Chapter Eleven

He was on his own the following day, the day after that, and the day after that. And the day after that.

He waited for the crunching of Wellington boots in the yard. He listened for the voice calling from the foot of the stairs. No one came. He cursed himself for a vile-tempered fool. He realised, after years of solitude, how much he missed the beachcomber’s visits.

The house was alive with the noises it had always had: the whir­ring of a hundred starlings which roosted in the living room; the shuffle and flop of the dogs; the roar of the wind and the move­ment of dark, deep water; the slither of rats in the chimney, the flitter of bats in the roof, the scuttle of toads and the snoring of hedgehogs in the bathroom woodpile . . . but for Harry, a cold and lonely silence filled the long, long days.

Sometimes he switched on the radio, but he only half listened, because his ear was tuned to the sound of a splashing footstep across his fields, the welcoming bark of the dogs, a shout from the hallway. So he switched the radio off, tired of the news, bored by the voices.

Once, he took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs and went splashing through the scummy pools downstairs, feeling blindly for the bass and the bream which were stranded there. But it was no fun on his own. It was silly. He got thoroughly chilled and very angry as he stampeded the fish out of the hallway, past the piano in the front door and into the yard, where the gulls and the rats could have them.

Moping in the empty house, he would wade to the mantelpiece in the living room and stare at the photograph of Helen. He would press his eyes close to it and whisper her name: no, not his wife’s name, but ‘Christine, Christine, Christine’, hissing the word over and over again. Then he would pick up the ammonite and test the familiar weight of it in his hand, the smooth, cold stone that the beachcomber’s warm, strong hands had held.

Sometimes he went shooting on the foreshore, but he banged and banged and often missed; even when he hit, Gog and Magog were uselessly apathetic. They yawned and sniffed instead of lum­ber­ing after the wounded bird. Indoors, they fidgeted on the landing or wriggled by the fire, unable to settle, because they were listening too, as Harry was listening, pricking their ears in case they might hear approaching footsteps.

In this way, the house was wrung to a higher state of tension. Harry and the dogs held their breath for the spark of laughter and life they craved.

But it didn’t come. If, for a short time, the house had seemed like a great ship riding a steel-grey ocean, now the ship was a hulk whose crew drifted hopelessly on a dead calm.

As for Christy, he’d staggered across the fields with blood and tears streaming from his face. Reaching the road, he’d washed himself in a rain-filled gutter before walking back to the home. Shocked but unhurt, he’d made an excuse to Mrs Bottomley about his wet and muddy state and why he was late for roll call, and he’d resolved never to go back to Ynys Elyrch. Never.

For the next few days he attended his lessons, went in and out of school on the bus, settled to the ordered routine of the orphanage.

But he thought about Mr Clewe. He thought about Gog and Magog. He thought of the dilapidated house with the piano wedged in the front door, where the sea rolled through the down­stairs rooms and left tidal pools, banks of shingle, barnacled boulders, mattresses of weed and all kinds of leaping, flapping, silvery fish.

At night, lying awake in his dormitory bed, he remembered the conger eel they’d found coiled in the living room, the struggle to net it and drag it to the shore; he remembered the sea monster’s skeleton, the biggest bones he’d ever seen in all his life; the bang of the gun that made his ears ring, the stink of smoke that made his nostrils sting, the plummeting duck that splashed in the flooded fields . . .

So much to remember! Such strange and secret things! The joyous dance on the landing, the smell of the man’s embrace and the triumphant whooping, once the windsurfer had been knocked into the water with a well-aimed potato! The gleam of the hook where the hand should have been! The fireside feasts! The jellyfish and dogfish and thornback rays, the crabs and urchins and squids, all the washed-up treasures that he and the man had found! The silver Jag, or whatever it was, lined with walnut and leather and used as a sort of tool shed!

With a shudder of fear as he lay in the softly snoring, moonlit dormitory, he remembered a thing he thought he’d seen in the cellar, floating in the black water . . .

He remembered the tiny tinkling noise through the keyhole of the locked room . . .

He brooded on the extraordinary way in which Mr Clewe had lost his temper. What was the man hiding, to react with such violence? What had he been shouting from the landing? Christy, confused by the bellowing and barking and the fall downstairs, had caught a few words, that was all. What sort of nonsense was it? What was floating in the cellar? What was the man hiding upstairs? What was the big secret?

Christy pondered for a week. Fourteen years old, he’d been institutionalised since he was three. His curiosity for the eccentric, the bizzarre and, above all, the forbidden, was highly developed. The more he thought about the house on the seashore and the man who lived in it, the more he was intrigued. Until he realised that, however he’d been abused and terrorised on his last visit, he must go back. He had to. How could he not go back?

Of course he was frightened. He would have to appease Mr Clewe. The day he determined to visit again, he sneaked into Mrs Bottomley’s bedroom and took something, as he’d done on previous occasions: this time, a tiny thing that the matron would never miss. He went to her dressing table, unscrewed and upended a bottle of perfume and dabbed the stuff behind his ears.

So he arrived at the house, trembling with nervousness. He paused in the hallway to catch his breath. He combed his long, blond, silken hair and shook it loose around his ears.

Then he knocked on the piano and called out, ‘It’s me, Mr Clewe! It’s me! Christine!’ before he went up the stairs, giggling softly to himself.