No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories (3 page)

“See that half-timbered shack,” said Garth, pointing, “at this end of the cemetery? That’s what’s left of Johnson’s Mill. Johnson’s sawmill, that is. That shack used to be Old Man Johnson’s office. A long line of Johnsons ran a couple of farms that enclosed all the fields round here right down to the cliffs. Pasture, mostly, with lots of fine animals grazing right here. But as the fields got eaten away and the buildings themselves started to be threatened, that’s when half the Johnsons moved out and the rest bought a big house in the village. They gave up farming and started the mill, working timber for the local building trade…

“Folks round here said it was a sin, all that noise of sawing and planing, right next door to a churchyard. But…it was Old Man Johnson’s land after all. Well, the sawmill business kept going till a time some seven years ago, when a really bad blow took a huge bite right out of the bay one night. The seaward wall of the graveyard went, and half of the timber yard, too, and that closed old Johnson down. He sold what machinery he had left, plus a few stacks of good oak that hadn’t suffered, and moved out lock, stock, and barrel. Just as well, for the very next spring his big house and two others close to the edge of the cliffs got taken. The sea gets ’em all in the end.

“Before then, though—at a time when just about everybody else was moving out of Easingham—Lily-Anne and me had moved in! As I told you, we got our bungalow for a song, and of course we picked ourselves a house standing well back from the brink. We were getting on a bit; another twenty years or so should see us out; after that the sea could do its worst. But…well, it didn’t quite work out that way.”

While he talked, Garth had led the way down across the open fields to the graveyard wall. The breeze was blustery here and fluttered his words back into my face:

“So you see, within just a couple of years of our settling here, the village was derelict, and all that remained of people was us and a handful of Johnsons still working the mill. Then Lily-Anne came down with something and died, and I had her put down in the ground here in Easingham—so’s I’d be near her, you know?

“That’s where the coincidences start to come in, for she went only a couple of months after the shipwreck. Now I don’t suppose you’d remember that; it wasn’t much, just an old Portuguese freighter that foundered in a storm. Lifeboats took the crew off, and she’d already unloaded her cargo somewhere up the coast, so the incident didn’t create much of a to-do in the newspapers. But she’d carried a fair bit of hardwood ballast, that old ship, and balks of the stuff would keep drifting ashore: great long twelve-by-twelves of it. Of course, Old Man Johnson wasn’t one to miss out on a bit of good timber like that, not when it was being washed up right on his doorstep, so to speak…

“Anyway, when Lily-Anne died I made the proper arrangements, and I went down to see old Johnson who told me he’d make me a coffin out of this Haitian hardwood.”

“Haitian?” Maybe my voice showed something of my surprise.

“That’s right,” said Garth, more slowly. He looked at me wonderingly. “Anything wrong with that?”

I shrugged, shook my head. “Rather romantic, I thought,” I said. “Timber from a tropical isle.”

“I thought so, too,” he agreed. And after a while he continued: “Well, despite having been in the sea, the stuff could still be cut into fine, heavy panels, and it still French-polished to a beautiful finish. So that was that: Lily-Anne got a lovely coffin. Except—”

“Yes?” I prompted him.

He pursed his lips. “Except I got to thinking—later, you know—as to how maybe the rot came here in that wood. God knows it’s a damn funny variety of fungus after all. But then this Haiti—well, apparently it’s a damned funny place. They call it ‘the Voodoo Island,’ you know?”

“Black magic?” I smiled. “I think we’ve advanced a bit beyond thinking such as that, Garth.”

“Maybe and maybe not,” he answered. “But voodoo or no voodoo, it’s still a funny place, that Haiti. Far away and exotic…”

By now we’d found a gap in the old stone wall and climbed over the tumbled stones into the graveyard proper. From where we stood, another twenty paces would take us right to the raw edge of the cliff where it sheared dead straight through the overgrown, badly neglected plots and headstones. “So here it is,” said Garth, pointing. “Lily-Anne’s grave, secure for now in what little is left of Easingham’s old cemetery.” His voice fell a little, grew ragged: “But you know, the fact is I wish I’d never put her down here in the first place. And I’d give anything that I hadn’t buried her in that coffin built of Old Man Johnson’s ballast wood.”

