle Mark took off his pullover but was still sweating slightly at the hairline when they had finished their food. He said, ‘I’m going to open a few windows.’

‘Please don’t,’ Olivia said.

He looked at her. Jack looked at her, too.

‘It’s okay to open the windows upstairs,’ she said.

‘But we’re boiling alive down here, Livs,’ Uncle Mark said.

‘You can open the windows at the front, then. But you can’t open the windows at the back of the house. It might get in.’

Uncle Mark said, ‘What might?’

‘The spookmeister,’ Jack said. He felt pretty jolly. The tennis had gone brilliantly. Dinner had been a carba-tastic treat. Uncle Mark had brought back cans of Fanta to wash it down with. He would definitely let his nephew stay up much later than was usually the case. Now his little sister was making a spectacle of herself in front of their dad’s only brother. Did life get any better?

Olivia turned to her uncle. ‘I’m frightened of the thing watching us from the garden,’ she said. ‘If we open one of the back windows, it might be tempted to come into the house. It hides itself really well. But when you catch sight of it, it looks very angry that you’ve spotted it. I think it is bad-tempered and easy to annoy. I think it would be very dangerous if it got into the house.’

Uncle Mark said, ‘What have you been reading, Livs? What have you seen on the television that has scared you so? Do Mummy and Daddy let you watch
Doctor Who
?’

‘I’m not scared of
Doctor Who
,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘I don’t believe that, darling. Sometimes
I’m
scared of
Doctor Who
.’

‘I’m scared of the thing in the garden,’ Olivia persisted. ‘I’m scared of the crouching thing without a proper face. It moves so fast. It moves the way an insect does.’

Jack said nothing. He wasn’t feeling quite as buoyant as he had been a moment earlier. He knew his sister; knew when she was lying and when she was telling the truth. She wasn’t even exaggerating now. She was truly afraid and you had to wonder if something real rather than imaginary had done this excellent job of spooking her.

‘Wait here,’ said their Uncle Mark.

No two more redundant words had ever been spoken to the Greer children. They were going nowhere. Certainly they were not about to follow their uncle into the study where they suspected he intended to unbolt the door that led to their garden.

Mark Greer had a duty of care to his nephew and niece beyond the responsibilities with which his brother and sister-in-law had charged him. He no more believed in crepuscular demons than he believed in little green men from Mars. But something in Olivia’s tone and facial expression had raised in him the possibility of genuine danger. She was afraid of something she really believed she had seen. It moved with a spider’s prancing speed and possessed a face contorted by fury. Could a child of eight make up such a thing?

There was a lot of burglary in this area. It wasn’t the random break-ins of desperate crackheads, either. There was a degree of professionalism involved. Intruders often did covert surveillance before breaking in. His brother had several thousand pounds worth of easily sellable computer hardware installed in the house. The pictures and the high-end stereo system were also pretty valuable.

Mark had no intention of being a hero. He had enjoyed a single pint of bitter shandy on the way to the chippie and so was somewhat short of the Dutch courage required for that role. But he could not ignore Olivia’s fears if doing so meant leaving two children in his care vulnerable to the possibility of attack in an aggravated burglary. He would take a look. That was all he would do. He had an obligation to his charges to do that.

He walked into the study without switching on the light and closed the door firmly behind him. He would be able to see nothing beyond his own reflection if he illuminated the room with either the overheads or the desk lamp. He walked towards the glass-panelled door that gave on to the garden. Outside he could see foliage and the bright dabs of flower petals stirring slightly in the evening breeze.