The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (4 page)

She turned back in her hurry along the landing, looking rather like a sparrow trapped in a house. ‘Yes, sir?’

I smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll get used to everything in no time.’

She breathed, waiting for my next command, and when none came she allowed a nod of her head. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she whispered, and disappeared out of sight. I shook my head and poured a cup of tea. I could never quite get the hang of the whole servant etiquette thing; they seemed to take it as a personal insult if you tried to be too civil to them. Then again, the girl Agnes looked as if she’d be scared of her own shadow.

I drank my tea, unpacked and visited the bathroom. I washed my face in hot water, a little unnerved by the dreadful clanking noise this unleashed from the geyser. As I still had some time, I went back to the bedroom, pulled the chair up before the mirror and attempted a quick little self-portrait. I liked to think my skills were coming along somewhat, but all the same, when I had finished and compared the picture with the reflection before me, I wondered who it was I’d actually drawn. Determined not to let the failure of the sketch bring me down, I folded it away to look at later, and decided to walk down through the house to meet Alec.

I was reaching the first-floor landing, thinking only of what dinner at eight might consist, when the drawing-room door opened and a woman stepped out; the woman, presumably, whose marriage to my cousin had caused such terrible excitement in the family, Mrs Alexander Bray.

She breathed in sharply when she saw me. She was not as tall as I had expected, and had a pale, pinched face with an expression akin to a squeezed lemon. A pattern of spots dimpled her forehead. Her hair was shortish and dark, and hung in two lank folds either side of her scalp. She was wearing a jade-green gown in some floating material, with furred cuffs, and she wrapped it about herself now with nails painted the colour of blood.

I held out my hand. ‘I’m so glad to meet you at last. Robert Carver, Alec’s cousin.’

She looked down at my hand as if I were offering her a dead fish. ‘I know who you are, Mr Carver,’ she said in an ice pick of a voice.

‘Oh, good,’ I said, grinning foolishly. I let my hand
drop. Behind her, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful blue-and-gold drawing room, a huge gilt mirror leaning at an angle above the fireplace.

She pulled the door shut tightly against her back. ‘You’re the poor relation who’s come to sponge off my husband for the summer.’

I stared at her. ‘I … I assure you that I’m not … that I wouldn’t …’

She raised a palm. ‘Please. I really couldn’t care less what your motives are. However, if my dear, darling father-in-law has sent you to spy on this house, then you can tell him from me that if that’s the price of my husband’s allowance, he can fuck himself up the arse with it. Thank you.’

And with that she glided past me and continued towards the stairs.

I gaped at the space she had left, a steady heat rising from my chest to my neck. I gripped the edge of the banister to steady myself. Horribly, I felt tears prick the insides of my eyes and blinked them quickly away. I swallowed and then, from below me, I heard Alec’s voice and walked down the stairs, holding on to the rail as I went.

‘You’re here!’ He was in the hallway, grinning up at me. ‘Shall we … I say …’

I walked straight past him. I pulled open the front door, headed down the steps and marched along the path, out through the gate and across the road to the railings that held the cliff back from the sea.

‘Robert! Robert, what’s the matter?’

I heard Alec behind me. My breath was very hot and very fast. My knuckles were white on the rail. He landed
beside me, his face half-amused, half-concerned. ‘You marched out of there as if you had a hand grenade up your backside.’

Unwittingly, this brought forth the image Mrs Bray had evoked with her foul mouth, and I grimaced. ‘I can’t stay. I’m sorry, but I shall have to get the first train back tomorrow.’

‘Why on earth … ?’ His open face crumpled into a frown. ‘Oh, no. Tell me she didn’t. Tell me my wife hasn’t said anything to you.’

‘She … er …’ I coughed with the force of the emotion. My lungs were stuck fast: the old problem, always recurring when I was under extreme stress. I felt the cool metal of the railing and used that to calm my breaths, in and out, in and out. Finally, I said, ‘She accused me firstly of being a … well, a sponger, and secondly of spying on behalf of your father.’

