The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (5 page)

‘You said that last time, remember? When we were supposed to go up to London for the day. And before that, when we were going to go night-swimming.’ I shrugged, which was wasted, because she couldn’t see me. ‘But like I said, I don’t care.’

I remained silent. She lifted her head slightly and pushed the ice-cream bowl towards me. ‘You have it. It’s pistachio.’

I looked down at the melting green gloop. ‘Is that supposed to be an apology?’

She put her chin on one fist and looked up at me. ‘Don’t be like this, Rosie. What happened on Friday, it was un … un … oh, what’s the word?’

‘Unhelpful? Unutterably unreliable of you?’

She clicked her fingers. ‘Unprecedented.’

‘What d’you mean, unprecedented? You’ve let me down a ton of times before.’

‘Oh, don’t go all clever on me. I mean, I didn’t know it was going to happen. I had a row with Johnny, and I completely forgot about our going to the One-Two.’

‘Un-flipping-likely,’ I muttered. Johnny and Star never rowed. They were the golden couple of Castaway House. All the same, I found I was picking up Star’s spoon to scoop up pistachio ice cream, and licking it clean.

‘I did, I really did.’ She sat up further and ground out the end of her cigarette. ‘And I’ll make it up to you. Promise. We’ll absolutely go this Friday, and we’ll have a totally fab time. Okay?’

‘You must think I’m some sort of gullible fool,’ I said, finishing off the ice cream. ‘I was knocking on your door for twenty minutes.’

‘I don’t think that, honestly.’ She reached a hand across the table and stayed my fist, clamping it around the spoon. ‘Don’t be angry. I can’t bear it.’ Her eyes trembled, and I sighed.

‘It’s all right,’ I muttered, ‘I’m not angry.’

She smiled. ‘Good.’ Releasing my fingers, she snatched the spoon from me and pooled the last of the ice cream into her mouth, licking the steel clean. She clattered it into the bowl and said in a breezy tone, ‘So you’re coming upstairs? Johnny’s out. We can make beans on toast and sit on the terrace.’

I
was
a gullible fool. I wished I could hold on to my bad mood, but I felt it melting just like the ice cream. ‘Actually,’ I said, trying to retain some aloofness, ‘I’ve got commitments.’

‘Commitments?’ Star spoke as if the very concept were alien to her.

‘I met an elderly man yesterday, in the hallway. I promised to visit him this afternoon.’ I ignored the fact that not only had I absolutely no intention of visiting him, but I was sure he’d forgotten my existence the minute I’d disappeared from sight.

‘You be careful. I know what these dirty old men are like.’ She winked at me. ‘Come up afterwards. We’ll watch television tonight, and I’ll be completely wonderful.’

The sunshine of her voice warmed me, despite everything – though it was no doubt also because Star and Johnny were the only people in the building who had a television set, and I missed
The Avengers
and
Ready Steady Go!
with an almost physical pain.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but you’d better be,’ and she giggled stupidly.

Afterwards, she pulled on her squeaky P. V. C. raincoat, tossed a few coins on to the table, and we left the café. Riccardo followed me out with the tin of soup, saying he most certainly did not want it as it would bring his reputation into disrepute, and I told her the story of dragging it with me from work, embellishing it and making her hoot with laughter. I realized that, despite all my good intentions, here I was, snared back inside Star’s sticky net of friendship.

The wind notched up apace as we climbed Gaunt’s Cliff, and I bent my head into it, battling my way upwards, holding the tin in front of me like a shield. Everyone said that you got used to the climb after a while, but I was still waiting for that to happen. ‘Time to get out the winter woollies,’ said Star, linking her arm through mine, and through the stale aroma of hashish and the new plastic of
the mac I found her real smell: cinnamon and cloves and blood orange.

‘I haven’t got any,’ I said. ‘They’re all still at my mum’s house.’

‘We should go and pick them up.’ She paused. ‘If you don’t want to see her, we can go when she’s not in.’

‘Hmm.’ I didn’t know how Star had intuited that. ‘Maybe.’

She nudged me. ‘By the way, you didn’t tell me you had an admirer.’

I frowned. ‘I don’t. Unless …’ I thought about my so-called commitment to that drunk, Dockie. ‘You mean the old man? Did Johnny tell you what happened yesterday?’

She put a hand on my arm. ‘Oh, God. Johnny never tells me anything these days. No, I mean the man in the white sports car. A Jag maybe, I’m not sure.’

