Elysium. Part One. (4 page)
Throughout the morning they examined the scattered bodies in the hope of finding more survivors, though to their despair they found none. The only life they came across was that of a crippled pig which lay beside a smashed fibreglass crate containing its drowned mate. It allowed them to approach and comfort it, though died soon after the misty sky had cleared.
It was a sobering morning, a macabre search for life amongst the dead. It brought to Selina’s mind the image of medieval battles; scavengers foraging the deceased for possessions.
Untouched for generations, the sweeping grass of the cliffs was tall and unkempt, and the thick underlying weeds tripped them frequently in their ascent. Wearing only shirt and shorts, Selina grazed her knees, staining them green and she muttered the Lords name so many times that Priya wondered if she were pious.
It took them fifteen minutes to claw their way through the wiry grass and thorns to the summit, and when they did an empty road greeted them. Flanked by stone slate walls and draped with flourishing wildflowers, it was a curious pleasantry to confront after the horrors on the beach. Blue-dog violets wafted their scent and bobbed in the warm breeze, navelwort shimmered lazily, their large circular leaves shining in the bright day. Long, clustered spikes of white pennywort thrust above the walls, as though guarding the land from interlopers.
The panoply of vivid colour spread further down the abandoned road, and although the scene was beautiful to observe, it also strengthened Selina’s fear that this was uninhabited land, and that meant only one thing: the pathogen here was rife.
While Selina and Priya were still comatose on the shore, flotsam at the will of the receding tide, the sun was lighting the wet rooftops of Mortehoe.
Betty woke for the third time; she looked behind furtively, frightened Semilion would be there to admonish her for falling asleep on guard. He wasn’t, and she sat back in her comfy chair atop the roof of the Smuggler’s Rest, peering out over the village with bleary eyes.
Around her she wore a patched duvet and, resting between her legs, was an old air gun. Yawning, she leant forward, laying her arm on the barrier that encompassed the roof. She looked down at the empty street. It was bathed in a lattice of golden rays and dark shadow, and she watched as a curling breeze snatched up some debris and scattered it along the road.
She leaned back in her chair and sniffed her old duvet; it smelt of dog. She spent the next moments wondering how that could be - she didn’t own a dog; she never would.
‘… that little villain, Breaker!’ she muttered to the chilly morning.
She thought dark thoughts and reminded herself to scowl at Corbin next time she saw him. That would do the trick!
She had been up on the roof all night and was angry that Semilion still made her do it. Her, in her sixties! While the younger folk slept in warm beds!
Semilion repeatedly told her it was policy, and her duty, regardless of her age. ‘Corbin sits out on the lighthouse, and he’s no younger,’ he would say. ‘Jenny gets as sick as a dog on the water but she takes in the nets without complaint.’ Betty had no choice but to agree, even though her wrists swelled and moved her to tears when the temperature plummeted.
Semilion had rudely interrupted her the previous evening and told that Ted Corbin had seen some electric lights in the storm. At first she had thrust herself into action, along with Tinder and Tom Barnaby, though the three of them could see nothing in the darkness, and after a while she was left on her own before Semilion retired to bed and the others made their excuses. After that she had watched the quiet sea and listened to the thunder beyond the horizon before falling asleep. When she woke she realised two hours had passed, and she peered out into the moonless night, growing ever confident that Ted had been wholly mistaken. The night had continued much the same after that, except at three in the morning, when the rain woke her with a start.
Now she was shivering and miserably cold, and she could hear her bones moaning when she moved. ‘Damn Semilion,’ she whispered, ‘damn his black old heart… and rot to his god-damned policies!’
The Smuggler’s Rest had seen better days. It had been a hotel over a century and a half before, though even in those days its bland façade hadn’t endorsed the most regal of lodgings.
It’s once lively bar-room was now dank and cheerless; the heavy curtains on every window, even when drawn wide, seemed to suck the light from the room like ornamental black holes.
