Sea Change (11 page)

"Enough," John
said to the seagulls. "I've had enough of this." And he walked up
into the village, heading for the bookshop. If he was going to
stand his ground this time, he needed to arm himself. And the only
ammunition he could think of was information. He felt tired, and
scared, but said to himself over and over under his breath: I am
not running, I will not run. Not again. Not again.

Chapter
Ten

Alan was bent
over a box, sifting through its contents.

"Ah, John. You
know, this bookshop's my living, my inheritance, and I grew up
loving books, still do, never without a book in my hand, but much
as it pains me to say it, there isn't half some total dross out
there." He let the book in his hand drop back into the box, and
shook his head. "Still, even the rubbish pays the bills. Glad you
came round, been talking to dad about you, he said he was keen to
meet Laura's brother, and you've come round on a good day, for
him."

The banter
dropped from Alan's voice, and he straightened up and looked
straight at John. "But even the good days aren't that good any
more. So be prepared, John. But whatever you do, don't let anything
show, because if he thinks you're pitying him, he'll tear you to
pieces." Then he smiled. "You're a bright lad, I'm sure you can
handle him. Got a half hour to spare?"

"Sure," John
said. "I'd love to."

No, no, no, he
thought. I don't have time for this. I've got to find out what the
hell is going on, who this man is who can do things no man should
be able to do, not make small talk with a grumpy man on his
sickbed. But he couldn't be rude to Alan, for Laura’s sake, so he
smiled and followed him up the twisting narrow stairs from the back
room of the bookshop, and onto the landing on the floor above. The
walls were all painted white. Alan opened the door at the far end
of the landing, and ushered John in.

The room smelt
of age and illness. On the mantelpiece, above the dark iron fire
surround, a vase of lilies drooped towards their final moments,
elegant white curves turning into a sad helpless sag. On the far
side, opposite the window, an old man lay in a bed, paper-white
skin against paper-white cotton sheets. Although John had never
seen him before, he knew that the man was shrunken from the man
that he had been when he was younger, that like the lilies, he was
fading. A black cylinder like the one used to blow up helium
balloons stood beside the bed, and for a moment John had the
irrational thought that the old man was going to start speaking in
a Mickey Mouse voice, and despite everything, or maybe because of
everything, John felt that he was going to laugh. But he bit down
upon it, and in a moment or two it was gone.

"Dad," Alan
said in a low voice, all his usual humour gone. "Dad?"

The old man
opened his eyes. "I heard you the first time." His voice sounded
tired and very far away.

"Dad, this is
John—I was telling you about him, you remember?"

"I may be old,
I may be on my last legs but I'm not bloody senile. Of course I
remember. Laura's lad." Now there was more life in the voice, more
fire, and John saw that Alan heard it too because he smiled and
walked forward to the bed.

"Let me help
you sit up," he said, and began pulling at pillows.

"Bugger off,"
his father said, and Alan stepped back and watched the old man
perform a long series of manoeuvres and wriggles that moved him to
a sitting position. When he was finally comfortable, Alan pulled
the blankets up around him. His father's breathing had become
hoarse and irregular, and Alan stooped to the side of the bed and
picked up a clear tube that led to the cylinder. He fastened it to
his father's head so that the tube ran under his nose, and then
turned a knob on the cylinder. John could hear a distant rushing,
as if someone was hoovering a couple of rooms away.

The old man
closed his eyes and just breathed for a moment. Then he opened his
eyes again, looked straight at John, who saw that Alan had
inherited his piercing blue eyes from his father. The old man
gestured to a chair that stood on the other side of the bed from
the oxygen cylinder.

John walked
over and sat down, feeling awkward and self-conscious. This wasn't
helped by the old man, who simply stared at him as if he were
passing judgement. Then he waved at Alan. "If I didn't ask for a
pot of tea for the two of us, would you leave us here to die of
thirst?"

"One pot of tea
coming up," Alan said, and again he smiled, and John knew that the
two men had held this conversation many times before, and that Alan
would remember it every time that he made tea in the future, even
when he was making it only for one.

"You do drink
tea, don't you, not just that gut-rot sugary pop rubbish?" Again
the old man glared at John, who felt like a mouse felt when a hawk
spotted it amongst the tall grass. He nodded and said, “Please, Mr
Denby”, and from the old man's tone of voice John could tell that
not drinking tea was equivalent to spitting on the floor or
swearing in church.

