The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (13 page)

The doorbell rang again. I took the book with me as I opened the kitchen door and stepped out on to the landing. From here, I could see nothing but the central stairwell disappearing to the ground floor, but I heard footsteps cross the tiled hallway and the crunch of the door being opened. Distantly, Star’s voice spoke.

I went as quietly as I could into the bedroom. The place smelled musty from the night-time breath of three pairs of lungs, still lingering and mingling with the damp bubbling through the walls. I shut the door behind me and tiptoed towards the nearest window, from where, beyond the balcony, I could see the whole of the street.

Parked in front of the house was a long-nosed white car with beady-eyed headlamps. I sat heavily on Val’s bed, squashing her soft toys. It all depended on Star, I supposed, and how much she understood that I definitely, most certainly, was not at home to callers, especially ones in white sports cars. I wondered if I could just refuse to answer the door if he knocked, and then I thought that he was only bound to come back.

Yet the idea of talking to him stuck in my throat.
Don’t want to
, I thought, like a child. The front door crunched shut again, and I stood up, watching the street, hoping I’d see him appear. I held my breath.

Yes. There he was, with his slick hair, twirling keys in his hand. I could even hear the faint jingle of them from up here. At the gateway to the house he stopped and turned, and I stepped backwards away from the window and from view. I listened for the sound of the car door opening and closing, and then the roar as the engine started. I watched it dart down the hill, and breathed out again.

As I stood there in the silence of the room I heard the whistling once more.

My thoughts skidded to a halt, and I strained my ears to listen.

Yes. It was the same grating, off-key whistle as before.
It travelled through my bones from somewhere else in the house, making me shiver.

Holes in the walls, Star had said. Perhaps she was right and it was only the wind making the noise, because it certainly wasn’t coming from the ground-floor flat any more. If anything, it was coming from just outside the door, and it was a lonely, pitiful sound, similar in tone to the desperate crying I’d heard yesterday.

I walked to the door and opened it, one ear cocked for the direction it was coming from. Yet now I was in the hallway, the sound was fainter. I shook my head and was about to go back inside the flat when I noticed the package just outside the door.

It was a thick paper bag with string handles, and as I picked it up I saw the legend on the side:
Lady Lucinda Boutique
.

There was a click as a door below me closed, and I thought of Star darting up the stairs to leave it here, gathering my secrets like desiccating leaves. I took the bag inside the flat and put it on my bed, my stomach knotting as I removed the box inside, opened the lid and saw, nestling among sheets of tissue paper, a pair of white, thick-buckled sandals in a size three.

There was a label attached to the string handle. I turned it towards me and read:
Rosie – happy belated birthday. Reckon you’ll look a proper little sexpot in these! Harry xxx

I collapsed backwards on to my bed, my head resting against the chilly windowpane, my feet trailing to the floor.

Tomorrow, I thought. I would deal with everything tomorrow. I brushed my right hand across the bed cover,
and it collided with
Northanger Abbey
. I drew it towards me and opened it to the back flyleaf, holding it above my head and reading again the various versions of a name, feeling oddly soothed by the repetitions:
Lizzie Carver
,
Mrs Robert Carver
,
Mrs Elizabeth Carver
,
E. F. C
.

I could still hear the whistling, and it grated on my teeth. I elbowed the box of shoes on to the floor, where it fell with a satisfying clatter.
Nothing matters
, I thought to myself, concentrating on the names in the book and thinking of Robert Carver and a girl who imagined herself married to him, remembering a time when I’d done the same thing with another name, scribbled in pencil in the margins of my diary, my cheeks burning now with the shame of it:
Mrs Harold Bright
,
Mrs Rose Bright
,
R. C. 4 H. B
., over and over and then rubbed out so fiercely I’d scored a hole in the page, and gone to bed, dreaming of things I had no right to be dreaming about at all.

