The Taint and Other Novellas (21 page)

At the door, Doreen lifted her chin. “I don’t recall saying anything like that. Nothing as rude as that, anyway.”

“Oh, you know what I mean!” John said testily, trailing her outside, and colliding with her where she’d paused on the front doorstep. Then—in unison but almost as an afterthought—they stuck their heads back inside to thank Jamieson for his hospitality.

“Not at all,” their host answered. “And I’ll be dropping in on you soon, to have a look at those carvings.”

“Please do,” John told him.

And Doreen added, “Evenings or weekends, you’ll be welcome. We’re so glad that you’ve settled in here, Doctor.”

“Oh, call me James, for goodness sake!” Jamieson waved them goodbye, closed the door, turned to Jilly and raised an enquiring, bushy grey eyebrow.

She shrugged. “A bit pompous maybe, but they’re neighbours. And it does get lonely out here.”

They went to the bay window in the end wall and watched the Tremains drive off down the road to their home less than a mile away. Jilly lived half a mile beyond that, and the tiny village—a huddle of old fishermen’s houses, really—stood some four or five hundred yards farther yet, just out of sight behind the rising, rocky promontory called South Point. On the far side of the village, a twin promontory, North Point, formed a bay, with the harbour lying sheltered in the bight.

For a moment more Jamieson watched the Tremains’s car speed into the distance, then turned a glance of covert admiration on Jilly. She noticed it, however, cocked her head on one side and said, “Oh? Is there something…?”

Caught out and feeling just a little uncomfortable now, the old man said, “My dear, I hope you won’t mind me saying so, but you’re a very attractive woman. And even though I’m a comparative stranger here, a newcomer, I can’t say I’ve come across too many eligible bachelors in the village.”

Now Jilly frowned. Her lips began to frame a question—or perhaps a sharp retort, an angry outburst—but he beat her to it.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” He held up his hands. “It’s none of my business, I know. And I keep forgetting that your husband…that he—”

“—Died less than eighteen months ago, yes,” Jilly said.

The old man sighed. “My bedside manner hasn’t improved any with age,” he said. “I retired here for what I thought would be solitude—an absence of everything that’s gone before—only to find that I can’t seem to leave my practice behind me! To my patients I was a healer, a father confessor, a friend, a champion. I didn’t realize it would be so hard not to continue being those things.”

She shook her pretty head, smiled wanly and said, “James, I don’t mind your compliments, your concern, or your curiosity. I find it refreshing that there are still people who…who care about anyone. Or anything for that matter!”

“But you frowned.”

“Not at what you said,” she answered, “but the way you said it. Your accent, really.”

“My accent?”

“Very similar to my husband’s. He was an American, too, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that. And he had a similar accent? A New England accent, you say?” Suddenly there was a new, a different note of concern in Jamieson’s voice, unlike the fatherly interest he’d taken in Jilly earlier. “And may I ask where he hailed from, your husband? His home town?”

“George was from Massachusetts, a town on or near the coast—pretty much like this place, I suppose—called, er, Ipswich? Or maybe Arkham or Innsmouth. He would talk about all three, so I can’t be certain. And I admit to being a dunce where American geography is concerned. But I’m sure I have his birth certificate somewhere in the house, if you’re that interested?”

Sitting down, the old man bade Jilly do the same. “Interested?” he said. “Well, perhaps not. Let sleeping dogs lie, eh?”

“Sleeping dogs?” Now she was frowning again.

And he sighed before answering. “Well, I did practice for a few months—
just
a few months—in Innsmouth. A very strange place, Jilly, even for this day and age. But no, you don’t want to know about that.”

“But now you’ve got
me
interested,” she said. “I mean, what was so strange about the place?”

“Well, if you must know, it was mainly the people—degenerate, inbred, often retarded—in fact much like young Geoff. I have bumped into him, yes, and there’s that about the boy…there’s a certain look to him…” But there the old man paused, probably because he’d seen how Jilly’s hands fluttered, trembling on the arms of her chair. Seeing where he was looking, she put her hands in her lap, clasping them until her fingers went white. It was obvious that something he had said had disturbed her considerably. And so:

“Let’s change the subject,” he said, sitting up straighter. “And let me apologise again for being so personal. But a woman like you—still young and attractive, in a place like this—surely you should be looking to the future now, realizing that it’s time to go, time to get out of here. Because while you’re here there are always going to be memories. But there’s an old saying that goes ‘out of sight—’”

“‘—Out of mind?’” She finished it for him.

