The House at the Edge of the World (22 page)

‘You think Dad didn’t die. You
think … what? He jumped off a cliff and then just walked off into a new life
somewhere?’

‘Yesterday I still thought that. Now I
know
it.’

‘That’s not true! You
don’t know!’

He was looking at me with enormous pity. His
was the face of the torturer, the face that says, This is going to hurt me more than it
will hurt you.

‘I don’t understand why you had
to jump. Why couldn’t you just tell me what you were thinking?’

‘Because I thought I was going crazy.
I wanted to see if you’d get to the same place without me. But you were being so
obtuse. And in the meantime, I was going over and over the cliff, trying to work out how
he did it. I got Mickey to show me all the tombstoning spots – he knows all those
extreme sports types – and I knew it could be done here. It’s simple in the end –
once you know where to jump. It’s a bowl. You just need a high enough tide so that
you have enough depth and so that the tide pulls back far enough to give you enough
beach at low tide to get out to the end of the rocks to climb over. The worst thing was
the cold and the waiting. I was planning for a better tide, actually. But things came to
a head.’

‘Were you waiting in the water? All
that time?’

‘No. I got up onto the rocks – which
wasn’t easy. In fact, it was fucking scary. I sort of tucked in while the tide
went out. Then I climbed down, but that was hard because I’d hurt my shoulder, and
then I walked out and made the climb.’

‘I still don’t understand why
you had to jump.’

‘Because
that’s what he did. Why jump off a cliff – why not just leave? I had to know.
I’d rather die than not know.’

I thought that I would rather not know. I
said, ‘It might be possible in Africa, but it’s not so easy to make the
better-off-dead lifestyle choice here. What’s he supposed to be doing? Hanging out
with Essex gangsters on the Costa del Sol?’

‘Of course not,’ said Corwin,
firmly. ‘You’re right. It would be harder here. But not
impossible.’

I didn’t want to believe him. I wanted
to believe that he was unwell, that these were delusions. My father grew things. He had
been training a peach tree into a fan against the southern wall of the kitchen garden.
He kept telling us it was a ten-year project. A man like that didn’t fake his own
death – but, then, a man like that didn’t commit suicide either.

‘Corwin,’ I said. ‘Please
stop. You’re driving yourself mad – you’re driving us both mad. You
don’t
know
anything. All you have is a strong hunch and a lucky escape.
After all this, we’re still where we began. The original explanation is still the
most likely.’

‘I do know.’

‘So you know,’ I said. ‘So
what’s the answer to your own question? Why jump off a cliff?’

‘Don’t you see? It had to be one
thing or the other – life or death. It was a gamble with fate. Like Russian roulette, or
something.’

‘So where is he? What’s he
doing? What’s he living off?’

‘That I
don’t
know. We
have to find him.’

‘You need help!’

‘Morwenna!’ He took my face in
his hands and looked hard at me. ‘We have to find him!’

He let go, sat back on the chair and warmed
the palms of his hands against the stove. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘I
don’t know.’

Steam was rising from our wet clothes. They
had already dried in patches. The cabin smelt of scorched cloth, of seawater, of hot
stove metal. Corwin stared at his hands. ‘I really don’t know.
Then I have to stop and consider what to do. Because right now if I
saw him, I think I might have to kill him.’

Quietly, coaxingly, I said, ‘But how,
Corwin? How would we even start?’

Corwin looked at me, incredulous.
‘With Matthew, of course. How do you think? If I’m right, then
he
certainly knows, the old bugger. He has to.’

The following Sunday I determined to visit Thornton in order to worship there at the
pretty Norman church, which was famous locally, so I had been informed, for its pew
carvings.

I set out on foot, taking a steep climb to the top of the cliffs, after which the
walking was easy and pleasant along the ridge and I eventually began to descend
around a high granitic outcrop beneath which a stream flung itself into the sea over
a sheer slab of rock. A lonely mill soon came into view, pressed up against the sea,
and, further along the beach, tucked into the lee of the cliff, a dwelling on the
foreshore. I was surprised to see a fishing boat pulled up beside it. It is rare to
find safe landing for a boat along that stretch of coast, but the cove, I surmised,
was protected from the battering of the sea by a long sheltering cliff wall.