The large oval bar sat on the entrance wall; its once varnished surface was warped and splintered, and a yellow tinge accompanied the bitter aroma of home-brewed ales that had seeped under its skin across the ages.
At the end of the room, pushed haphazardly into the corner, was a torn and fractured pool table, the glass panel scuffed and cracked, and the balls - save the cue – had long ago been dispersed by time and drunken appropriation. The wood had become weathered and misshapen after long years in the salty air of the garden. Semilion had once decided to restore the table to its former grace, and had dragged it back into the bar with an air of determination, only to give up after a quarter hour of staring at it with hands on hips.
Numerous pictures lined the walls, all of them paintings of ancient vessels, or the hotel itself during the Georgian and Elizabethan eras. Opposite the bar was a large painting that had remained since the hotel’s first days; a view of a local bay by moonlight, a small row-boat and a host of smugglers making their way to the tavern.
An hour after the end of her vigil, Betty was lethargically removing tankards from window-sills and tables, and trying to ignore the impossibly stained bar.
Tinder North and Dawn Corbin sat by the largest window, bathed in morning light, a pint before them and a long pipe resting in Tinder’s hand. He saw Betty entering the room in the corner of his eye, and brushed his short grey fringe with his fingers. ‘Morning Betty, how are you?’ He asked.
Betty grunted, and began wiping the bar with a dirty cloth, and Tinder wondered whether she wasn’t actually making it dirtier. He took matches from his linen shirt pocket and lit his pipe, his lips smacking the tip as smoke began to glow in the sunlight. He patted the stool beside him, ‘Will you join us for a pint? You will, go on.’
‘I don’t have time,’ Betty answered, her back to them both, ‘Maybe if he didn’t make me sit up on that bleedin’ roof every time someone thinks they see something… Maybe then I’d have the energy to get this done and sit down and talk, but as it is he does, so I won’t. Thank you!’
Tinder smiled at Dawn, who rolled her eyes.
‘So it were nothin’ then?’ Tinder said.
She looked at him with a raised brow. His question, it seemed, deserved no more a response. She turned and was just about to leave when she glanced at Dawn and said: ‘Your old man better watch himself. Got eyes with ships stuck to ‘em, I reckon! Sees all sorts of fancy in the lightning, he does. We’ll be chasing after his dreams next!
Tinder laughed and patted Dawn’s bulging stomach gently. ‘Don’t listen to her, dear.’
She was ballooning with child, and had about her a persistently troubled air, for she had birthed two stillborn children in as many years – and was obsessively fretful of a third.
The front door opened with a piercing squeak and the two of them waited to see who would enter the bar-room from the foyer. Boen Waeshenbach stepped in, looking meeker than normal.
‘I should be getting back,’ Dawn said, smiling at Boen and kissing Tinder on the cheek.
‘You take care of yourself, love,’ he said, turning to the bar. ‘Morning, Boen.’
‘Morning, Tinder… Have you seen Eryn?’
‘Eryn? No, I don’t think as I have, my boy. You in for a drink?’
‘Yeah, just the one, mind… I came here to see Eryn really… I shouldn’t stay long.’
‘Work to be done, eh?’
‘You know it.’ Boen took hold of a stool and sat at the bar, expecting Betty to serve him, though she didn’t look up from her continuous scouring.
‘Get much weather last night your way?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe, heard the rafters creaking like the roof was about to come off. It took the windows clean out in Arabella’s bedroom!’
‘Strange, it was quiet my way.’ Tinder said, aware that Boen was most likely lying. ‘Dawn reckons Woolacombe took a right batterin’, though. Must have been right on the edge of it.’
‘Pa mentioned that Reighn and Dawn’s place took a beating,’ he replied unenthusiastically, hoping his story might have attracted more interest.
‘So she said. Knocked a wall over and took their barn clean down.’ White-blue smoke billowed from his nostrils and he sighed. ‘Don’t know what they’ll do without that barn, I suppose Semilion’ll have to move them somewhere more suitable. Speaking of Semilion, I think I’ll go and speak to Ted about last night… he really does get too jumpy. Poor old Betty spent the night on the roof ‘cause of what he thought he saw.’