"Hmm. Don't
call me Mr. Denby, it's always buggers trying to sell me things who
call me Mr. Denby. Call me Charles. Never Charlie, or I'll jump
from my bed and throw you out of the house myself. Just Charles,
thank you, and we'll get along nicely."

"Okay
Mr.—Charles."

"And ignore
this thing." Charles waved a hand that was so pale, so thin that it
could almost be transparent, up towards the tube under his nose.
"Bloody inconvenience, pain in the backside to be blunt, but not,
as much of an inconvenience as dying, so one has to put up with
such things. Alan tells me that you're a bright boy. Not surprised,
if you take after your sister, she's a smart girl. I can see it in
you. You're alive to the world. So many children today, can't say
the same for them."

The sudden
change in direction caught John unawares, but he never knew how to
respond to praise, so he just shrugged.

"Don't do that,
you're not French. Nice people, lived there for nearly a decade,
lovely people, but all that shrugging. Alan tells me you've got a
bit of an interest in the local history. Bought a book on folklore
last time you were in? Read up on it much, that kind of thing?"

John knew right
away that lying was not an option and would lead to him leaving the
house before Alan came back with the tea.

"No, not a lot.
I mean, I know a little, Greek and Roman stuff I used to read when
I was younger, but I don't know much. My sister's quite into that
sort of thing."

Charles
snorted. "You mean her shop? Load of tat to sell to credulous
tourists. Not that there's anything wrong with that, how this
village stays alive but there's no poetry in this new-age nonsense,
no tradition behind it, just a mish-mash of badly worded books by
preposterous fraudsters." Charles paused, closed his eyes again,
concentrating on bringing his breathing under control and taking
more oxygen from the tube under his nose.

John wondered
whether he could do anything, should offer to help, maybe call
Alan, as the old man seemed to have his eyes closed for a long
time. Then they flicked open. "Damn thing. Ah, I thought you'd died
or been waylaid by bandits."

The door behind
John had opened, and Alan came in carrying a tray with a pot of
tea, two cups and a plate of biscuits.

"Boring you
yet, is he?" Alan asked John. "You could always dive out of the
window you know, it's just flowerbeds underneath, if it all gets
too unbearable you shouldn't break too many limbs."

"No Garibaldi,"
Charles said, peering down at the plate.

"No—I thought
you hated Garibaldi. Always told me that you couldn't stand the
things."

"Did I? Well,
when you've lived as long as I have and had as much pain and
trouble as I have had—" here Charles glared at Alan to indicate
precisely where such pain and trouble had come from—"you're
entitled to change your mind. Get some Garibaldi next time you go
shopping, please, if it's not too much bother or disruption."

Alan turned to
leave, raising an eyebrow at John who could tell from the gesture
that what passed between the two men was an extended game, a battle
of wits and a way to show each other than they loved each other
without ever having to suffer the excruciating pain of having to
say just that.

They sat in
silence for a while, sipping tea and eating the biscuits that to
John's great relief weren't garibaldi, which always made him think
of dead flies pressed into cardboard boxes. There were a dozen
questions that John wanted to ask, but he was conscious of
Charles's poor state of health and was worried that the old man
might tire and the time together end without any of the things that
were important to John having been discussed.

“So, which book
is it on the local legends that you bought? Dunstone? Parnaby?"

"Um," John
said, "I can't quite—it's got a red cover..."

"Ah, Parnaby.
Hmm." Charles's voice made it quite clear what he thought of
Parnaby. "Take it all with a pinch of salt, I'm afraid. Too fond of
the sound of his own voice. Couldn't just tell a tale without
feeling he could improve it in some way. In a book that claims to
be an accurate account, there's no place for it. Dilutes the real
thing, you see, next generation along another writer produces a new
book based on what's he's read in Parnaby, embellishes it a bit
himself and before you know it, the real story, the one that's been
handed down for a thousand years, well, it's gone. Always meant to
write a book myself. Set all the local legends down as they should
be." He laughed, but this turned into a cough too, and it was a
moment or two before he could carry on. "Spent a lifetime doing the
research for it, and now it's too late. Maybe Alan will put some of
my notes together, turn something out. He could do it. If he
bothered. And if he could read my handwriting."