The hamlet lay in a deep combe, which now, in spring, was white with hawthorn.
Uphill of the mill was a scattering of houses and cottages around the church spire.
My path led me past the mill and over a small footbridge along a twisting stream,
which disappeared, at times, beneath cascades of tumbling thorn, which soon turned
to ancient dwarf oak, laden with moss. The church itself was guarded by two enormous
cedars, which, as I later observed, appeared when viewed uphill of the hamlet to
form a gateway to the sea.

I arrived while the church was empty, in order to make some sketches of the pew
carvings. I had copied into my sketchbook an intricately scaled mermaid and the
profile of a Red Indian in fine feather head-dress when the bell-ringers arrived.
They were curious to see my work, and one, an old man who could barely climb the
ladder to the bell tower, declared it ‘as good as any
I’ve seen’, for they were used to visitors with sketchbooks and had
tales at the ready about the smuggling days when the church had been used to hide
contraband. Such tales are told up and down the coast, but, having seen the landing
down at Thornton Mouth, I could well believe that this spot had been indeed a
favoured haunt for smugglers.

It was a lively service. The congregation had descended from the surrounding farms
to hear the old rector, who was more ancient still than my approving bell-ringer,
and who was of the fire and brimstone variety, to the obvious satisfaction of his
flock. Upon hearing that I was the new curate at St Peter’s, he invited me to
take lunch with him at the rectory, which invitation I gladly accepted, and while we
were at table he regaled me with the story of Thornton’s Devil Stone.

The church at Thornton had taken many years to build. This was not the fault of the
workmen, who were diligent and skilled. But each morning, when they returned to
work, they discovered that their tools and materials had been removed a mile away
and thrown to the foot of the cliffs at Thornton Mouth, and each morning, before the
work could continue, the workmen must move it all back up the hill to the site of
the church.

One night, the youngest of the builders hid in a tree and waited for the culprit to
reveal himself. At midnight he was assailed by a terrible smell of sulphur, and he
thought he might faint and fall out of the tree, but he held fast and soon he heard
voices. He climbed up higher into the tree and looked down upon a troop of demons
who were being overseen by the Devil himself, and he watched as they marched down
the combe carrying on their shoulders the builders’ bricks and tools.

The next day, the young builder told his fellows what he had seen, and they sought
the advice of their priest, who told them to pray to St Michael, for it was he who
always knew how to get the better of the Devil. Thereupon they prayed, and the very
next
night they watched for the Devil, and when he and his demons
were gathered a great light appeared in the sky and St Michael came down and grabbed
the Devil by his forked tail and flung him over the parish boundary, then picked up
a great boulder and hurled it after him, pinning the Devil beneath it. And there the
Devil was stuck, his demons all scattered, until such time as the building of the
church was completed and could be consecrated, whereupon the grateful worshippers of
Thornton dedicated their church to their protector, St Michael.

The rector rounded off his story with a spirited quotation from Revelation, Chapter
20: ‘“And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the
bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that
old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast
him into the bottomless pit.” Yes,’ said the rector, ‘the Devil
likes it here. The sea entices him. He hopes one day to bounce off her belly back
into the middle atmosphere, out of which he was cast into the earth. Above all
else,’ he warned, ‘the Devil is an optimist.’

As I took my leave of the rector, I thought to enquire about the strange dwelling on
the beach. ‘Ah!’ said he. ‘Now there’s an interesting
fellow. You must drop in on your way home and see for yourself. He enjoys a bit of
Christian company, and his mortal soul is much in need of it!’

It was upon this advice that I approached the hut at Thornton Mouth, although I
hesitate to dignify it with that designation, the ‘hut’ resembling an
upturned boat, being a precarious clinker-built pile of old ships’ bones with
portholes for windows. As I approached I observed that it was garlanded about with
glass fishing floats and strings of perforated pebbles and was buttressed by coils
of thick, tarred rope. Before the entrance were piled crab pots and driftwood. Smoke
issued from a stovepipe that protruded from the roof.