“Something like that.” He nodded. “A chance to start again, in a place, some town or city, that
does
have its fair share of eligible bachelors…” And then he smiled, however wryly. “But there I go, being personal again!”

Jilly didn’t return his smile but told him, “I do intend to get away, I have intended it, but there are several things that stop me. For one, it’s such a short time since George…well, since he…”

“I understand.” Jamieson nodded. “You haven’t yet found the time or the energy to get around to it.”

“And two, it’s not going to be easy to sell up—not for a decent price, anyway. I mean, look how cheaply you were able to secure this place.”

Again the old man nodded. “When people die or move away, no one moves in, right? Well, except for old cheapskates like me.”

“And all perfectly understandable,” said Jilly. “There’s no school in the village, and no work; the fishing has been unproductive for years now, though of late it has seemed to pick up just a little. As for amenities: the nearest supermarket is in St. Austell! And when the weather gets bad the old road out of the village is like a death trap; it’s always getting potholed or washed out. So there’s no real reason why anyone would want to come here. A few holidaymakers, maybe, in the summer season, and the very rare occasion when someone like you might want to retire here. But apart from that…”

“Yes?” He prompted her, slyly. “But apart from that? Jilly, almost everything you’ve said seems to me contradictory. You’ve given some very excellent reasons why you
shouldn’t
stay, and a few pretty bad ones why you
should
. Or haven’t I heard them all yet?”

She shrank down into herself a little, and Jamieson saw her hands go back to the arms of her chair, fluttering there like a pair of nervous birds…

• • •

“It’s my daughter,” she said after a while. “It’s Anne. I think we’ll have to stay here a little longer, if only for her sake.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. She’s…she’s doing piano with Miss Harding in the village, and twice a week she studies languages at night school in St. Austell. She loves it; she’s quite a little interpreter, you know, and I feel I have to let her continue.”

“Languages, you say?” The old man’s eyebrows went up. “Well, she’ll find plenty of work as an interpreter—or as a teacher, for that matter.”

“Yes, I think so, too!” said Jilly, more energetically now. “It’s her future, and she has a very real talent. Why, she even reads sign!”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sign language, as used by the deaf and dumb.”

“Oh, yes, of course. But no, er, higher education?”

“She had the grades,” said Jilly, protectively. “She would have no trouble getting into university. But what some desire, others put aside. And to be totally honest…well, she’s not the communal type. She wouldn’t be happy away from home.”

Again Jamieson’s nod of understanding. “A bit of a loner,” he said.

“She’s a young girl,” Jilly quickly replied, “and so was I, once upon a time. And I know that we all go through our phases. She’s unsettled enough—I mean, what with her father’s death and all—so any move will just have to wait. And that’s that.”

Now, having firmly indicated that she no longer desired to talk about her daughter, it was Jilly’s turn to change the subject. And in doing so she returned to a previous topic.

“You know,” she said, after a moment, “despite that you’ll probably think it’s a morbid sort of fascination, I can’t help being interested in what you were saying about Innsmouth—the way its denizens were, well, strange.”

Denizens,
Jamieson repeated her, but silently, to himself.
Yes, I suppose you could describe them that way.

He might have answered her. But a moment earlier, as Jilly had spoken the last few words, so the verandah door had glided open to admit Anne. There she stood framed against the evening, her hair blowing in the unrelenting sea breeze, her huge green eyes gazing enquiringly into the room. But her face was oh-so-pale, and her gaze cold and unsmiling. Maybe she’d been out in the wind too long and the chill had finally got to her.

Sliding the door shut behind her, and going to the fire to warm herself she said, “What was that you were saying, Mother? Something about strange denizens?”

But Jilly shrugged it off. “Mr Jamieson and I were engaged in a private conversation, dear, and you shouldn’t be so nosy.”

