No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories (12 page)

The shock came (not to me, you understand, for I was only on the periphery of the thing, a child, to be seen and not heard) only three days later. The first shock of several, it came first to Harden village, but like a pebble dropped in a still pond its ripples began spreading almost at once.

It was this: the recently widowed Muriel Anderson had committed suicide, drowning herself in the beck under the viaduct. Unable to bear the emptiness, still stunned by her husband’s absence, she had thought to follow him. But she’d retained sufficient of her senses to leave a note: a simple plea that they lay her coffin next to his, in a single grave. There were no children, no relatives; the funeral should be simple, with as few people as possible. The sooner she could be with Joe again the better, and she didn’t want their reunion complicated by crowds of mourners. Well, things were easier in those days. Her grief quickly became the grief of the entire village, which almost as quickly dispersed, but her wishes were respected.

From my attic room I watched the gravediggers at work on Joe Anderson’s plot, shifting soil which hadn’t quite settled yet, widening the hole to accommodate two coffins. And later that afternoon I watched them climb out of the hole, and saw the way they scratched their heads. Then they separated and went off, one towards Harden on a bicycle, heading for the viaduct shortcut, and the other coming my way, towards the knoll, coming no doubt to speak with my Uncle Zachary. Idly, I looked for the gypsies then, but they weren’t picnicking that day and I couldn’t find them around their caravan. And so, having heard the gravedigger’s cautious knock at the door of the house, and my uncle letting him in, I went downstairs to the latter’s study.

As I reached the study door I heard voices: my uncle’s soft tones and the harsher, local dialect of the gravedigger, but both used so low that the conversation was little more than a series of whispers. I’ve worked out what was said since then, as indeed I’ve worked most things out, and so am able to reconstruct it here:

“
Holes
, you say?” That was my uncle.

“Aye!” said the other, with conviction. “In the side of the box. Drilled there, like. Fower of them.” (Fower meaning four.)

“Wormholes?”

“Bloody big worms, gaffer!” (Worms sounding like ‘warms’.) “Big as half-crowns, man, those holes! And anyhow, he’s only been doon a fortneet.”

There was a pause before: “And Billy’s gone for the undertaker, you say?”

“Gone for Mr Forster, aye. I told him, be as quick as you can.”

“Well, John,” (my uncle’s sigh) “while we’re waiting, I suppose I’d better come and see what it is that’s so worried you…”

I ducked back then, into the shadows of the stairwell. It wasn’t that I was a snoop, and I certainly didn’t feel like one, but it was as well to be discreet. They left the house and I followed on, at a respectful distance, to the graveyard. And I sat on the wall at the entrance, dangling my long skinny legs and waiting for them, sunbathing in the early evening glow. By the time they were finished in there, Mr Forster had arrived in his big, shiny hearse.

“Come and see this,” said my uncle quietly, his face quite pale, as Mr Forster and Billy got out of the car. Mr Forster was a thin man, which perhaps befitted his calling, but he was sweating anyway, and complaining that the car was like a furnace.

“That coffin,” his words were stiff, indignant, “is of the finest oak. Holes? Ridiculous! I never heard anything like it! Damage, more like,” and he glowered at Billy and John. “
Spade
damage!” They all trooped back into the graveyard, and I went to follow them. But my uncle spotted me and waved me back.

“You’ll be all right where you are, Sandy my lad,” he said. So I shrugged and went back to the house. But as I turned away I did hear him say to Mr Forster: “Sam, it’s not spade damage. And these lads are quite right. Holes they said, and holes they are—four of them—all very neat and tidy, drilled right through the side of the box and the chips still lying there in the soil. Well, you screwed the lid down, and though I’ll admit I don’t like it, still I reckon we’d be wise to have it open again. Just to see what’s what. Joe wouldn’t mind, I’m sure, and there’s only the handful of us to know about it. I reckon it was clever of these two lads to think to come for you and me.”

“You because you’re the doctor, and because you were closest,” said Forster grudgingly, “and me because they’ve damaged my coffin!”