The plot was a neat oblong picked out in oval pebbles. It had been weeded round its border, and from its bottom edge to the foot of the simple headstone it was decked in flowers, some wild and others cut from Easingham’s deserted gardens. It was deep in flowers, and the ones underneath were withered and had been compressed by those on top. Obviously Garth came here more often than just “now and then.” It was the only plot in sight that had been paid any sort of attention, but in the circumstances that wasn’t surprising.

“You’re wondering why there are so many flowers, eh?” Garth sat down on a raised slab close by.

I shook my head, sat down beside him. “No, I know why. You must have thought the world of her.”

“You don’t know why,” he answered. “I did think the world of her, but that’s not why. It’s not the only reason, anyway. I’ll show you.”

He got down on his knees beside the grave, began laying aside the flowers. Right down to the marble chips he went, then scooped an amount of the polished gravel to one side. He made a small mound of it. Whatever I had expected to see in the small excavation, it wasn’t the cylindrical, fibrous surface—like the upper section of a lagged pipe—that came into view. I sucked in my breath sharply.

There were tears in Garth’s eyes as he flattened the marble chips back into place. “The flowers are so I won’t see it if it ever breaks the surface,” he said. “See, I can’t bear the thought of that filthy stuff in her coffin. I mean, what if it’s like what you saw under the floorboards in that house back there?” He sat down again, and his hands trembled as he took out an old wallet and removed a photograph to give it to me. “That’s Lily-Anne,” he said. “But God!—I don’t like the idea of that stuff fruiting on her…”

Aghast at the thoughts his words conjured, I looked at the photograph. A homely woman in her late fifties, seated in a chair beside a fence in a garden I recognized as Garth’s. Except the garden had been well-tended then. One shoulder seemed slumped a little, and though she smiled, still I could sense the pain in her face. “Just a few weeks before she died,” said Garth. “It was her lungs. Funny that I worked in the pit all those years, and it was her lungs gave out. And now she’s here, and so’s this stuff.”

I had to say something. “But…where did it come from. I mean, how did it come, well, here? I don’t know much about dry rot, no, but I would have thought it confined itself to houses.”

“That’s what I was telling you,” he said, taking back the photograph. “The British variety does. But not this stuff. It’s weird and different! That’s why I think it might have come here with that ballast wood. As to how it got into the churchyard: that’s easy. Come and see for yourself.”

I followed him where he made his way between the weedy plots toward the leaning, half-timbered shack. “Is that the source? Johnson’s timber yard?”

He nodded. “For sure. But look here.”

I looked where he pointed. We were still in the graveyard, approaching the tumbledown end wall, beyond which stood the derelict shack. Running in a parallel series along the dry ground, from the mill and into the graveyard, deep cracks showed through the tangled brambles, briars, and grasses. One of these cracks, wider than the others, had actually split a heavy horizontal marble slab right down its length. Garth grunted. “That wasn’t done last time I was here,” he said.

“The sea’s been at it again.” I nodded. “Undermining the cliffs. Maybe we’re not as safe here as you think.”

He glanced at me. “Not the sea this time,” he said, very definitely. “Something else entirely. See, there’s been no rain for weeks. Everything’s dry. And
it
gets thirsty same as we do. Give me a hand.”

He stood beside the broken slab and got his fingers into the crack. It was obvious that he intended to open up the tomb. “Garth,” I cautioned him. “Isn’t this a little ghoulish? Do you really intend to desecrate this grave?”

“See the date?” he said. “1847. Heck, I don’t think he’d mind, whoever he is. Desecration? Why, he might even thank us for a little sweet sunlight! What are you afraid of? There can only be dust and bones down there now.”

Full of guilt, I looked all about while Garth struggled with the fractured slab. It was a safe bet that there wasn’t a living soul for miles around, but I checked anyway. Opening graves isn’t my sort of thing. But having discovered him for a stubborn old man, I knew that if I didn’t help him he’d find a way to do it by himself anyway; and so I applied myself to the task. Between the two of us we wrestled one of the two halves to the edge of its base, finally toppled it over. A choking fungus reek at once rushed out to engulf us! Or maybe the smell was of something else and I’d simply smelled what I “expected” to.

Garth pulled a sour face. “
Ugh!
” was his only comment.

