1989

 

No Sharks in the Med

Brian Lumley

IN 1989, PUBLISHER Nick Robinson decided to create a companion volume to Gardner Dozois’ excellent The Year’s Best Science Fiction series (retitled Best New SF for the UK market).

So when he asked me if I would be interested in editing an annual “Year’s Best” horror anthology, containing a selection of stories chosen from those initially published in the preceding year, I immediately agreed. However, I had a couple of stipulations.

The first was that I ask Ramsey Campbell – in my opinion one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable authors in the horror field – to co-edit the book with me. The second was that I check first that it was okay with my old friend Karl Edward Wagner, who was currently editing The Year’s Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. (Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling had started The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror for St Martin’s Press a couple of years previously, but I did not consider that direct competition as half the book was made up of fantasy stories.) Karl graciously gave us his blessing (which is why the first volume was dedicated to him), and Ramsey and I started reading everything we could get our hands on.

That first volume contained twenty stories, and marked the only time we used tales by Robert Westall and Richard Laymon, who both passed away far too early. Our Introduction, which was an overview of horror in 1989, covered just seven pages, and Kim Newman and I carried our Necrology column over from the defunct film magazine Shock Xpress. It ran one page longer than the Introduction.

In our summation, Ramsey and I expressed concern that the 1980s horror boom could not be sustained and, to survive, the genre would have to move out of the mid-list category. In retrospect, we were depressingly prescient.

For the cover, the publisher chose Les Edwards’ iconic painting of “The Croglin Vampire” (if you want to see where Buffy the Vampire Slayer got its inspiration from for The Gentlemen in the classic “Hush” episode, look no further). The only thing Robinson did not have was a logo, so I quickly knocked up a concept using a sheet of Letraset transfer lettering. Tomy surprise, they used it on the final book.

In the UK, Robinson Publishing issued that first volume of Best New Horror in trade paperback with gold foil on the cover. For the US, Carroll & Graf decided to do it as a hardcover (without the foil), which they then reprinted as a trade paperback the following year.

When it came to selecting a story from that inaugural edition, it was not difficult. For me, Brian Lumley’s “No Sharks in the Med” has always been a powerful slice of psychological (as opposed to supernatural) horror, and a perfect example of one of my favourite sub-genres – the “fish out of water” tourist who stumbles into a situation over which they have no control . . .

CUSTOMS WAS NON-EXISTENT; people bring duty frees out of Greece, not in. As for passport control: a pair of tanned, hairy, bored-looking characters in stained, too-tight uniforms and peaked caps were in charge. One to take your passport, find the page to be franked, scan photograph and bearer both with a blank gaze that took in absolutely nothing unless you happened to be female and stacked (in which case it took in everything and more), then pass the passport on. Geoff Hammond thought: I wonder if that’s why they call them passports? The second one took the little black book from the first and hammered down on it with his stamp, impressing several pages but no one else, then handed the important document back to its owner – but grudgingly, as if he didn’t believe you could be trusted with it.

This second one, the one with the rubber stamp, had a brother. They could be, probably were, twins. Five-eightish, late twenties, lots of shoulders and no hips; raven hair shiny with grease, so tightly curled it looked permed; brown eyes utterly vacant of expression. The only difference was the uniform: the fact that the brother on the home-and-dry side of the barrier didn’t have one. Leaning on the barrier, he twirled cheap, yellow-framed, dark-lensed glasses like glinting propellers, observed almost speculatively the incoming holidaymakers. He wore shorts, frayed where they hugged his thick thighs, barely long enough to be decent. Hung like a bull! Geoff thought. It was almost embarrassing. Dressed for the benefit of the single girls, obviously. He’d be hoping they were taking notes for later. His chances might improve if he were two inches taller and had a face. But he didn’t; the face was as vacant as the eyes.

Then Geoff saw what it was that was wrong with those eyes: beyond the barrier, the specimen in the bulging shorts was wall-eyed. Likewise his twin punching the passports. Their right eyes had white pupils that stared like dead fish. The one in the booth wore lightly-tinted glasses, so that you didn’t notice until he looked up and stared directly at you. Which in Geoff’s case he hadn’t; but he was certainly looking at Gwen. Then he glanced at Geoff, patiently waiting, and said: “Together, you?” His voice was a shade too loud, making it almost an accusation.

Different names on the passports, obviously! But Geoff wasn’t going to stand here and explain how they were just married and Gwen hadn’t had time to make the required alterations. That really would be embarrassing! In fact (and come to think of it), it might not even be legal. Maybe she should have changed it right away, or got something done with it, anyway, in London. The honeymoon holiday they’d chosen was one of those get-it-while-it’s-going deals, a last-minute half-price seat-filler, a gift horse; and they’d been pushed for time. But what the hell – this was 1987, wasn’t it?

“Yes,” Geoff finally answered. “Together.”

“Ah!” the other nodded, grinned, appraised Gwen again with a raised eyebrow, before stamping her passport and handing it over.

Wall-eyed bastard! Geoff thought.

When they passed through the gate in the barrier, the other wall-eyed bastard had disappeared . . .