"I was
reading," John said, his mouth dry, "in Parnaby. About Saltcliff,
about the dog."

Again Charles
laughed, and again John had to wait until the inevitable rattle and
wheeze had subsided.

"Ah yes,"
Charles said, when he could talk again. "The infamous Saltcliff
Shuck."

"That's the
one."

"Saltcliff
Shuck my backside," Charles said. "No such thing."

John felt his
hope betrayed. There would be no help here.

"Just Parnaby
feeling left out because other parts of the county have one,"
Charles went on, "and we don't. So he took a perfectly good local
legend that you don't get anywhere else, and turned it into
something that’s just the same wherever you go in the country."

"So there's no
black dog then?" John asked dully.

"Oh, there
certainly is. But it's no Shuck, it’s no fiery-eyed harbinger of
death like you see in every bloody book of folklore right across
the country. The Saltcliff hound is more than that, much more."
Another cough, another pause. "You heard of the Hob?"

"Yeah," John
said, and then quickly, seeing Charles's expression, "I mean, yes.
I've been hearing about how the lads of the village used to have to
spend a night in the Hole."

"You've been
reading more than Parnaby then lad. Or talking to somebody who
knows the old stories."

"Davey," John
said. "I don't know his name, but he's really old, about..." He
tailed off into silence.

"About twenty
years younger than me," Charles said, his eyes twinkling. "Assuming
you're talking about Davey Allthrop. Fisherman. Smokes a stinking
pipe, spins a good tale."

"That's him,"
John said. "I'm friends with his nephew and niece. So what does the
dog have to do with the Hob?"

"Hob is the
spirit of this place, he's Saltcliff itself and no-one knows how he
came here, but he's been here as long as the village, longer.
No-one knows why a hob does what it does, and it can be a
trickster, but it does more good than harm, or so the stories
say.

“Trouble is
though, according to the tales the Hob and its like came from an
older time, maybe from before time, and the Church didn't like the
people thinking about the old times any more. When Whitby heard
that Saltcliff had its Hob a monk there, a man called Oswald, vowed
to banish it forever. But Oswald, he fell ill, so another young
monk volunteered to go in his place. This monk was a chap called
Cedric, and he had grown up in Saltcliff. He knew what the Hob
meant to the place, that it
was
the place, and he knew that
not all the old things were bad. Cedric thought to himself, well if
the Hob does good deeds, surely it must being doing God's work, and
who are we monks to banish something that does God’s work. It came
into it too, that Cedric thought the luck of the Hob had saved him
too, as a lad, when he was out in a coracle and thought himself
sure to drown.

“Oswald was
suspicious though, he knew that Cedric was from the village, and he
put whispers around that Cedric would not do his duty, that he
would turn away from the Church and let the old ways win. Which
back in those days, was a dangerous thing to have said about
you."

Charles coughed
and took a few shallow, rasping breaths.

"So Cedric was
in a bind. He had to be seen to banish the Hob. But he knew that if
he did, the village would lose its luck, and the boats would come
home with empty nets, and plagues would take their toll, and
Saltcliff would be a sadder, darker place. "

"So he found
another way," John said.

Charles arched
an eyebrow.

“He made it
look as if the Hob was gone.”

"Smart lad,"
Charles said. "That he did."

"So what
happened next?" John said. “And I don't understand how the dog fits
into it?"

"I'm getting
there, have patience lad. So Cedric, he banishes the Hob, but not
from this world altogether, just from the part of it we can see. He
banished it to the bottom of the Hole, and he took much of its
power, so Oswald could not sense that it was still here. Cedric
took most of the power of the Hob, and he bound it into a piece of
Whitby jet as big as your hand, and he buried it somewhere up on
the cliffs above the village, where it still lies to this day. The
story says that anyone with evil in their heart can’t take the jet
from where it lies, to stop them from getting hold of the power of
the Hob that's held in there, and that no ordinary man can even see
it is there, only someone who is touched with a gift. But while the
jet's still there, the Hob stays trapped in its Hole, and it cannot
reach far beyond—which is why you have the tradition of the
circling round the hole for luck—because that's still in what power
it has left to give."