“No,” John Lane spoke up, “because you built it—your cousin, anyhow—and it’s got holes in it!”

And off they went, beyond my range of hearing. But not beyond viewing. I ran as quickly as I could.

Back in my attic room I was in time to see Mr Forster climb out of the hole and scratch his head as the others had done before him. Then he went back to his car and returned with a toolkit. Back down into the hole he went, my uncle with him. The two gravediggers stood at the side, looking down, hands stuffed in their trouser pockets. From the way they crowded close, jostling for a better position, I assumed that the men in the hole were opening the box. But then Billy and John seemed to stiffen a little. Their heads craned forward and down, and their hands slowly came out of their pockets.

They backed away from the open grave, well away until they came up against a row of leaning headstones, then stopped and looked at each other. My uncle and Mr Forster came out of the grave, hurriedly and a little undignified, I thought. They, too, backed away; and both of them were brushing the dirt from their clothes, sort of crouched down into themselves.

In a little while they straightened up, and then my uncle gave himself a shake. He moved forward again, got down once more into the grave. He left Mr Forster standing there wringing his hands, in company with Billy and John. My binoculars were good ones and I could actually see the sweat shiny on Mr Forster’s thin face. None of the three took a pace forward until my uncle stood up and beckoned for assistance.

Then the two gravediggers went to him and hauled him out. And silent, they all piled into Mr Forster’s car which he started up and headed for the house. And of course I would have liked to know what this was all about, though I guessed I wouldn’t be told. Which meant I’d have to eavesdrop again.

This time in the study the voices weren’t so hushed; agitated, fearful, even outraged, but not hushed. There were four of them and they knew each other well, and it was broad daylight. If you see what I mean.

“Creatures? Creatures?” Mr Forster was saying as I crept to the door. “Something in the ground, you say?”

“Like rats, d’you mean?” (John, the senior gravedigger.)

“I really don’t know,” said my uncle, but there was that in his voice which told me that he had his suspicions. “No, not rats,” he finally said; and now he sounded determined, firm, as if he’d come to a decision. “Now look, you two, you’ve done your job and done it well, but this thing mustn’t go any further. There’s a guinea for each of you—from me, my promise—but you can’t say anything about what you’ve seen today. Do you hear?”

“Whatever you say, gaffer,” said John, gratefully. “But what’ll you do about arl this? I mean—”

“Leave it to me,” my uncle cut him off. “And mum’s the word, hear?”

I heard the scraping of chairs and ducked back out of sight. Uncle Zachary ushered the gravediggers out of the house and quickly returned to his study. “Sam,” he said, his voice coming to me very clear now, for he’d left the door ajar, “I don’t think it’s rats. I’m sure it isn’t. Neither is it worms of any sort, nor anything else of that nature.”

“Well, it’s certainly nothing to do with me!” the other was still indignant, but more shocked than outraged, I thought.

“It’s something to do with all of us, Sam,” said my uncle. “I mean, how long do you think your business will last if this gets out, eh? No, it has nothing to do with you or the quality of workmanship,” he continued, very quickly. “There’s nothing personal in it at all. Oh, people will still die here, of course they will—but you can bet your boots they’ll not want to be
buried
here!”

“But what on earth
is
it?” Forster’s indignation or shock had evaporated; his voice was now very quiet and awed.

“I was in Bulgaria once,” said my uncle. “I was staying at a small village, very tranquil if a little backward, on the border. Which is to say, the Danube. There was a flood and the riverbank got washed away, and part of the local graveyard with it. Something like this came to light, and the local people went very quiet and sullen. At the place I was staying, they told me there must be an ‘Obour’ in the village. What’s more, they knew how to find it.”

“An Obour?” said Forster. “Some kind of animal?”

My uncle’s voice contained a shudder when he answered: “The worst possible sort of animal, yes.” Then his chair scraped and he began pacing, and for a moment I lost track of his low-uttered words. But obviously Mr Forster heard them clearly enough.