Stepping through the automatic glass doors from the shade of the airport building into the sunlight of the coach terminus was like opening the door of a furnace; it was a replay of the moment when the plane’s air-conditioned passengers trooped out across the tarmac to board the buses waiting to convey them to passport control. You came out into the sun fairly crisp, but by the time you’d trundled your luggage to the kerbside and lifted it off the trolley your armpits were already sticky. One o’clock, and the temperature must have been hovering around eighty-five for hours. It not only beat down on you but, trapped in the concrete, beat up as well. Hammerblows of heat.

A mini-skirted courier, English as a rose and harassed as hell – her white blouse soggy while her blue and white hat still sat jaunty on her head – came fluttering, clutching her millboard with its bulldog clip and thin sheaf of notes. “Mr Hammond and Miss—” she glanced at her notes, “—Pinter?”

“Mr and Mrs Hammond,” Geoff answered. He lowered his voice and continued confidentially: “We’re all proper, legitimate, and true. Only our identities have been altered in order to protect our passports.”

“Um?” she said.

Too deep for her, Geoff thought, sighing inwardly.

“Yes,” said Gwen, sweetly. “We’re the Hammonds.”

“Oh!” the girl looked a little confused. “It’s just that—”

“I haven’t changed my passport yet,” said Gwen, smiling.

“Ah!” Understanding finally dawned. The courier smiled nervously at Geoff, turned again to Gwen. “Is it too late for congratulations?”

“Four days,” Gwen answered.

“Well, congratulations anyway.”

Geoff was eager to be out of the sun. “Which is our coach?” he wanted to know. “Is it – could it possibly be – air-conditioned?” There were several coaches parked in an untidy cluster a little further up the kerb.

Again the courier’s confusion, also something of embarrassment showing in her bright blue eyes. “You’re going to – Achladi?”

Geoff sighed again, this time audibly. It was her business to know where they were going. It wasn’t a very good start.

“Yes,” she cut in quickly, before he or Gwen could comment. “Achladi – but not by coach! You see, your plane was an hour late; the coach for Achladi couldn’t be held up for just one couple; but it’s okay – you’ll have the privacy of your own taxi, and of course Skymed will foot the bill.”

She went off to whistle up a taxi and Geoff and Gwen glanced at each other, shrugged, sat down on their cases. But in a moment the courier was back, and behind her a taxi came rolling, nosing into the kerb. Its driver jumped out, whirled about opening doors, the boot, stashing cases while Geoff and Gwen got into the back of the car. Then, throwing his straw hat down beside him as he climbed into the driving seat and slammed his door, the young Greek looked back at his passengers and smiled. A single gold tooth flashed in a bar of white. But the smile was quite dead, like the grin of a shark before he bites, and the voice when it came was phlegmy, like pebbles colliding in mud. “Achladi, yes?”

“Ye—” Geoff began, paused, and finished: “—es! Er, Achladi, right!” Their driver was the wall-eyed passport-stamper’s wall-eyed brother.

“I Spiros,” he declared, turning the taxi out of the airport. “And you?”

Something warned Geoff against any sort of familiarity with this one. In all this heat, the warning was like a breath of cold air on the back of his neck. “I’m Mr Hammond,” he answered, stiffly. “This is my wife.” Gwen turned her head a little and frowned at him.

“I’m—” she began.

“My wife!” Geoff said again. She looked surprised but kept her peace.

Spiros was watching the road where it narrowed and wound. Already out of the airport, he skirted the island’s main town and raced for foothills rising to a spine of half-clad mountains. Achladi was maybe half an hour away, on the other side of the central range. The road soon became a track, a thick layer of dust over pot-holed tarmac and cobbles; in short, a typical Greek road. They slowed down a little through a village where white-walled houses lined the way, with lemon groves set back between and behind the dwellings, and were left with bright flashes of bougainvillea-framed balconies burning like after-images on their retinas. Then Spiros gave it the gun again.

Behind them, all was dust kicked up by the spinning wheels and the suction of the car’s passing. Geoff glanced out of the fly-specked rear window. The cloud of brown dust, chasing after them, seemed ominous in the way it obscured the so-recent past. And turning front again, Geoff saw that Spiros kept his strange eye mainly on the road ahead, and the good one on his rearview. But watching what? The dust? No, he was looking at . . .

At Gwen! The interior mirror was angled directly into her cleavage.

They had been married only a very short time. The day when he’d take pride in the jealousy of other men – in their coveting his wife – was still years in the future. Even then, look but don’t touch would be the order of the day. Right now it was watch where you’re looking, and possession was ninety-nine point nine per cent of the law. As for the other point one per cent: well, there was nothing much you could do about what the lecherous bastards were thinking!

Geoff took Gwen’s elbow, pulled her close and whispered: “Have you noticed how tight he takes the bends? He does it so we’ll bounce about a bit. He’s watching how your tits jiggle!”

She’d been delighting in the scenery, hadn’t even noticed Spiros, his eyes or anything. For a beautiful girl of twenty-three, she was remarkably naïve, and it wasn’t just an act. It was one of the things Geoff loved best about her. Only eighteen months her senior, Geoff hardly considered himself a man of the world; but he did know a rat when he smelled one. In Spiros’s case he could smell several sorts.