‘Oh, Lord.’ Alec put his elbows on the railings and his hands over his eyes. Eventually he said, ‘I’m so sorry, Robert.’

I shook my head, wanting to say it was quite all right but unable to find the words. ‘If it had even occurred to me you might think I was … well, I would never …’

‘Don’t pay her any attention. She was only saying it to upset you. I mean, talk about hypocrisy. The woman’s the biggest parasite I’ve ever met.’ He looked up at me. ‘I’m sorry to say this, Robert, but the cliché holds true. Marry in haste, et cetera, et cetera.’

I remembered once, long ago, going out with Grandfather to shoot rabbits and coming across one, its eyes stitched wide into its face as it looked down the barrel of
my rifle. I felt like that rabbit now. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.’

‘Don’t you?’ He fiddled inside his jacket pocket, took out a tin of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. He fitted it inside his lips, lit it and said, ‘I thought I’d show the whole stuffy lot of them – you know, Father, Mother, all the rest. If one loves the girl, I thought, who cares if she’s an actress or a road sweeper or a bloody farmhand? She saw me coming, Robert, and now she’s yoked to me and she hates me and hates anyone associated with me, and unfortunately you received the brunt of that and I’m sorry.’

I looked down over the rail at the dots of people on the promenade below and breathed a lungful of precious air. ‘She seemed to think your allowance might be in jeopardy,’ I said.

‘Father’s been threatening it ever since I married her.’ Alec sniffed. ‘She must be scared stiff about the chance of being poor again.’

‘Well, anyway,’ I said. ‘You do understand that I couldn’t possibly stay now?’

Alec put his hand over mine on the rail. ‘You must,’ he said. ‘I’ve been feeling absolutely mad, shut up in that place with just the two of us and the servants chewing over every little detail. And look, she’s either out of the house or gone on some mysterious errand she doesn’t care to tell me about. You won’t even see her.’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realize … that is, I wouldn’t want to …’

My inarticulacy was saved by Alec muttering under his breath, ‘Oh, damn it,’ and looking past me, down the hill.

‘What is it?’ I turned and saw a bearded, middle-aged man wearing a crumpled hat and round-rimmed spectacles striding across the street towards us. He waved exaggeratedly, although we stood only a few yards from him. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Bray!’

Alec nodded dispiritedly. ‘Dr Feathers.’

The man turned to me and beamed broadly. ‘Don’t tell me, this is the famous cousin. How d’you do? Awfully pleased to meet you.’

He pumped my hand vigorously. Alec sighed and said, ‘Robert, this is our neighbour Dr Feathers. My cousin, Robert Carver.’

‘Here for the summer, are you, Mr Carver?’

‘Er …’ I hesitated. Alec leaped in.

‘Yes, he is, and we’re both terribly glad to have him here.’

‘Marvellous.’ The doctor beamed. ‘If you have any health problems, you know where to come. Surgery’s directly next door.’

He turned and indicated the house attached to Castaway, a smaller mirror image of its neighbour.

‘Oh – um – thank you,’ I said, slightly unnerved.

‘Actually, Robert’s in perfect health, aren’t you, Robert?’ said Alec, nodding firmly.

‘Indeed?’ Feathers looked slightly crestfallen. ‘How is the charming Mrs Bray? Is she well?’

‘Quite well, thank you. We’re all well.’ Alec tapped his foot impatiently.

‘And the servant situation? Doris …’ And here the doctor turned to me. ‘Our head parlourmaid; we’re not blessed with a Scone, unfortunately. Doris says your
under-housemaid’s had a sudden promotion to fill the gap. What’s her name? Agnes?’

Alec blinked. ‘You appear to know more about our household than we do,’ he said, attempting a laugh. ‘Anyway, my wife deals with the servants. You’ll have to ask her, I’m afraid.’

The doctor beamed, not fazed in the slightest by Alec’s rebuff. ‘According to Doris, the girl looks as if she might drop down dead any day now.’

Alec tightened his lips. ‘If she feels unwell, we’ll call you immediately, you can guarantee that.’