I hesitated to knock at the door, and instead attempted to peer discreetly through
an open porthole, but before I could so much as glimpse its occupant, a voice called
out from within: ‘If you’re
from the dead, be off with
you. Unless you come to take me with you!’

I was so taken aback that I believe that I turned my head to look about for a ghost,
and only then understood that the voice spoke to me. I returned that, indeed no, I
was alive and well, and stated my business: that the rector had sent me with his
greetings.

‘In that case,’ said the voice, ‘you’d do better to come
round by the door.’

Bending to enter, I was met by the stench of damp rope, tar, smoke and stale fish.
The walls were piled high with insulating coils of rope, and a hammock stitched from
sailcloth hung from a beam formed from a broken mast. A crate served as a table, and
crude shelves and benches sawn from ship’s planks made up the remaining
furniture. A driftwood fire smouldered in a stove, which stood on a pile of sand in
the middle of the floor.

The man sitting there might have been old, or he might not have been more than
forty. He had that look of the sea, which disguises age. His forearms bore the
inkings of a mariner. He sat on a bench, working at his nets. As I entered he looked
up and said, ‘Take your place by the fire and be welcome.’

His speech bore some trace that was not of the West Country. ‘No,’ he
acknowledged. ‘I’m not from these parts.’ I asked from where he
hailed, but he would not say. ‘They all ask me that,’ he said.
‘But I never tell.’

He stood to take from the shelf a bottle and two pewter mugs. ‘If the rector
sent you,’ he said, ‘you must drink with me.’

I was apprehensive of the concoction that the proffered glass must contain, but was
surprised by the taste of a good brandy. Noting my surprise, my host laughed and,
waving the bottle, said, ‘This is how I’m paid for my
services.’

‘And what might those services be?’ I enquired.

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I serve as sexton to this cove,
here.’

Naturally, I sought to understand what he meant by this. ‘Well,’ he
explained, ‘you know how it is. This is a bad stretch of
coast. The dead wash ashore, for the sea don’t always want them. And I bring
them home, to their final resting place, to the church. The rector and I used to
share the work, but he’s too old for the climb now.’

‘Are there no survivors?’ I asked, thinking with a shudder of the tales
of murderous wreckers with their lanterns and their knives.

‘Only me,’ he said. ‘I’m the only one ever washed up alive
on this beach.’

This I recognized to be a cue for a tale, and so I permitted him to refill my glass
and settled in to hear what he had to say.

‘As you so rightly observed,’ he began, ‘I’m not from these
parts. And I took to sea when I was a lad and stayed afloat until I was a young man.
I didn’t much take to the life. All the hours they let a man call his own, and
he believes it: needle and ink, whittling at whalebone. I spent days put together
over a fine waistcoat, but what for? Who was ever to see me wear it? So I was the
quarrelsome sort. And one day we were harboured up for repairs and I took off. And
they took after me, for I had enemies aboard and they were only too glad to hunt me
down. And I ran for three days and they came after me and I found myself up on these
cliffs and there was a big pile of rock sticking out over the sea and I went around
it to hide. Now my enemies had caught up with me, and I found myself looking down
into the water, and I thought to myself: Jump or you are lost. So I jumped, right
off the edge of that cliff and into the sea.

‘Well, when I hit the water I felt pain all over, like a thousand slaps with
the back of the hand, it was. And I went down, down, down. And when I popped back
up, who should be waiting for me in the water, but the Devil himself, red eyes,
jack-o’-lantern grin, horns and all. And he said my name, and he said,
“You’re coming with me.” And I said, “No, I’m not. Not
if I can help it.” And he leaped at me off the top of a wave, and I fought
with him right there in the water. He thrashed like a conger, but I caught hold of
him by the tail and twisted him over and over until at last I
climbed up onto his back and I rode him through the waves till he was tired and
spent, and he shot off into the sky, shouting and cursing.