“He . . . what—?” Gwen said out loud, glancing down at herself. One button too many had come open in her blouse, showing the edges of her cups. Green eyes widening, she looked up and spotted Spiros’s rearview. He grinned at her through the mirror and licked his lips, but without deliberation. He was naïve, too, in his way. In his different sort of way.

“Sit over here,” said Geoff out loud, as she did up the offending button and the one above it. “The view is much better on this side.” He half-stood, let her slide along the seat behind him. Both of Spiros’ eyes were now back on the road . . .

Ten minutes later they were up into a pass through gorgeous pine-clad slopes so steep they came close to sheer. Here and there scree slides showed through the greenery, or a thrusting outcrop of rock. “Mountains,” Spiros grunted, without looking back.

“You have an eye for detail,” Geoff answered.

Gwen gave his arm a gentle nip, and he knew she was thinking sarcasm is the lowest form of wit – and it doesn’t become you! Nor cruelty, apparently. Geoff had meant nothing special by his “eye” remark, but Spiros was sensitive. He groped in the glove compartment for his yellow-rimmed sunshades, put them on. And drove in a stony silence for what looked like being the rest of the journey.

Through the mountains they sped, and the west coast of the island opened up like a gigantic travel brochure. The mountains seemed to go right down to the sea, rocks merging with that incredible, aching blue. And they could see the village down there, Achladi, like something out of a dazzling dream perched on both sides of a spur that gentled into the ocean.

“Beautiful!” Gwen breathed.

“Yes,” Spiros nodded. “Beautiful, thee village.” Like many Greeks speaking English, his definite articles all sounded like thee. “For fish, for thee swims, thee sun – is beautiful.”

After that it was all downhill; winding, at times precipitous, but the view was never less than stunning. For Geoff, it brought back memories of Cyprus. Good ones, most of them, but one bad one that always made him catch his breath, clench his fists. The reason he hadn’t been too keen on coming back to the Med in the first place. He closed his eyes in an attempt to force the memory out of mind, but that only made it worse, the picture springing up that much clearer.

He was a kid again, just five years old, late in the summer of ’67. His father was a Staff-Sergeant Medic, his mother with the QARANCs; both of them were stationed at Dhekelia, a Sovereign Base Area garrison just up the coast from Larnaca where they had a married quarter. They’d met and married in Berlin, spent three years there, then got posted out to Cyprus together. With two years done in Cyprus, Geoff’s father had a year to go to complete his twenty-two. After that last year in the sun . . . there was a place waiting for him in the ambulance pool of one of London’s big hospitals. Geoff’s mother had hoped to get on the nursing staff of the same hospital. But before any of that . . .

Geoff had started school in Dhekelia, but on those rare weekends when both of his parents were free of duty, they’d all go off to the beach together. And that had been his favourite thing in all the world: the beach with its golden sand and crystal-clear, safe, shallow water. But sometimes, seeking privacy, they’d take a picnic basket and drive east along the coast until the road became a track, then find a way down the cliffs and swim from the rocks up around Cape Greco. That’s where it had happened.

“Geoff!” Gwen tugged at his arm, breaking the spell. He was grateful to be dragged back to reality. “Were you sleeping?”

“Daydreaming,” he answered.

“Me, too!” she said. “I think I must be. I mean, just look at it!”

They were winding down a steep ribbon of road cut into the mountain’s flank, and Achladi was directly below them. A coach coming up squeezed by, its windows full of brown, browned-off faces. Holidaymakers going off to the airport, going home. Their holidays were over but Geoff’s and Gwen’s was just beginning, and the village they had come to was truly beautiful. Especially beautiful because it was unspoiled. This was only Achladi’s second season; before they’d built the airport you could only get here by boat. Very few had bothered.

Geoff’s vision of Cyprus and his bad time quickly receded; while he didn’t consider himself a romantic like Gwen, still he recognized Achladi’s magic. And now he supposed he’d have to admit that they’d made the right choice.

White-walled gardens; red tiles, green-framed windows, some flat roofs and some with a gentle pitch; bougainvillea cascading over white, arched balconies; a tiny white church on the point of the spur where broken rocks finally tumbled into the sea; massive ancient olive trees in walled plots at every street junction, and grapevines on trellises giving a little shade and dappling every garden and patio. That, at a glance, was Achladi. A high sea wall kept the sea at bay, not that it could ever be a real threat, for the entire front of the village fell within the harbour’s crab’s-claw moles. Steps went down here and there from the sea wall to the rocks; a half-dozen towels were spread wherever there was a flat or gently-inclined surface to take them, and the sea bobbed with a half-dozen heads, snorkels and face-masks. Deep water here, but a quarter-mile to the south, beyond the harbour wall, a shingle beach stretched like the webbing between the toes of some great beast for maybe a hundred yards to where a second claw-like spur came down from the mountains. As for the rest of this western coastline: as far as the eye could see both north and south, it looked like sky, cliff and sea to Geoff. Cape Greco all over again. But before he could go back to that:

“Is Villa Eleni, yes?” Spiros’s gurgling voice intruded. “Him have no road. No can drive. I carry thee bags.”

