No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories (53 page)

“Certainly,” I said, “Jeremy’s
spare
pot leg.” And seeing her mouth about to form words: “Now don’t say it, Angela. Of
course
he had a spare, and this is it. I mean, can you imagine if he’d somehow broken one? What then? Do you have spare reading glasses? Do I have spare car keys? Naturally Jeremy had spare…things. It’s just that he was sensitive enough not to let you see them, that’s all.”

“Jeremy, sensitive!” she laughed, albeit hysterically. “But very well—you must be right. And anyway, I’ve never been in that wardrobe in a donkey’s years. Now do put it away—no, not there, but in the cupboard under the stairs—and come to bed and love me.”

And so I did. Champagne has that effect on her.

But afterwards—sitting up in bed in the darkness, while she lay huddled close, asleep, breathing across my chest—I thought about him, the “Old Boy”, Jeremy.

Adventurer, explorer, wanderer in distant lands. That was him. Jeremy Johnson Cleave, who might have been a Sir, a Lord, a Minister, but chose to be himself. Cantankerous old (old-
fashioned
) bugger! And yet in many ways quite modern, too. Naïve about certain things—the way he’d always trusted me, for instance, to push his chair along the airy heights of the cliff tops when he didn’t much feel like hobbling—but in others shrewd as a fox, and nobody’s fool. Never for very long, anyway.

He’d lost his eye to an N’haqui dart somewhere up the Orinoco or some such, and his leg to a croc in the Amazon. But he’d always made it back home, and healed himself up, and then let his wanderlust take him off again. As for juju: well, a man is liable to see and hear and touch upon some funny things in the far-flung places of the world, and almost certainly he’s like to go a bit native, too…

The next day (today, in fact, or yesterday, since it’s now past midnight) was Friday, and I had business which took me past Denholme. Now don’t ask me why, but I bought a mixed posy from the florist’s in the village and stopped off at the old graveyard, and made my way to Jeremy’s simple grave. Perhaps the flowers were for his memory; there again they could have been an alibi, a reason for my being there. As if I needed one. I mean I had been his friend, after all! Everyone said so. But it’s also a fact that murderers do, occasionally, visit their victims.

The marble headstone gave his name and dates, and a little of the Cleave history, then said:

Distant lands ever called him;

he ever ventured,

and ever returned.

Rest in Peace.

Or pieces? I couldn’t resist a wry chuckle as I placed my flowers on his hollow plot.

But…hollow?

“Subsidence, sir,” said a voice directly behind me as a hand fell on my arm. Lord, how I jumped!

“What?” I turned my head to see a gaunt, ragged man leaning on his shovel: the local gravedigger.

“Subsidence,” he said again, his voice full of dialect and undisguised disgust, gravelly as the path he stood on. “Oh, they likes to blame me for it—saying as ’ow I don’t pack ’em down tight enough, an’ all—but the fact is it’s the subsidence. One in every ’alf-dozen or so sinks a little, just like Old J.J.’s ’ere. This was ’is family seat, y’know: Denholme. Last of the line, ’e were—
and
a rum un’! But I suppose you knows all that.”

“Er, yes,” I said. “Quite.” And, looking at the concave plot: “Er, a little more soil, d’you think? Before they start blaming it on you again?”

He winked and said, “I’ll see to ’er right this minute, sir, so I will! Good day to you.” And I left him scratching his head and frowning at the grave, and finally trundling his barrow away, doubtless to fetch a little soil.

And all of this was the second thing I wasn‘t going to report to Angela, but as it happens I don’t suppose it would have made much difference anyway…

So tonight at fall of dark I arrived here at their (hers, now) country home. and from the moment I let myself in I knew that things weren’t right. So would anyone have known, the way her shriek came knifing down the stairs:

“Arthur!
Arthur!
” her voice was piercing, penetrating, very nearly unhinged. “Is that you? Oh, for
God’s sake
say it’s you!”

“But of course it’s me, darling, who else would it be?” I shouted up to her. “Now what on earth’s the matter?”

“The matter? The matter?” She came flying down the stairs in a towelling robe, rushed straight into my arms. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter…” But out of breath, she couldn’t. Her hair was wet and a mess, and her face wasn’t done yet, and…well, she looked rather floppy all over.

So that after a moment or so, rather brusquely, I said: “So tell me!”

“It’s
him
!” she gasped then, a shudder in her voice. “Oh, it’s him!” And bursting into tears she collapsed against me, so that I had to drop my chocolates and flowers in order to hold her up.

“Him?” I repeated her, rather stupidly, for by then I believe I’d begun to suspect that it might indeed be ‘him’ after all—or at least something of his doing.