I laughed, although my guts were creaking with unease. ‘I don’t know anyone who owns a white sports car.’

‘Well, somebody knows you.’ She sniffed a laugh. ‘I was coming out of the house earlier on, and this chap was driving up the road and then back again, dead slow. I thought he was some sort of maniac at first, and then he stopped, leaned out and asked me if a Rosemary Churchill lived at Castaway House.’

I wriggled free from Star and wrapped my arms around my chest as we climbed. ‘What did he look like?’

‘Erm … quite dishy. Dark hair. But old. Sort of thirty-ish.’

I felt as if the breath had been whipped from my lungs. ‘Did you … did you say anything about me?’

Star shrugged. ‘Just that you were at work. He said
okay, and thank you, and tootled off. Should I … ? I mean, was that all right?’

I looked out at the tossing waves below me to our left. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said gloomily.

‘Right. I won’t mention him again, I promise.’ I sensed behind her words an aching need in Star to discover exactly what was going on, but I stared fiercely ahead at the approaching Bella Vista guest house as if that were the only interesting thing in the world, with its faded red canopy drooping lopsidedly over the doorway and the sign on the pathway that said
VACANCIES
and had never, ever been changed.

‘Disgusting,’ muttered Star, and I jumped, startled, as if she’d seen into my soul, but she was looking at a herring gull in the middle of the Bella Vista’s empty gateway, pecking at a fallen roof tile as if it were a morsel of fish. Either side of the gateway were two pillars in such a state of disrepair it was as if they were doing a dance of the veils, revealing crumbling brick innards within hints of grey plastering amid the mouldering paint on top. In fact, I thought, the entire terrace, all the way down the cliff, was falling to pieces, and it occurred to me that perhaps they ought to pull the whole lot down and start again, just as they’d done with the Majestic.

I saw a movement in the ground-floor window of the guest house. As I looked again, I realized an elderly man was standing there, watching us. I jumped, startled, but he merely nodded at me and raised his hand in greeting.

‘Look,’ I said to Star, indicating the old man. I raised my own hand and smiled at him.

‘Mmm,’ said Star. ‘Listen, about that chap with the sports car –’

‘Oh, God.’ I looked up at the sky. ‘It’s starting to rain.’

I dashed ahead of her, not having a waterproof on, and ran up the steps to the house as drops started to fall. As I was fishing my keys from my bag I heard Star land beside me, breathy and curious.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine.’ I blinked hurriedly up at her. ‘Just, you know, thinking about my commitments.’

‘Oh, the old man?’ Star nodded at the tin I was resting on one hip. ‘Hey, you could make him soup.’

I twirled the key ring on my finger until I found the battered brass one that opened the main door. ‘I suppose … yes, I suppose I could.’

Star sighed. ‘I wish I was like you. You’re such a nice person.’

I wiggled the key in the lock and let us into the house. ‘Oh, shut up.’ I pushed on the light and wiped my feet on the mat. The blackboard above the telephone had no message, thank goodness.

She traced the snail-shell end of the banister with one finger. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘You are nice. It’s one of your best qualities.’

I glanced at her to see if she was teasing me, but her eyes were hidden beneath the brim of her cap. I thought about how I’d had no intention of visiting the old man, and revised my plan. A nice person would do what she’d promised to do, after all; at the very least I should check that he was all right.

Star was still avoiding my gaze; the air seemed thick with an odd sort of silence, but I wasn’t quite sure how it had arrived. To break it, I said, ‘Oh, by the way, you don’t
know who lives in the ground-floor flat, do you? Because whoever it is has the most awful whistle.’

‘Um … no, I don’t.’ She climbed one stair. ‘I meant what I said, you know.’

I looked up at her. ‘About what?’

‘This Friday. You’ll love the One-Two. It’s completely gear. For this old town, anyway.’

‘You told me,’ I said. ‘It’s in a basement just by the seafront, and the walls are painted as if you’re underwater, and the man who owns it is some ancient cat called George Basin.’

‘That’s it.’ She looked at me now, from two steps up, and smiled. Her long fingers drummed the banister. I reached up, and as her fingers fluttered in my palm I felt an answering sensation in my belly.

‘I’ll be up shortly,’ I said, and she grinned at me, before running up to the half-landing and disappearing at the corner, and I put the idea that I was a total idiot to a very small place at the back of my mind.