The weeks passed, and as June blended into the deeper warmth of July, Helmstone revealed itself to me in slow bursts of colour, from the weather-gnarled fishermen gutting sprats on three-legged stools outside their arches, to the young shop girls queuing excitedly outside the enormous dance halls that flung fast jazz from their temple-like doors. As summer blossomed, the population of the town swelled accordingly, packing out the guest houses that lined the front and thickening the promenade and beach. All movement slowed, so that one ended up ambling in a shoal of humanity, buffeted by the tides of holidaymakers who joined and left the swarm, laden with picnics, parasols and the constant anxiety of the Englishman away from home.

I occupied myself in helping Alec with his nascent Hall of Fame, which appeared to be coming on much more slowly than I’d imagined, sketching odd views as they occurred to me, and avoiding Mrs Bray. This last was not so difficult, as since that first hideous skirmish in the dining room she had absented herself for every meal except breakfast, and was indeed out of the house most of every day. I remarked to Alec that it was almost as if she had a job, to which he roared with laughter and said he’d believe a hundred unlikely things before that.

I had also been seeing a great deal of Lizzie Feathers and, over the weeks, she had overcome her nervousness. In fact, she was fairly forthright at times with her opinions. She was also, naturally, quite undeserving of the lascivious thoughts I entertained about her while sitting side by side in the cinema. I knew I was wrong to have these thoughts; and yet, as they came unbidden, I let them run their course.

One blue-skied, mid-July afternoon, we went to a showing of
Faint Hearts over the Amazon
, and as Lizzie watched the screen, rapt in the action, her hands clutched in her lap, I watched her – or rather, the shape of her breasts beneath her blouse. Her bosom was large, and I had spent many happy hours at night imagining it unsheathed. My fantasies were informed by the French photographs passed around under the desks at school, and so doubtless were not particularly representative of the average female form, but they were all I had to go on.

Afterwards, standing on the steps of the Regal Picturehouse, I had the odd, out-of-kilter sensation that often comes from sitting in a darkened room for several hours and then emerging, squinting, into bright sunshine. Lizzie was still deep in the world of the film. ‘Wasn’t he just the most handsome thing you’ve ever seen?’ she said in a hushed voice as we climbed down the steps, referring, I imagined, to the jumped-up lead actor and, I also imagined, not requiring a reply from me. I had no idea what the film had been about as I had been looking at Lizzie during the entire picture, but this was never really a hindrance where Lizzie was concerned.

We repaired to a tea room in the old quarter of the
town, a maze of alleyways known locally as the Snooks, packed with tiny shops where antiquarian booksellers plied their trade, shoulder to shoulder with jewellers and chocolatiers. I bought Lizzie a slice of cream cake and we sat at the counter in the window, watching the day-trippers pass by.

‘You’re still coming to Father’s dinner party next week, I hope?’ She sectioned off a piece of cake with a glinting fork and folded it between her lips.

‘I daren’t miss it,’ I said. ‘Whenever I’ve met him it’s all he’s spoken about.’

She shook her head and pulled a wry, adult sort of expression that I supposed she was trying out. ‘He’s driving Mother round the twist. He’s most worried that Mr Bray won’t come. I suppose he thinks he’s the cherry on the top.’

I smiled, although I could understand Feathers’ point of view. Alec would lend a certain glamour to what would otherwise no doubt be a terribly dull evening. Merely the fact that he was from London seemed to infuse him with a raffish, debonair quality in the eyes of the Helmstonites who knew him.

‘I’m sure Alec will be there,’ I said, although I could quite equally imagine him changing his mind at the last minute.

‘Father wants to smooth over rough ground with him, you see.’ Lizzie’s eyes narrowed, and she said in quite a different tone, ‘I wish that girl wouldn’t keep looking at you.’

‘What girl?’ I turned, suddenly intrigued; at the other end of the counter were two overly thin females drinking
tea and talking in loud, affected voices. However, whichever girl it was to whom Lizzie was referring, they both appeared to be interested only in themselves. I shook my head and turned back. ‘Rough ground, you said?’