“Him!” she cried aloud, beating on my chest. “Him, you fool—
Jeremy!
”

Well, ‘let reason prevail’ has always been my family motto, and I think it’s to my merit that I didn’t break down and start gibbering right there and then, along with Angela…Or on the other hand, perhaps I’m simply stupid. Anyway I didn’t, but picked up my flowers and chocolates—yes, and Angela, too—and carried them all upstairs. I put her down on the bed but she jumped up at once, and commenced striding to and fro, to and fro, wringing her hands.

“Now what
is
it?” I said, determined to be reasonable.

“
Not
in that tone of voice!” she snarled at me, coming to a halt in front of me with her hands clenched into tight little knots and her face all twisted up. “Not in that ‘oh, Angela’s being a silly again’ voice! I said it’s him, and I
mean
it’s him!”

But now I was angry, too. “You mean he’s here?” I scowled at her.

“I mean he’s
near
, certainly!” she answered, wide-, wild-eyed. “His bloody bits, anyway!” But then, a moment later, she was sobbing again, those deep racking sobs I just can’t put up with; and so once more I carried her to the bed.

“Darling,” I said, “just tell me all about it and I’ll sort it out from there. And that’s a promise.”

“Is it, Arthur? Is it? Oh, I do hope so!”

So I gave her a kiss and tried one last time, urging: “Now come on, do tell me about it.”

“I…I was in the bath,” she started, “making myself nice for you, hoping that for once we could have a lovely quiet evening and night together. So there I am soaping myself down, and all of a sudden I feel that someone is watching me. And he was, he was! Sitting there on the end of the bath! Jeremy!”

“Jeremy,” I said, flatly, concentrating my frown on her. “Jeremy…the man?”

“No, you fool—
the bloody eye!
” And she ripped the wrapper from the chocolates (her favourite liqueurs, as it happens) and distractedly began stuffing her mouth full of them. Which was when the thought first struck me:
maybe she’s cracked up!

But: “Very well,” I said, standing up, striding over to the chest of drawers and yanking open the one with the velvet-lined box, “in that case—”

The box lay there, open and quite empty, gaping at me. And at that very moment there came a well-remembered rolling sound, and I’ll be damned if the hideous thing didn’t come bowling out of the bathroom and onto the pile of the carpet, coming to a halt there with its malefic gaze directed right at me!

And:
Bump!—bump!
from the wardrobe, and
BUMP!
again; a final kick so hard that it slammed the door back on its hinges. And there was Jeremy’s pot leg, jerking about on the carpet like a claw freshly wrenched from a live crab! I mean not just lying there but…active! Lashing about on its knee-hinge like a wild thing!

Disbelieving, jaw hanging slack. I backed away from it—backed right into the bed and sat down there, with all the wind flown right out of me. Angela had seen everything and her eyes were threatening to pop out of her head; she dribbled chocolate and juice from one corner of her twitching mouth, but still her hand automatically picked up another liqueur. Except it wasn’t a liqueur.

I waved a fluttery hand, croaked something unintelligible, tried to warn her. But my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and the words wouldn’t come. “
Gurk!
” was the only thing I managed to get out. And that too late for already she’d popped the thing into her mouth. Jeremy’s eye—but
not
his glass eye!

Oh, and what a horror and a madness and an asylum then as she bit into it! Her throat full of chocolate, face turning blue, eyes bulging as she clawed at the bedclothes going “Ak—ak—
ak
!” And me trying to massage her throat, and the damned pot leg kicking its way across the floor towards me, and that bloody nightmare glass eye wobbling there for all the world as if its owner were laughing!

Then…Angela clawed at me one last time and tore my shirt right down the front as she toppled off the bed. Her eyes were standing out like organ stops and her face was purple, and her dragging nails opened up the shallow skin of my chest in five long red bleeding lines, but I scarcely noticed. For Jeremy’s leg was still crashing about on the floor and his eye was still laughing.

I started laughing, too, as I kicked the leg into the wardrobe and locked it, and chased the eye across the floor and under Angela’s dressing-table. I laughed and I laughed—laughed until I cried—and perhaps wouldn’t have sobered yet, except…

What was that?

That bumping, out there on the landing!

And it—he—Jeremy, is still out there, bumping about even now. He’s jammed the windows again so that I can’t get out, but I’ve barricaded the door so that
he
can’t get in; and now we’re both stuck. I’ve a slight advantage, though, for I can see, while he’s quite blind! I mean, I
know
he’s blind for his glass eye is in here with me and his real eye is in Angela! And his leg will come right through the panelling of the wardrobe eventually I suppose but when it does I’ll jump on it and pound the thing to pieces.

And he’s out there blind as a bat hopping around on the landing, going
gurgle, gurgle, gurgle
and stinking like all Hell! Well sod you Jeremy Johnson Cleave for I’m not coming out. I’m just going to stay here always. I won’t come out for you or for the maid when she comes in the morning or for the cook or the police or anybody.

I’ll just stay here with my pillows and my blankets and my thumb where it’s nice and safe and warm. Here under the bed.

Do you hear me, Jeremy?

Do you hear me?

I’m—not—coming—out!