The road went right down the ridge of the spur to the little church. Half-way, it was crossed at right-angles by a second motor road which contained and serviced a handful of shops. The rest of the place was made up of streets too narrow or too perpendicular for cars. A few ancient scooters put-putted and sputtered about, donkeys clip-clopped here and there, but that was all. Spiros turned his vehicle about at the main junction (the only real road junction) and parked in the shade of a giant olive tree. He went to get the luggage. There were two large cases, two small ones. Geoff would have shared the load equally but found himself brushed aside; Spiros took the elephant’s share and left him with the small-fry. He wouldn’t have minded, but it was obviously the Greek’s chance to show off his strength.

Leading the way up a steep cobbled ramp of a street, Spiros’s muscular buttocks kept threatening to burst through the thin stuff of his cut-down jeans. And because the holidaymakers followed on a little way behind, Geoff was aware of Gwen’s eyes on Spiros’s tanned, gleaming thews. There wasn’t much of anywhere else to look. “Him Tarzan, you Jane,” he commented, but his grin was a shade too dry.

“Who you?” she answered, her nose going up in the air. “Cheetah?”

“Uph, uph!” said Geoff.

“Anyway,” she relented. “Your bottom’s nicer. More compact.”

He saved his breath, made no further comment. Even the light cases seemed heavy. If he was Cheetah, that must make Spiros Kong! The Greek glanced back once, grinned in his fashion, and kept going. Breathing heavily, Geoff and Gwen made an effort to catch up, failed miserably. Then, toward the top of the way Spiros turned right into an arched alcove, climbed three stone steps, put down his cases and paused at a varnished pine door. He pulled on a string to free the latch, shoved the door open and took up his cases again. As the English couple came round the corner he was stepping inside. “Thee Villa Eleni,” he said, as they followed him in.

Beyond the door was a high-walled courtyard of black and white pebbles laid out in octopus and dolphin designs. A split-level patio fronted the “villa”, a square box of a house whose one redeeming feature had to be a retractable sun-awning shading the windows and most of the patio. It also made an admirable refuge from the dazzling white of everything.

There were whitewashed concrete steps climbing the side of the building to the upper floor, with a landing that opened onto a wooden-railed balcony with its own striped awning. Beach towels and an outsize lady’s bathing costume were hanging over the rail, drying, and all the windows were open. Someone was home, maybe. Or maybe sitting in a shady taverna sipping on iced drinks. Downstairs, a key with a label had been left in the keyhole of a louvred, fly-screened door. Geoff read the label, which said simply: “Mr Hammond”. The booking had been made in his name.

“This is us,” he said to Gwen, turning the key.

They went in, Spiros following with the large cases. Inside, the cool air was a blessing. Now they would like to explore the place on their own, but the Greek was there to do it for them. And he knew his way around. He put the cases down, opened his arms to indicate the central room. “For sit, talk, thee resting.” He pointed to a tiled area in one corner, with a refrigerator, sink-unit and two-ring electric cooker. “For thee toast, coffee – thee fish and chips, eh?” He shoved open the door of a tiny room tiled top to bottom, containing a shower, wash-basin and WC. “And this one,” he said, without further explanation. Then five strides back across the floor took him to another room, low-ceilinged, pine-beamed, with a Lindean double bed built in under louvred windows. He cocked his head on one side. “And thee bed – just one . . .”

“That’s all we’ll need,” Geoff answered, his annoyance building.

“Yes,” Gwen said. “Well, thank you, er, Spiros – you’re very kind. And we’ll be fine now.”

Spiros scratched his chin, went back into the main room and sprawled in an easy chair. “Outside is hot,” he said. “Here she is cool – chrio, you know?”

Geoff went to him. “It’s very hot,” he agreed, “and we’re sticky. Now we want to shower, put our things away, look around. Thanks for your help. You can go now.”

Spiros stood up and his face went slack, his expression more blank than before. His wall-eye looked strange through its tinted lens. “Go now?” he repeated.

Geoff sighed. “Yes, go!”

The corner of Spiros’s mouth twitched, drew back a little to show his gold tooth. “I fetch from airport, carry cases.”

“Ah!” said Geoff, getting out his wallet. “What do I owe you?” He’d bought drachmas at the bank in London.

Spiros sniffed, looked scornful, half-turned away. “One thousand,” he finally answered, bluntly.

“That’s about four pounds and fifty pence,” Gwen said from the bedroom doorway. “Sounds reasonable.”

“Except it was supposed to be on Skymed,” Geoff scowled. He paid up anyway and saw Spiros to the door. The Greek departed, sauntered indifferently across the patio to pause in the arched doorway and look back across the courtyard. Gwen had come to stand beside Geoff in the double doorway under the awning.

The Greek looked straight at her and licked his fleshy lips. The vacant grin was back on his face. “I see you,” he said, nodding with a sort of slow deliberation.

As he closed the door behind him, Gwen muttered, “Not if I see you first! Ugh!”

“I am with you,” Geoff agreed. “Not my favourite local character!”