“
What
? Man, that’s madness! And you a doctor!”

My uncle was ever slow to take offence. But I suspected that by now he’d be simmering. “They went looking for the Obour with lanterns in the dark—woke up everyone in the village, in the dead of night, to see what they looked like by lantern light. For the eyes of the Obour are yellow—and triangular!”

“Madness!” Forster gasped again.

And now my uncle
was
angry. “Oh, and do you have a better suggestion? So you tell me, Sam Forster, what
you
think can tunnel through packed earth and do…that?”

“But I—”

“Look at this book,” my uncle snapped. And I heard him go to a bookshelf, then his footsteps crossing the room to his guest.

After a while: “Russian?”

“Romanian—but don’t concern yourself with the text, look at the pictures!”

Again a pause before: “But…this is too…”

“Yes, I know it is,” said my uncle, before Forster could find the words he sought. “And I certainly hope I’m wrong, and that it is something ordinary. But tell me, can
anything
of this sort be ordinary?”

“What will we do?” Forster was quieter now. “The police?”

“What?” (my uncle’s snort.) “Sergeant Bert Coggins and his three flat-foot constables? A more down-to-earth lot you couldn’t ask for! Good Lord, no! The point is, if this really is something of the sort I’ve mentioned, it mustn’t be frightened off. I mean, we don’t know how long it’s been here, and we certainly can’t allow it to go somewhere else. No, it must be dealt with here and now.”

“How?”

“I’ve an idea. It may be feasible, and it may not. But it certainly couldn’t be considered outside the law, and it has to be worth a try. We have to work fast, though, for Muriel Anderson goes down the day after tomorrow, and it will have to be ready by then. Come on, let’s go and speak to your cousin.”

Mr Forster’s cousin, Jack Boulter, made his coffins for him; so I later discovered.

“Wait,” said Forster, as I once more began backing away from the door. “Did they find this…this
creature
, these Bulgarian peasants of yours?”

“Oh, yes,” my uncle answered. “They tied him in a net and drowned him in the river. And they burned his house down to the ground.”

When they left the house and drove away I went into the study. On my uncle’s desk lay the book he’d shown to Mr Forster. It was open, lying face down. Curiosity isn’t confined to cats: small girls and boys also suffer from it. Or if they don’t, then there’s something wrong with them.

I turned the book over and looked at the pictures. They were woodcuts, going from top to bottom of the two pages in long, narrow panels two to a page. Four pictures in all, with accompanying legends printed underneath. The book was old, the ink faded and the pictures poorly impressed; the text, of course, was completely alien to me.

The first picture showed a man, naked, with his arms raised to form a cross. He had what looked to be a thick rope coiled about his waist. His eyes were three-cornered, with radiating lines simulating a shining effect. The second picture showed the man with the rope uncoiled, dangling down loosely from his waist and looped around his feet. The end of the rope seemed frayed and there was some detail, but obscured by age and poor reproduction. I studied this picture carefully but was unable to understand it; the rope appeared to be fastened to the man’s body just above his left hip. The third picture showed the man in an attitude of prayer, hands steepled before him, with the rope dangling as before, but crossing over at knee height into the fourth frame. There it coiled upward and was connected to the loosely clad body of a skeletally thin woman, whose flesh was mostly sloughed away to show the bones sticking through.

Now, if I tell my reader that these pictures made little or no sense to me, I know that he will be at pains to understand my ignorance. Well, let me say that it was not ignorance but innocence. I was a boy. None of these things which I have described made any great impression on me
at that time
. They were all incidents—mainly unconnected in my mind, or only loosely connected—occurring during the days I spent at my uncle’s house; and as such they were very small pieces in the much larger jigsaw of my world, which was far more occupied with beaches, rock pools, crabs and eels, bathing in the sea, the simple but satisfying meals my uncle prepared for us, etc. It is only in the years passed in between, and in certain dreams I have dreamed, that I have made the connections. In short, I was not investigative but merely curious.