I peered down the dark hallway that led to the back of the building. I’d yet to go down to the basement; all the rooms there were singles, mostly occupied by people whom life had passed by, and consequently the social niceties too. I sometimes saw them in the hall, hurrying towards the back stairs with a half loaf of bread and a mad scowl on their faces.

Well, Star thought I was a nice person, and I would live up to that. I marched along the passageway and down the stairs, where the smell of old cabbage wafted up like the stench of despair. I climbed down into a long narrow hallway that continued behind me towards a chilly-looking bathroom with a mousetrap just over the threshold, and
ahead of me all the way beneath the house towards the basement door.

To my right was another passageway, lit by one bare bulb attached to a looping wire pinned to the false ceiling. Flat Four, Johnny had said yesterday. It was the last door at the end on the right, with the number smeared on in white paint. Check he was still alive, I thought, make soup, leave. I took a breath and rapped with my knuckles on the bare wood.

There was no answer. I waited, and then knocked again. The timer light turned off, and I patted the walls between the door frames until I found the switch. ‘Hello?’ I called through the closed door. ‘It’s … er … it’s Rosie. From yesterday?’

For a short while I thought my call might be met by yet more silence, but then I heard faint creaks from inside the room and a hacking cough that started and never seemed to end. Finally the doorknob turned, and a yellow eye beneath a wild grey eyebrow looked out. ‘Is it the rent?’ barked a cracked old voice.

‘No.’ I smiled at the yellow eye. ‘It’s me. Rosie.’

The door opened a shade further, revealing another eye and Dockie’s red-veined nose. ‘Were you sent by Mrs O’Shea?’

‘Mrs … O’Shea?’

There was a noise from inside the room, a sort of strangled gargle. I heard a muffled oath, and then the door was flung open to its full extent, sending forth a reek of body odour and stale alcohol, and Dockie roared, ‘Where the hell has my room gone?’

He was still wearing the stained overcoat he had worn
yesterday. Perhaps this was where the cabbage smell was coming from. He staggered out into the corridor and pointed a shaking finger towards the darkened space behind. ‘My room has gone missing.’ He clutched the wilds of his hair. ‘Mrs O’Shea’s. Tell me I am at Mrs O’Shea’s. Ranelagh Road. Rathmines. Dublin. Ireland.’

I shook my head. ‘None of the above, I’m afraid. You’re in England.’

Dockie took in a deep, raggedy breath. His hand gripped the door frame. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said, with a seashore of regret in his voice. ‘What on earth have I done?’

He rested his forehead against the frame. I raised the tin and he blinked at it, trying to focus. ‘I’ve brought soup.’

He grunted, and I took that to be an invitation. I entered the dark, foul-smelling room and said, with my breath held, ‘I’m just going to open the window, if that’s all right.’

He grunted again, and I put the tin down and walked to the lighter-coloured oblong at the end of the room. There were some nylon curtains covering the window; I yanked them apart, revealing a basement yard with nothing much in it but some corrugated iron sheets stacked against the far wall, rusting quietly, and an overgrown fern that was nodding under the weight of the rain.

I tugged at the sash window and pushed it up as far as it would go. A gust blew drizzle on to my face and rattled the curtains together on their flimsy runner. I pulled them apart once more, and turned back towards Dockie’s new home.

I was standing in a small kitchenette, divided from the rest of the room by a half-partition. The kitchenette
contained two gas rings, a sink, a few sagging cupboards and a small pull-down table, which was where I’d put the tin. Behind the half-partition was a single bed made up with a rough-looking blanket and one pillow, with planks for shelving overhead. Dockie remained in the doorway.

‘You don’t remember meeting me yesterday, I suppose,’ I said.

He shook his head and ran his calloused hand across his eyes. ‘I feel a little … my dear, could you tell me where I may locate the facilities of this establishment?’

‘It’s at the end of the hall,’ I said. ‘On the left.’

Dockie lurched into the hallway, then swung suddenly back towards me. ‘I beg your pardon. Where did you say I was?’

‘Helmstone,’ I said. ‘South of England.’

He squinted towards the end of the passageway. ‘Helmstone,’ he murmured. ‘Helmstone.’

‘Castaway House,’ I said. ‘That’s the name of this place.’

He staggered away along the hall. I turned back to the window and gulped in lungfuls of damp air. I thought of how I could recount this tale of the confused old man to Star, already exaggerating the humour to make her giggle.