“Spiros,” she said. “Well, and it suits him to a tee. It’s about as close as you can get to spider! And that one is about as close as you can get!”

They showered, fell exhausted on the bed – but not so exhausted that they could just lie there without making love.

Later – with suitcases emptied and small valuables stashed out of sight, and spare clothes all hung up or tucked away – dressed in light, loose gear, sandals, sunglasses, it was time to explore the village. “And afterwards,” Gwen insisted, “we’re swimming!” She’d packed their towels and swimwear in a plastic beach bag. She loved to swim, and Geoff might have, too, except . . .

But as they left their rooms and stepped out across the patio, the varnished door in the courtyard wall opened to admit their upstairs neighbours, and for the next hour all thoughts of exploration and a dip in the sea were swept aside. The elderly couple who now introduced themselves gushed, there was no other way to describe it. He was George and she was Petula.

“My dear,” said George, taking Gwen’s hand and kissing it, “such a stunning young lady, and how sad that I’ve only two days left in which to enjoy you!” He was maybe sixty-four or five, ex-handsome but sagging a bit now, tall if a little bent, and brown as a native. With a small grey moustache and faded blue eyes, he looked as if he’d – no, in all probability he had – piloted Spitfires in World War II! Alas, he wore the most blindingly colourful shorts and shirt that Gwen had ever seen.

Petula was very large, about as tall as George but two of him in girth. She was just as brown, though, (and so presumably didn’t mind exposing it all), seemed equally if not more energetic, and was never at a loss for words. They were a strange, paradoxical pair: very upper-crust, but at the same time very much down to earth. If Petula tended to speak with plums in her mouth, certainly they were of a very tangy variety.

“He’ll flatter you to death, my dear,” she told Gwen, ushering the newcomers up the steps at the side of the house and onto the high balcony. “But you must never take your eyes off his hands! Stage magicians have nothing on George. Forty years ago he magicked himself into my bedroom, and he’s been there ever since!”

“She seduced me!” said George, bustling indoors.

“I did not!” Petula was petulant. “What? Why he’s quite simply a wolf in . . . in a Joseph suit!”

“A Joseph suit?” George repeated her. He came back out onto the balcony with brandy-sours in a frosted jug, a clattering tray of ice-cubes, slices of sugared lemon and an eggcup of salt for the sours. He put the lot down on a plastic table, said: “Ah! – glasses!” and ducked back inside again.

“Yes,” his wife called after him, pointing at his Bermudas and Hawaiian shirt. “Your clothes of many colours!”

It was all good fun and Geoff and Gwen enjoyed it. They sat round the table on plastic chairs, and George and Petula entertained them. It made for a very nice welcome to Achladi indeed.

“Of course,” said George after a while, when they’d settled down a little, “we first came here eight years ago, when there were no flights, just boats. Now that people are flying in—” he shrugged, “—two more seasons and there’ll be belly-dancers and hotdog stands! But for now it’s . . . just perfect. Will you look at that view?”

The view from the balcony was very fetching. “From up here we can see the entire village,” said Gwen. “You must point out the best shops, the bank or exchange or whatever, all the places we’ll need to know about.”

George and Petula looked at each other, smiled knowingly.

“Oh?” said Gwen.

Geoff checked their expressions, nodded, made a guess: “There are no places we need to know about.”

“Well, three, actually,” said Petula. “Four if you count Dimi’s – the taverna. Oh, there are other places to eat, but Dimi’s is the place. Except I feel I’ve spoilt it for you now. I mean, that really is something you should have discovered for yourself. It’s half the fun, finding the best place to eat!”

“What about the other three places we should know about?” Gwen inquired. “Will knowing those spoil it for us, too? Knowing them in advance, I mean?”

“Good Lord, no!” George shook his head. “Vital knowledge, young lady!”

“The baker’s,” said Petula. “For fresh rolls – daily.” She pointed it out, blue smoke rising from a cluster of chimneypots. “Also the booze shop, for booze—”

“—Also daily,” said George, pointing. “Right there on that corner – where the bottles glint. D’you know, they have an ancient Metaxa so cheap you wouldn’t—”

“And,” Petula continued, “the path down to the beach. Which is . . . over there.”

“But tell us,” said George, changing the subject, “are you married, you two? Or is that too personal?”

“Oh, of course they’re married!” Petula told him. “But very recently, because they still sit so close together. Touching. You see?”

“Ah!” said George. “Then we shan’t have another elopement.”

“You know, my dear, you really are an old idiot,” said Petula, sighing. “I mean, elopements are for lovers to be together. And these two already are together!”

Geoff and Gwen raised their eyebrows. “An elopement?” Gwen said. “Here? When did this happen?”

“Right here, yes,” said Petula. “Ten days ago. On our first night we had a young man downstairs, Gordon. On his own. He was supposed to be here with his fiancée but she’s jilted him. He went out with us, had a few too many in Dimi’s and told us all about it. A Swedish girl – very lovely, blonde creature – was also on her own. She helped steer him back here and, I suppose, tucked him in. She had her own place, mind you, and didn’t stay.”

“But the next night she did!” George enthused.

“And then they ran off,” said Petula, brightly. “Eloped! As simple as that. We saw them once, on the beach, the next morning. Following which—”

“—Gone!” said George.