A frown clouded Lizzie’s brow. ‘She obviously thinks she can have any man she wants, and never mind if he’s with someone else already. They’re probably laughing right now about how grossly overweight I am.’

We had had similar conversations like this previously, each time plunging me into a state of confusion, although I had by now developed a strategy for such an occurrence. I privately thought Lizzie utterly deluded, but I had learned that to suggest such a thing was to invite hours of conversation on the matter. ‘Firstly, you’re not fat,’ I said, ‘and secondly, I don’t find those sorts of girls attractive in the slightest, as well you know.’

The frown lifted slightly. ‘But they’re so
thin
. And, you know, completely fashionable.’

I glanced at them again. ‘They look like scrawny chickens to me,’ I said, which in all honesty I did not exactly think, but it cheered Lizzie up no end and so I was able to return to the subject of Alec and the rough ground to be smoothed over.

‘Well, according to Father, he was quite a tearaway when he was younger,’ said Lizzie, allowing a smile to creep on to her lips, especially once the girls had left without a backward glance and she was able to relax.

‘He was,’ I said. ‘Spoiled to death by my aunt, no doubt. I’m sure he terrorized the town when he was here for the summer vacs. It’s all right; he had the same reputation in our family too.’

Lizzie held out her smeary, licked fork to me, a question on her face, but I shook my head.

‘Father was always going next door to complain about him, and then raging to us that the boy was “completely undisciplined”.’ She puffed out her bosom in a passable mimicry of her father. ‘Although I don’t suppose your cousin has particularly fond memories of him.’

I shrugged. ‘Alec forgives everybody. I’m quite sure he deserved any dressing-down he got, and I’m sure he knows that too.’

‘Well, Father wants to mend any broken bridges. Especially as …’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘As we’re neighbours, I suppose.’

I thought privately that if Alec had not inherited Castaway and a sizeable amount of money from his mother then Dr Feathers might have left those bridges broken. Then again, maybe I was being prejudiced against the bumptious fool.

Afterwards, I walked Lizzie along the seafront to show her the Hall of Fame. She had been begging me for weeks to give her a tour, but Alec had made me promise to wait until it was at least in some sort of presentable condition.

The door was open, and the sound of hammering came from inside.

‘Hello?’ I called, sticking my head in, and the carpenter emerged, scratching his chin.

I had met him before, and he smiled easily enough and said, ‘You’re Mr Bray’s mate, ain’tcha?’

‘I’m his cousin,’ I said. ‘And his artistic advisor.’

That sounded idiotic now, but the carpenter simply
stood back and said, ‘You taking the young lady to have a look round?’

‘If that’s all right.’ I stepped over the raised door frame and held out my hand to Lizzie to follow.

The carpenter pulled his tobacco tin from his top pocket. ‘You take your time.’ He winked at me in an extremely seedy manner.

I led Lizzie into the entrance way of the Hall of Fame, which now boasted a fresh coat of paint and the beginnings of a turnstile. ‘Oh, how exciting,’ she said. ‘I say, who’s that?’

She pushed through the turnstile and inspected the royal family, peering up the King’s nose as if a beetle had got stuck there. She turned uncertainly to me. ‘Lenin?’

‘Not quite.’ I adjusted his glued-on beard. ‘Let me take you round the corner.’

The second half of the Hall of Fame was illuminated by a frosted window at the end of the arch. Blurred shapes moved across the hazy blue. The electric light was still a little temperamental, so I kept the room dim and showed Lizzie the tableau of Rudolph Valentino with Gloria Swanson.

‘How darling,’ she said. ‘But they weren’t in
The Sheik
together. It was
Beyond the Rocks
.’

‘Well, don’t tell Alec,’ I said. ‘He thinks I’m a genius because I’m the one who arranged them.’

‘You are a genius,’ she said stoutly, and loyally inspected the rest of the exhibits. ‘And I’m sure you’re going to make lots of money.’

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Alec and his business partner will.
They’re the ones who’ve invested in it; at least, Alec has. His inheritance, I believe.’