The air cleared and we looked into the tomb. In there, a coffin just a little over three feet long, and the broken sarcophagus around it filled with dust, cobwebs, and a few leaves. Garth glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “So now you think I’m wrong, eh?”

“About what?” I answered. “It’s just a child’s coffin.”

“Just a little ’un, aye.” He nodded. “And his little coffin looks intact, doesn’t it?
But is it?
” Before I could reply he reached down and rapped with his horny knuckles on the wooden lid.

And despite the fact that the sun was shining down on us, and for all that the sea gulls cried and the world seemed at peace, still my hair stood on end at what happened next. For the coffin lid collapsed like a puffball and fell into dusty debris, and—God help me—
something in the box gave a grunt and puffed itself up into view!

I’m not a coward, but there are times when my limbs have a will of their own. Once when a drunk insulted my wife, I struck him without consciously knowing I’d done it. It was that fast, the reaction that instinctive. And the same now. I didn’t pause to draw breath until I’d cleared the wall and was halfway up the field to the paved path; and even then I probably wouldn’t have stopped, except I tripped and fell flat and knocked all the wind out of myself.

By the time I stopped shaking and sat up, Garth was puffing and panting up the slope toward me. “It’s all right,” he was gasping. “It was nothing. Just the rot. It had grown in there and crammed itself so tight, so confined, that when the coffin caved in…”

He was right and I knew it. I
had
known it even with my flesh crawling, my legs, heart, and lungs pumping. But even so: “There were…
bones
in it!” I said, contrary to common sense. “A skull.”

He drew close, sank down beside me gulping at the air. “The little ’un’s bones,” he panted, “caught up in the fibers. I just wanted to show you the extent of the thing. Didn’t want to scare you to death!”

“I know, I know.” I patted his hand. “But when it moved—”

“It was just the effect of the box collapsing,” he explained, logically. “Natural expansion. Set free, it unwound like a jack-in-the-box. And the noise it made—”

“—That was the sound of its scraping against the rotten timber, amplified by the sarcophagus.” I nodded. “I know all that. It shocked me, that’s all. In fact, two hours in your bloody Easingham have given me enough shocks to last a lifetime!”

“But you see what I mean about the rot?” We stood up, both of us still a little shaky.

“Oh, yes, I see what you mean. I don’t understand your obsession, that’s all. Why don’t you just leave the damned stuff alone?”

He shrugged but made no answer, and so we made our way back toward his home. On our way the silence between us was broken only once. “There!” said Garth, looking back toward the brow of the hill. “You see him?”

I looked back, saw the dark outline of an Alsatian dog silhouetted against the rise. “Ben?” Even as I spoke the name, so the dog disappeared into the long grass beside the path.

“Ben!” Garth called, and blew his piercing whistle. But with no result. The old man worriedly shook his head. “Can’t think what’s come over him,” he said. “Then again, I’m more his friend than his master. We’ve always pretty much looked after ourselves. At least I know that he hasn’t run off…”

Then we were back at Garth’s house, but I didn’t go in. His offer of another coffee couldn’t tempt me. It was time I was on my way again. “If ever you’re back this way—” he said as I got into the car.

I nodded, leaned out of my window. “Garth, why the hell don’t you get out of here? I mean, there’s nothing here for you now. Why don’t you take Ben and just clear out?”

He smiled, shook his head, then shook my hand. “Where’d we go?” he asked. “And anyway, Lily-Anne’s still here. Sometimes in the night, when it’s hot and I have trouble sleeping, I can feel she’s very close to me. Anyway, I know you mean well.”

That was that. I turned the car round and drove off, acknowledged his final wave by lifting my hand briefly, so that he’d see it.

Then, driving round a gentle bend and as the old man sideslipped out of my rearview mirror, I saw Ben. He was crossing the road in front of me. I applied my brakes, let him get out of the way. It could only be Ben, I supposed: a big Alsatian, shaggy, yellow eyed. And yet I caught only a glimpse; I was more interested in controlling the car, in being sure that he was safely out of the way.

It was only after he’d gone through the hedge and out of sight into a field that an afterimage of the dog surfaced in my mind: the way he’d seemed to limp—his belly hairs, so long as to hang down and trail on the ground, even though he wasn’t slinking—a bright splash of yellow on his side, as if he’d brushed up against something freshly painted.