“Maybe their holidays were over and they just went home,” said Gwen, reasonably.

“No,” George shook his head. “Gordon had come out on our plane, his holiday was just starting. She’d been here about a week and a half, was due to fly out the day after they made off together.”

“They paid for their holidays and then deserted them?” Geoff frowned. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Does anything, when you’re in love?” Petula sighed.

“The way I see it,” said George, “they fell in love with each other, and with Greece, and went off to explore all the options.”

“Love?” Gwen was doubtful. “On the rebound?”

“If she’d been a mousey little thing, I’d quite agree,” said Petula. “But no, she really was a beautiful girl.”

“And him a nice lad,” said George. “A bit sparse but clean, good-looking.”

“Indeed, they were much like you two,” his wife added. “I mean, not like you, but like you.”

“Cheers,” said Geoff, wryly. “I mean, I know I’m not Mr Universe, but—”

“Tight in the bottom!” said Petula. “That’s what the girls like these days. You’ll do all right.”

“See,” said Gwen, nudging him. “Told you so!”

But Geoff was still frowning. “Didn’t anyone look for them? What if they’d been involved in an accident or something?”

“No,” said Petula. “They were seen boarding a ferry in the main town. Indeed, one of the local taxi drivers took them there. Spiros.”

Gwen and Geoff’s turn to look at each other. “A strange fish, that one,” said Geoff.

George shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. You know him, do you? It’s that eye of his which makes him seem a bit sinister . . .”

Maybe he’s right, Geoff thought.

Shortly after that, their drinks finished, they went off to start their explorations . . .

The village was a maze of cobbled, whitewashed alleys. Even as tiny as it was you could get lost in it, but never for longer than the length of a street. Going downhill, no matter the direction, you’d come to the sea. Uphill you’d come to the main road, or if you didn’t, then turn the next corner and continue uphill, and then you would. The most well-trodden alley, with the shiniest cobbles, was the one that led to the hard-packed path, which in turn led to the beach. Pass the “booze shop” on the corner twice, and you’d know where it was always. The window was plastered with labels, some familiar and others entirely conjectural; inside, steel shelving went floor to ceiling, stacked with every conceivable brand; even the more exotic and (back home) wildly expensive stuffs were on view, often in ridiculously cheap, three-litre, duty-free bottles with their own chrome taps and display stands.

“Courvoisier!” said Gwen, appreciatively.

“Grand Marnier, surely!” Geoff protested. “What, five pints of Grand Marnier? At that price? Can you believe it? But that’s to take home. What about while we’re here?”

“Coconut liqueur,” she said. “Or better still, mint chocolate – to complement our midnight coffees.”

They found several small tavernas, too, with people seated outdoors at tiny tables under the vines. Chicken portions and slabs of lamb sputtering on spits; small fishes sizzling over charcoal; moussaka steaming in long trays . . .

Dimi’s was down on the harbour, where a wide, low wall kept you safe from falling in the sea. They had a Greek salad which they divided two ways, tiny cubes of lamb roasted on wooden slivers, a half-bottle of local white wine costing pennies. As they ate and sipped the wine, so they began to relax; the hot sunlight was tempered by an almost imperceptible breeze off the sea.

Geoff said: “Do you really feel energetic? Damned if I do.”

She didn’t feel full of boundless energy, no, but she wasn’t going down without a fight. “If it was up to you,” she said, “we’d just sit here and watch the fishing nets dry, right?”

“Nothing wrong with taking it easy,” he answered. “We’re on holiday, remember?”

“Your idea of taking it easy means being bone idle!” she answered. “I say we’re going for a dip, then back to the villa for siesta and you know, and—”

“Can we have the you know before the siesta?” He kept a straight face.

“—And then we’ll be all settled in, recovered from the journey, ready for tonight. Insatiable!”

“Okay,” he shrugged. “Anything you say. But we swim from the beach, not from the rocks.”

Gwen looked at him suspiciously. “That was almost too easy.”

Now he grinned. “It was the thought of, well, you know, that did it,” he told her . . .

Lying on the beach, panting from their exertions in the sea, with the sun lifting the moisture off their still-pale bodies, Gwen said: “I don’t understand.”

“Hmm?”

“You swim very well. I’ve always thought so. So what is this fear of the water you complain about?”

“First,” Geoff answered, “I don’t swim very well. Oh, for a hundred yards I’ll swim like a dolphin – any more than that and I do it like a brick! I can’t float. If I stop swimming I sink.”

“So don’t stop.”

“When you get tired, you stop.”

“What was it that made you frightened of the water?” He told her:

“I was a kid in Cyprus. A little kid. My father had taught me how to swim. I used to watch him diving off the rocks, oh, maybe twenty or thirty feet high, into the sea. I thought I could do it, too. So one day when my folks weren’t watching, I tried. I must have hit my head on something on the way down. Or maybe I simply struck the water all wrong. When they spotted me floating in the sea, I was just about done for. My father dragged me out. He was a medic – the kiss of life and all that. So now I’m not much for swimming, and I’m absolutely nothing for diving! I will swim – for a splash, in shallow water, like today – but that’s my limit. And I’ll only go in from a beach. I can’t stand cliffs, height. It’s as simple as that. You married a coward. So there.”