Lizzie turned on her heel. ‘I suppose he knows what he’s doing.’

‘Ye-es,’ I said doubtfully. ‘I’m sure he does.’

‘Of course, it should be open now, for the summer.’ She rearranged Valentino’s headscarf. ‘Still, don’t ask me. I’m utterly clueless.’

I approached her softly. For weeks now, I had been wondering how I could be in a room with Lizzie, alone, and now I was I did not quite know what I should do. ‘Lizzie …’ I began, unsure of what to say next.

She turned. ‘Oh!’ she said, not realizing I was so close behind her. Then there was an adjustment in her features. She blinked, half-smiled, and said, ‘Yes?’

I took her hand. She wanted me to kiss her; I felt the urge in her rise up through me like a heat, taking me by surprise. I swallowed, and she inched towards me, and I bent my head to hers, miscalculated my descent and kissed the side of her nose.

She snorted a giggle. I put my hands around her waist and she relaxed into them. ‘Those girls
were
awful, weren’t they?’ she murmured.

‘Hmm?’ I had no idea what she was talking about. I bent my head again, and her lips pressed against mine. They were soft and pleasant-feeling. This was going better than I’d hoped.

I wasn’t sure how long one should continue kissing for, and her nose was nudging the side of my cheek, and I felt a little too hot, and awkward with my hands, but perhaps
any second now I’d begin to get the hang of this, and then her tongue pushed against my lips, parting them slightly, and with a gasp she spun away from me and said, scarlet-faced, ‘I’m so sorry,’ whirled down the arch, around the corner, and was gone from view.

I ran after her, emerging through the archway on to the beach. The carpenter, leaning against the wall smoking his cigarette, turned to me, pushed his hat back up his head and said, ‘You went too far there, mate.’ He cackled unpleasantly.

I ignored him, scanning the beach for her. However, she had sprinted faster than an Olympic runner and was nowhere to be seen. I walked up the steps to the promenade to get a better view, but saw only a galaxy of children swirling like tiny stars towards the Punch and Judy man just starting to set up his red-and-white stall on the edge of the sand.

I touched my mouth, the memory of Lizzie’s tongue still imprinted between my lips. I began walking, ostensibly looking for her but in reality attempting to allow my sensations to settle. I headed towards Gaunt’s Cliff and then changed my mind, resting against a wall and letting the day-trippers and holidaymakers shift past me in waves of excitement, gabbling and arguing and squealing.

Somebody passed me who was not gabbling or arguing or squealing. I was struck by her, but at first I was not sure why. She was wearing a plain brown dress and an old shawl, and was carrying a straw basket. Her hat was dull and shabby. It was only when she turned her head to cross the road and I saw her unmade-up face tilt against the sun that I realized it was Mrs Bray, and that was why I had
noticed her – not because she stood out, but precisely because she did not.

I stared. I had never seen her so … well, so ordinary-looking. As I watched her go in her inconspicuous get-up, I realized that she was heading to wherever she usually headed off to, and, the memory of Lizzie’s tongue in my mouth still inside me, I knew with an absolute certainty that, right now, Mrs Bray was heading for an assignation with the man who was making my cousin a cuckold.

Rage boiled my head. I darted after her across the busy street. I would follow her, and then Alec would have proof, should he need it, should he wish to divorce himself from her. At the very least he should know, I thought, what a wanton slut he had married, and as I followed her past the chemist’s advertising its ‘Cure for Male Baldness’ on King Street and then right along Wellington, I did not even stop to wonder why the thought of her infidelity enraged me so, only that it did.

She stopped suddenly, staring inside the window of Dacre’s Meat Shop (‘Only English Meat Sold Here’). I halted to match, and stepped inside the doorway of the Lady Lucinda Boutique. She was looking up at a man, possibly Mr Dacre himself, climb a stepladder with a leg of ham and hook it on to the rail, next to all the others that formed the window display. She called up to him and he brushed his hands on his starched white apron as he climbed down. She disappeared inside the shop and I knew I had her.