‘Good.’ Dr Feathers rocked back on his heels. ‘We must take good care of our servants, or how on earth do we expect them to take good care of us, hmm?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Alec. ‘Now, we must be getting along.’

He took my arm and tried to wheel me past the doctor, who said, ‘Oh, Mr Carver …’

Alec rolled his eyes. I stifled a smile and said, ‘Yes?’

‘I’m sure your cousin has told you that the Featherses will be holding a modest dinner in a few weeks’ time. We’re expecting the mayor, by the way.’ He nodded significantly at me. ‘We would be extremely honoured if you would do us the pleasure of attending.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Although I’m not sure if I’ll still be in Helmstone.’

‘He will be,’ said Alec. ‘And if the mayor’s going to be there, I don’t think Carver will be able to stay away.’

I coughed back a snort of laughter. Dr Feathers smiled broadly. ‘I’ll send the invitation over tomorrow.’

‘Wonderful,’ called Alec, dragging me downhill alongside him. ‘See you soon.’

I was in time to see the doctor bow slightly before Alec pulled me out of sight. We walked down the hill in a dignified silence before spluttering into laughter once we were far from earshot. I laughed so much I was forced to hold on to the rail once more until my lungs had calmed down. ‘The man’s such a snob,’ said Alec. ‘Hated me when I was a kid, you know. Always complaining to my parents about my behaviour. Now I own Castaway he thinks I’m the cream of the crop.’

‘Does he always tout for business like that?’ I asked.

Alec puffed out his lips. ‘He used to treat the servants for a pittance,’ he said, ‘back when Mother owned Castaway. I think his nose has been rather put out of joint we’ve not yet called on his services. It’s my opinion he’s a terrible doctor; probably killed more patients than he’s saved.’

‘That’s why you didn’t let on about …’ I tapped my chest. ‘The old problem.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ said Alec. ‘Fresh air and sunshine, that’s what you need.’

‘Not much of either at home,’ I said. ‘The house is riddled with damp; my own doctor said that was half the problem.’

‘In which case,’ he said casually, ‘a summer spent by the seaside is exactly the tonic.’

I paused. ‘Your …’ I began. ‘I mean, Mrs Bray …’

‘I’m asking you as a favour,’ he said. ‘I need – well, I need somebody in the house who doesn’t hate the sight of me. And do you know what? I can put up with her insulting me, but I won’t allow her to insult my family. And if you do leave on that account I – well, I might just throw her back into the gutter where she belongs.’

‘Please don’t,’ I said quickly. I thought of us standing in front of the diplodocus, and the way I had stared up at my hero Alec, goggle-eyed, thinking him the very paragon of worldliness. ‘Look, there’s no point in my leaving immediately, anyhow.’

Alec grinned. ‘There’s a good chap.’

‘I can’t promise anything,’ I added, and he nodded, although I had the sense he was hardly listening.

‘You’ll like Helmstone,’ he was saying. ‘It’s a small place, but it’ll give you what you need.’

‘Health and sunshine?’ I supplied. We were approaching the bottom of the hill now, and stopped for a second. From somewhere unseen I heard an organ grinder’s wheezy tune.

‘Pleasure,’ he said. ‘Pleasure of all kinds. Mind you, I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good idea.’

I wondered what he meant, but he was already walking away from me across the road. I hurried to catch up. ‘The thing is …’ I began, but he wasn’t listening to me.

‘That’s enough sea air,’ he said. ‘Now let’s have a drink.’

He disappeared inside a narrow opening between two shops and I followed him, the darkness swallowing up the sun. As I walked behind him down a tiny alleyway, I remembered the rabbit again, but this time after it had been shot. It had been hanging by its legs in Grandfather’s barn, its eyes glassy as it waited to be skinned, and I had the unnerving sensation that I knew exactly what that was like.

Twenty-four hours after the cliff-top storm had nearly flung me into the sea, I stood inside the tea kiosk on the edge of the fun park, shivering in my inadequate cardigan as the wind battered the tin roof and howled along the walkways between the rides.