“No I didn’t,” she said. “I married someone with a great bottom. Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“You didn’t ask me. I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t much care to remember it. I was just a kid, and yet I knew I was going to die. And I knew it wouldn’t be nice. I still haven’t got it out of my system, not completely. And so the less said about it the better.”

A beach ball landed close by, bounced, rolled to a standstill against Gwen’s thigh. They looked up. A brown, burly figure came striding. They recognized the frayed, bulging shorts. Spiros.

“Hallo,” he said, going down into a crouch close by, forearms resting on his knees. “Thee beach. Thee ball. I swim, play. You swim?” (This to Geoff.) “You come swim, throwing thee ball?”

Geoff sat up. There were half-a-dozen other couples on the beach; why couldn’t this jerk pick on them? Geoff thought to himself: I’m about to get sand kicked in my face! “No,” he said out loud, shaking his head. “I don’t swim much.”

“No swim? You frighting thee big fish? Thee sharks?”

“Sharks?” Now Gwen sat up. From behind their dark lenses she could feel Spiros’s eyes crawling over her.

Geoff shook his head. “There are no sharks in the Med,” he said.

“Him right,” Spiros laughed high-pitched, like a woman, without his customary gurgling. A weird sound. “No sharks. I make thee jokes!” He stopped laughing and looked straight at Gwen. She couldn’t decide if he was looking at her face or her breasts. Those damned sunglasses of his! “You come swim, lady, with Spiros? Play in thee water?”

“My . . . God!” Gwen sputtered, glowering at him. She pulled her dress on over her still-damp, very skimpy swimming costume, packed her towel away, picked up her sandals. When she was annoyed, she really was annoyed.

Geoff stood up as she made off, turned to Spiros. “Now listen—” he began.

“Ah, you go now! Is Okay. I see you.” He took his ball, raced with it down the beach, hurled it out over the sea. Before it splashed down he was diving, low and flat, striking the water like a knife. Unlike Geoff, he swam very well indeed . . .

When Geoff caught up with his wife she was stiff with anger. Mainly angry with herself. “That was so rude of me!” she exploded.

“No it wasn’t,” he said. “I feel exactly the same about it.”

“But he’s so damned . . . persistent! I mean, he knows we’re together, man and wife . . . ‘thee bed – just one.’ How dare he intrude?”

Geoff tried to make light of it. “You’re imagining it,” he said.

“And you? Doesn’t he get on your nerves?”

“Maybe I’m imagining it too. Look, he’s Greek – and not an especially attractive specimen. Look at it from his point of view. All of a sudden there’s a gaggle of dolly-birds on the beach, dressed in stuff his sister wouldn’t wear for undies! So he tries to get closer – for a better view, as it were – so that he can get a wall-eyeful. He’s no different to other blokes. Not quite as smooth, that’s all.”

“Smooth!” she almost spat the word out. “He’s about as smooth as a badger’s—”

“—Bottom,” said Geoff. “Yes, I know. If I’d known you were such a bum-fancier I mightn’t have married you.”

And at last she laughed, but shakily.

They stopped at the booze shop and bought brandy and a large bottle of Coca-Cola. And mint chocolate liqueur, of course, for their midnight coffees . . .

That night Gwen put on a blue and white dress, very Greek if cut a little low in the front, and silver sandals. Tucking a handkerchief into the breast pocket of his white jacket, Geoff thought: she’s beautiful! With her heart-shaped face and the way her hair framed it, cut in a page-boy style that suited its shiny black sheen – and her green, green eyes – he’d always thought she looked French. But tonight she was definitely Greek. And he was so glad that she was English, and his.

Dimi’s was doing a roaring trade. George and Petula had a table in the corner, overlooking the sea. They had spread themselves out in order to occupy all four seats, but when Geoff and Gwen appeared they waved, called them over. “We thought you’d drop in,” George said, as they sat down. And to Gwen: “You look charming, my dear.”

“Now I feel I’m really on my holidays,” Gwen smiled.

“Honeymoon, surely,” said Petula.

“Shh!” Geoff cautioned her. “In England they throw confetti. Over here it’s plates!”

“Your secret is safe with us,” said George.

“Holiday, honeymoon, whatever,” said Gwen. “Compliments from handsome gentlemen; the stars reflected in the sea; a full moon rising and bouzouki music floating in the air. And—”

“—The mouth-watering smells of good Greek grub!” Geoff cut in. “Have you ordered?” He looked at George and Petula.

“A moment ago,” Petula told him. “If you go into the kitchen there, Dimi will show you his menu – live, as it were. Tell him you’re with us and he’ll make an effort to serve us together. Starter, main course, a pudding – the lot.”

“Good!” Geoff said, standing up. “I could eat the saddle off a donkey!”

“Eat the whole donkey,” George told him. “The one who’s going to wake you up with his racket at six-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“You don’t know Geoff,” said Gwen. “He’d sleep through a Rolling Stones concert.”

“And you don’t know Achladi donkeys!” said Petula.