That was that; Anne’s return had called a halt to any more talk. But when Jamieson drew the verandah curtains he couldn’t help noticing that hulking, shambling, head-down figure silhouetted against the sand dunes; the shape of Geoff, casting long ugly shadows as he headed back toward the village.

Following which it was time to drive Anne and Jilly home…

• • •

There was a week of bad weather. James Jamieson would sit in a chair by his sliding patio window and gaze out across the decking of the verandah, across the dunes and beach, at the roaring, rearing ocean. But no matter the driving rain and pounding surf, the roiling sky split by flashes of lightning and shuddering to drum rolls of thunder, sooner or later there would be a hulking figure on the sands: “Young Geoff,” as Jilly White had seen fit to call him, the “unfortunate” youth from the village.

Sometimes the boy—or young man, whatever—would be seen shambling along the tidemark; at others he’d walk too close to the turbulent water, and end up sloshing through the foam when waves cast their spume across his route. Jamieson made a point of watching him through his expensive high-resolution binoculars, and now and then he would bring Geoff’s face into sharper focus.

The sloping forehead and almost bald head; the wide, fleshy mouth, bulging eyes and scaly bump of a chin, with the bristles of a stubby beard poking through; the youth’s skin—its roughness in general, with those odd folds or wattles—especially the loose flaps between his ears and his collar…

One afternoon toward the end of the week, when the weather was calmer, Jamieson also spied John Tremain on the beach. The link road must have washed out again, relieving the headmaster of his duties for a day or so and allowing him time to indulge his hobby. And sure enough as he walked the tidemark, he would stoop now and then to examine this or that piece of old driftwood. But at the same time “the village idiot” was also on the beach, and their paths crossed. Jamieson watched it all unfold in the cross hairs of his binoculars:

Tremain, crouching over a dark patch of seaweed, and Geoff coming over the dunes on a collision course. Then the meeting; the headmaster seeing the youth and jerking upright, lurching backward from the advancing figure and apparently threatening him with the knobby end of a stripped branch! The other coming to an awkward halt, and standing there with his arms and hands flapping uselessly, his flabby mouth opening and closing as if in silent protest.

But was it revulsion, hatred, or stark terror on Tremain’s part? Or simply shock? Jamieson couldn’t make up his mind. But whichever, it appeared that Tremain’s dislike of “bolshy” teenagers went twice for those who weren’t so much bolshy as, well, unfortunate.

That, however, was all there was to it; hardly a confrontation as such, and over and done with as quickly as that. Then Tremain scuttling for home, and Geoff standing there, watching him go. The end. But at least it had served to remind Jamieson of his promise to go and see John’s driftwood carvings—which was one reason at least why he should pay a return visit…

• • •

At the weekend Jamieson called the Tremains on the telephone to check that the invitation was still open, and on Sunday evening he drove the solitary mile to his neighbour’s place, parking by the side of the road. Since he, the Whites and the Tremains had the only properties on this stretch of potholed road, it wasn’t likely that he’d be causing any traffic problems.

“Saw you on the beach the other day,” he told John when he was seated and had a drink in his hand. “Beachcombing, hey?”

The other nodded. “It seems our talking about it must have sparked me off again. I found one or two rather nice pieces.”

“You certainly have an eye for it,” the old man commented, his flattery very deliberate. “Why, I can see you have several ‘nice pieces’—expertly finished pieces, that is—right here. But if you’ll forgive my saying so, it seems to me these aren’t so much carvings as wind-, sea-, and sand-sculptures really, which you have somehow managed to revitalize with sandpaper and varnish, imagination and infinite skill. So much so that you’ve returned them to a new, dramatic life of their own!”

“Really?” Tremain was taken aback; he didn’t see Jamieson’s flattery for what it really was, as a means to an end, a way to ingratiate himself into the Tremains’s confidence. For Jamieson found himself in such a close-knit microcosm of isolated community society that he felt sure the headmaster and his wife would have knowledge of almost everything that had gone on here; they would have the answers to questions he couldn’t possibly put to Jilly, not in her condition.