To my left, the merry-go-round creaked in an endless circle to ‘Camptown Races’, one solitary rider clinging on to a pole spiked through a grinning porcelain horse. In front of me, through the kiosk’s hatch, I could see the bored lad who worked the dodgems bounding from empty car to empty car. He waved at me as he jumped about, going faster and faster, and I waved back and felt bad that I’d worked opposite him for six weeks and still couldn’t remember his name.

I looked at my watch. Ten more minutes until my job was over for good. It felt as if there were ten minutes until the end of summer, which was silly because summer had packed itself up a few weeks ago, high-kicking its way into the horizon, leaving behind it a squalling storm, a miserable dribble of coach tours, and day-tripping families marching along the prom with grim, workman-like faces.

There were still a few retired couples holidaying here, such as the ones approaching the kiosk now, wound into overcoats, she with a purple headscarf pulled tightly under
her chin, and he with a pencil moustache. As I took two chipped cups and saucers down from the hooks over my head and held them under the tea urn, the husband eyed me narrowly. ‘Are you a local girl, by any chance?’

‘Not exactly,’ I replied, topping up the sludgy tea with hot water from the other urn. ‘I’m from – well, the suburbs, I suppose. Petwick, it’s called.’

‘Thought so.’ His moustache twitched. ‘You’re far too well spoken to be from this dump.’

‘Eric!’ His wife gave me an embarrassed smile.

‘It’s true.’ He hunched his shoulders inside his overcoat. ‘This place – here, d’you remember it during the war, Frances? Really something, this place was, even back then when you couldn’t swim in the sea.’

‘It’s fine,’ whispered his wife, pink-faced. ‘It’s fine.’

‘Is this what we fought for?’ He took in the fun park with a sweep of his arm – the dodgems, the merry-go-round – and ended back at the kiosk with a limp shudder and a baleful glare at his drink. ‘To be served tea in a chipped cup?’

‘I’ll change it,’ I said, glad Mrs Hale wasn’t around to hear, and that he hadn’t noticed the sugar bowl, stuck fast inside a sticky ring of granules adhering to the counter.

‘Hmm,’ he muttered, barely mollified, and as he turned to his wife for her purse he said, obscurely, ‘Now. It was Shipwreck.’

‘No, no.’ She handed me a two-shilling piece and, as they turned away with their cups and saucers to find a seat, I distinctly heard her say, ‘Castaway. I’m sure it was Castaway House.’

‘What’s that?’ I said, leaning over the counter, but the
wind whipped my voice away from them. They were talking about a scandal, a tragedy, some sort of mystery. My heart quickened; Johnny and Star – it had to be them, that mysterious pair.

‘What a day!’ Mrs Hale was approaching from the promenade, her fist bristling with keys, drowning out the couple’s talk. ‘Oh, Rosie, it would be wonderful if you could stand a little straighter. I don’t want people to think I’m exploiting a cripple.’

‘I am standing straight,’ I protested, but Mrs Hale was not listening. The ties of her headscarf flapped in the wind, sending wisps of grey hair skittering across her forehead. She disappeared around the side of the kiosk and a second later came in through the door. Her stilettos rattled on the metal floor.

‘How’s it been?’ she said, and without waiting for an answer opened the cash box. ‘That’s awful. Goodness, you didn’t give anyone the wrong change, did you?’

‘Of course not.’ I handed her the paper bag upon which every transaction had to be written.

‘That’s terrible.’ Mrs Hale studied the bag with a beady eye. ‘How am I going to pay my bills on that?’

‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘I expect we’ll all be blown up in a nuclear holocaust soon.’

She gave me a sideways glance. ‘Was that supposed to cheer me up?’

I shrugged. ‘You know, live for the moment and all that.’

‘I remember when I used to think the same,’ she said to herself. ‘Anyway, did you want this morning job at the hotel, or will you be too busy marching for unilateral disarmament to do some washing-up?’