Boen nodded that he’d heard about the supposed ship, though his mind was elsewhere.
They said their farewells, and after Tinder’s heavy footsteps had left the bar, the front door squeaked again and thumped shut.
He sat for a while in silence, Betty’s complaining the only sound breaking the peace. After a short time footfall and creaking stairs sounded from the space behind the bar. Boen thought it must be Eryn, though was disappointed when her brother, Baron, emerged. He was three years older than Boen and wore tight sleeveless tops that vainly boasted a muscular physique. He puffed himself up when he saw Boen, changing his gait to a bouncing swagger as he entered the room.
‘Morning.’ Boen said, hoping to keep their exchange polite for once.
‘What you doing here so early?’ Baron demanded, knocking his shoulder into Boen as he passed.
‘Just came in for a drink, I was speaking with Tinder.’
‘Tinder’s not even here you lying little whelk.’
‘He was here a minute ago. He just went to speak to…’
‘I saw you pesterin’ Eryn last night. Keep away from her, right?’
Boen said nothing and Baron looked at him derisively before leaving, muttering ‘Cock’ all too audibly.
He stood. There was no reason to stay if Eryn wasn’t there. He’d come back later.
The sound of chairs scraping on wood sounded from another room, and as he reached the door he turned and saw Baron look up at him. They stared at each other for a brief moment, and then Boen reached for the door and departed the pub, almost knocking Eryn over on the doorstep.
‘What are you doing here?’ She said.
‘I need to speak with you.’ He said quietly, hoping Baron hadn’t heard.
She looked at him vacuously. ‘This better not be about what you said last night. I can’t…’
‘Yes it bloody well is about what I said last night! I need to speak to someone… and I’m sorry it’s you but... Look, I know you don’t like me much, but it’s more than anyone else… Please, just listen to me, Eryn.’
Betty appeared beside them holding a grimy mop; she yawned when she saw the two and cuffed her bleary eyes.
‘Well?’ Eryn said, and Boen’s attention snapped back to her.
‘I... Nothing, I’ll speak to you later. I’ve got to go.’
‘What?’ Eryn snapped, but he’d already pushed his way passed her and had rounded the corner of the building. She followed him and grasped his shoulder. ‘What is it? You’re trying to tell me someone murdered Kelly? Is that it?’ She ordered as he turned and almost stumbled. The words seemed alien in her mouth, as though she were grasping to pronounce some unrehearsed foreign phrase.
He was anxious. He’d thought of telling Eryn for days but now his words seemed foolish and implausible. ‘I don’t know!’ he replied, making sure there was no-one observing them. ‘He was from outside, he wasn’t from Mortehoe or Woolacombe. I didn’t know what was going on, but I just thought it was some kind of joke and forgot about it...’
He saw the look of scepticism and irritation swirl in her face. ‘You don’t have to listen if you think I’m lying… But he was an outsider. He ran straight down the street to the shore like the devil were on his heels… and then the next morning Kelly was found dead.’
‘He had a heart attack!’ Eryn said defensively.
Boen shrugged as though he had reported all he knew. They shared fixed glances for a moment, and then he cast his eyes down and left her.
‘Didn’t you think it strange,’ he called back to her, ‘that no-one was allowed to see the body? Roger Hullenby had an open casket, didn’t he… and James Sooth? He had his head broke open by that rafter that killed him, and they didn’t shy away from displaying
him
!’
Eryn stood for a long while gazing after him. She wondered if there could be any truth in it, and reluctantly conceded that it had indeed been strange that Kelly’s body had been placed in a casket and buried without anyone saying goodbye. Her father had told the community that he left behind no family and so the decision had been made to seal the coffin. It had seemed perfectly reasonable when he said it, and no-body paid it a second thought.