‘Oh no,’ I said quickly. ‘I still owe my rent this week.’

‘It’s only part time: half past six until half past ten. Tuesdays off. Start tomorrow if you like.’ She handed me two ten-bob notes for today, and said, ‘What’s this cup doing in the bin?’

I tried not to think about getting up at dawn tomorrow, and pointed to the couple shivering at a table by the railings. At least I only had to go next door. ‘They complained. Said it was chipped.’

‘Some people are so fussy.’ Mrs Hale fished out the cup and put it back on the side. ‘By the way, do you want a tin of soup to take home?’

I paused, in the middle of untying my apron. ‘I’m sorry?’

She was holding one of the giant wheels of soup tins that we heated up to serve customers on the tiny gas flame in the kiosk. ‘I can’t leave anything in here over the winter; you may as well have it.’ She dumped it on the counter. ‘It’s not too heavy.’

This was a lie, but I only fully realized it once I had already left the kiosk and was staggering along to the beach. Still, it was soup. Not that I particularly liked tomato soup, but … oh well, it was soup.

As I passed the couple, I remembered their mention of my home. I hovered nearby, balancing the tin on the railings, and said, ‘I was just wondering, what were you saying about Castaway House? It’s where I live, you see.’

‘I told you!’ The woman made a nudging gesture with her elbow. ‘I said it was called Castaway House.’

Her husband humphed, and I said, ‘Has something happened there? I’ve only been in the place since August.’

The woman laughed. ‘Oh, this was a long time ago,
love. I’m going back to when I was a little girl. We used to come to Helmstone for our summer holidays. Eating fish and chips, we were, and there was Dad, reading out loud from the newspaper they were wrapped in. I can’t remember the exact details, but ooh, it was a fascinating story.’

I picked up the tin again, disappointed. ‘I thought it was a recent thing.’

Her husband snorted. ‘Anything that happened before these young ’uns were born is ancient history. Might as well be Roman times as far as they’re concerned.’

His wife reached across the table and squeezed his hand. ‘We’re war relics, you and me, eh?’ She smiled up at me, and I thought, as much as I didn’t want to, that she was right.

I had a vague idea of donating my soup tin to someone in one of the beach huts, so I walked down the steps, a brisk wind rattling through my already knotted hair. Debris had been blown on to the sand overnight from the sea; chunks of bracken criss-crossed the beach like spidery handwriting.

The donkeys were clumped together, flicking sand out of their eyes, their garishly coloured saddles rather incongruous against the grey of the sky and the sea. A painted sign said,
BEACH RIDES
5/-. A woman was sitting in a deckchair beside the sign, reading a paperback novel and eating a Chelsea bun.

I walked along by the abandoned fishermen’s arches and then on to the walkways in front of the rented beach huts. A council sign stated that all of them had to be vacated by the thirtieth of September. I peered into one and saw a woman packing a gas stove into a wooden crate.
The rest were empty, and so I carried on along the sand, passing a father holding the hand of a child in a bonnet. ‘Not until you apologize to your mother,’ I heard him snap as they passed me, and he gave me a harried look, the child pouty-faced and miserable.

I turned and looked up at the fun park, the silent dodgems, the creaking horses. The kiosk was a lonely bunker from here, and with its corrugated tin roof it gave the impression of a wartime lookout post. People said there’d been barbed wire strung across the beach during the war, in case of invasion. I wondered what it must have been like on those boiling days of summer, when the sea turned turquoise and licked the fringes of the shore, barred from reach by looping cylinders of steel.

From here I could also see across the road to the skeleton of the new Majestic Arcade. Scaffolding was caged around it, but between the planking and metal struts a concrete butterfly was emerging from the chaos within. I’d seen the architect’s plan pinned to the lower reaches, a silver dream of a pleasure castle with its name in lights across the door, and stick-thin young people looking up at it in wonder. Mrs Hale was very voluble on what she thought of the destruction of the grand old hotel, but I felt excited by the banner the council had had printed and put up on every new construction in the town:
A Brand-New Helmstone for a Brand-New Age
. I almost felt I was living in the future, when a mile of concrete walkways would span overhead and everybody would live on protein pills and yoghurt.

I walked as far as the broken pier, hacked in two during the war to stop aircraft landing and never again mended,
and then I turned up the steps back to the prom. I thought I’d probably have missed Susan and Val, as they usually went home to their mums for Sunday dinner, but I was trying to make sure. I’d crept out of bed while they were still asleep, and hoped it would be a while before I had to listen to a lecture from Susan about not borrowing Val’s boots to go out in the mud, or using her own Arôme de Violettes to fragrance my bathwater.

‘Hey, dollface.’

I turned. Across the road, leaning against the doorway of Riccardo’s with a cigarette dangling between two long fingers and her lips puffed into a pout, was Star. Her red-and-black striped dress bounced off her angular hips, and she had an oversized cap pulled over the new geometric hairdo she’d had done in London. She looked like a colour plate from a fashion magazine.

I scowled, but was unable to tear my gaze from her. She winked at me and jerked her head towards the coffee shop’s interior, drawling in the same stupid put-on American accent she’d used just now, ‘Why don’tcha come in and share some ice cream?’

I narrowed my eyes and marched across the road. ‘You’ve got a nerve –’ I began.

‘Why the soup?’ she interrupted, this time in her normal voice. ‘Don’t tell me; it’s for a happening. We’ll pass it round the room while reciting poetry backwards.’

‘Eh!’ Riccardo himself was coming past the door carrying three cups of coffee up one arm. ‘You come or you go. You don’t leave the door open so we all die of the hypothermia, okay?’

Star grinned sloppily. I thought she was probably
stoned. ‘
Va bene
,’ she said, throwing her hands in the air. ‘I’m over there, Rosie. I’ve got a booth.’

She turned and went inside. I transferred the tin into my other arm and stomped after her, determined I wouldn’t let her get round me again.

At this time of day, Riccardo’s was usually full of the after-school crowd: kids playing footsie with each other on the high stools by the counter, straggles of boys exclaiming loudly over the fruit machine. On a Sunday, however, the youth of Helmstone melted away and the coffee shop was a quiet hum of parents and well-behaved children in Peter Pan collars and velvet dresses. The steam from Riccardo’s whirring coffee machine had bubbled mist up the plate-glass windows, making me feel as if we were on a ship bobbing on the icy waters of the North Sea.

‘So …’ I dumped the ugly tin out of sight on a chair and sat down, rubbing my arms to release the ache in them. ‘What’s your excuse this time?’

‘
Ciao
, Antonia!’ Star waved her cigarette at Riccardo’s tatty wife, who nodded at her from her constant position behind the bulging trays of multicoloured ice creams beneath the glass cover. ‘How’re the
bambini
?’

She exchanged a few words in cod-Italian with Riccardo’s wife, and I took the opportunity to watch Star, because even when I was annoyed with her, Star was still somebody you wanted to look at. It wasn’t just her expensive clothes, which I presumed Johnny must fund as Star never seemed to have a proper job; it was the whole of her. She was tall, but not awkward; her limbs seemed to fold themselves around objects in just the right sort of way, and her face – well, it wasn’t flawless, but it was beautiful all the same.

The brim of her silly cap was too large for her to see properly out of, so she lifted her head as she turned towards me. I caught a flash of her huge violet-coloured eyes. ‘What were you saying?’

‘I was asking you,’ I said, as icily as I could, ‘why you stood me up on Friday night without so much as a note. But it’s all right. I’ve decided I couldn’t care less either way.’

‘Friday night …’ She squinted at the cake stand and flicked her cigarette over the tin tray, scattering ash across the table. ‘Friday night.’

All of a sudden, her brow seemed to collapse. She put her forehead on to the Formica. I was silent. From the booth beside us, a woman said, ‘Give it here, Linda, you silly girl!’

After a while, still with her forehead down, I heard Star mumble, ‘I feel awful. I’ll never forgive myself.’