In the kitchen, the huge, bearded proprietor was busy, fussing over his harassed-looking cooks. As Geoff entered he came over. “Good evenings, sir. You are new in Achladi?”

“Just today,” Geoff smiled. “We came here for lunch but missed you.”

“Ah!” Dimitrios gasped, shrugged apologetically. “I was sleeps! Every day, for two hours, I sleeps. Where you stay, eh?”

“The Villa Eleni.”

“Eleni? Is me!” Dimitrios beamed. “I am Villa Eleni. I mean, I owns it. Eleni is thee name my wifes.”

“It’s a beautiful name,” said Geoff, beginning to feel trapped in the conversation. “Er, we’re with George and Petula.”

“You are eating? Good, good. I show you.” Geoff was given a guided tour of the ovens and the sweets trolley. He ordered, keeping it light for Gwen.

“And here,” said Dimitrios. “For your lady!” He produced a filigreed silver-metal brooch in the shape of a butterfly, with DIMI’S worked into the metal of the body. Gwen wouldn’t like it especially, but politic to accept it. Geoff had noticed several female patrons wearing them, Petula included.

“That’s very kind of you,” he said.

Making his way back to their table, he saw Spiros was there before him.

Now where the hell had he sprung from? And what the hell was he playing at?

Spiros wore tight blue jeans, (his image, obviously), and a white T-shirt stained down the front. He was standing over the corner table, one hand on the wall where it overlooked the sea, the other on the table itself. Propped up, still he swayed. He was leaning over Gwen. George and Petula had frozen smiles on their faces, looked frankly astonished. Geoff couldn’t quite see all of Gwen, for Spiros’s bulk was in the way.

What he could see, of the entire mini-tableau, printed itself on his eyes as he drew closer. Adrenalin surged in him and he began to breathe faster. He barely noticed George standing up and sliding out of view. Then as the bouzouki tape came to an end and the taverna’s low babble of sound seemed to grow that much louder, Gwen’s outraged voice suddenly rose over everything else:

“Get . . . your . . . filthy . . . paws . . . off me!” she cried.

Geoff was there. Petula had drawn as far back as possible; no longer smiling, her hand was at her throat, her eyes staring in disbelief. Spiros’s left hand had caught up the V of Gwen’s dress. His fingers were inside the dress and his thumb outside. In his right hand he clutched a pin like the one Dimitrios had given to Geoff. He was protesting:

“But I giving it! I putting it on your dress! Is nice, this one. We friends. Why you shout? You no like Spiros?” His throaty, gurgling voice was slurred: waves of ouzo fumes literally wafted off him like the stench of a dead fish. Geoff moved in, knocked Spiros’s elbow away where it leaned on the wall. Spiros must release Gwen to maintain his balance. He did so, but still crashed half over the wall. For a moment Geoff thought he would go completely over, into the sea. But he just lolled there, shaking his head, and finally turned it to look back at Geoff. There was a look on his face which Geoff couldn’t quite describe. Drunken stupidity slowly turning to rage, maybe. Then he pushed himself upright, stood swaying against the wall, his fists knotting and the muscles in his arms bunching.

Hit him now, Geoff’s inner man told him. Do it, and he’ll go clean over into the sea. It’s not high, seven or eight feet, that’s all. It’ll sober the bastard up, and after that he won’t trouble you again.

But what if he couldn’t swim? You know he swims like a fish – like a bloody shark!

“You think you better than Spiros, eh?” The Greek wobbled dangerously, steadied up and took a step in Geoff’s direction.

“No!” the voice of the bearded Dimitrios was shattering in Geoff’s ear. Massive, he stepped between them, grabbed Spiros by the hair, half-dragged, half-pushed him toward the exit. “No, everybody thinks he’s better!” he cried. “Because everybody is better! Out—” he heaved Spiros yelping into the harbour’s shadows. “I tell you before, Spiros: drink all the ouzo in Achladi. Is your business. But not let it ruin my business. Then comes thee real troubles!”

Gwen was naturally upset. It spoiled something of the evening for her. But by the time they had finished eating, things were about back to normal. No one else in the place, other than George and Petula, had seemed especially interested in the incident anyway.

At around eleven, when the taverna had cleared a little, the girl from Skymed came in. She came over.

“Hello, Julie!” said George, finding her a chair. And, flatterer born, he added: “How lovely you’re looking tonight – but of course you look lovely all the time.”

Petula tut-tutted. “George, if you hadn’t met me you’d be a gigolo by now, I’m sure!”

“Mr Hammond,” Julie said. “I’m terribly sorry. I should have explained to Spiros that he’d recover the fare for your ride from me. Actually, I believed he understood that but apparently he didn’t. I’ve just seen him in one of the bars and asked him how much I owed him. He was a little upset, wouldn’t accept the money, told me I should see you.”

“Was he sober yet?” Geoff asked, sourly.

“Er, not very, I’m afraid. Has he been a nuisance?”

Geoff coughed. “Only a bit of a one.”

“It was a thousand drachmas” said Gwen.

The courier looked a little taken aback. “Well it should only have been seven hundred.”

“He did carry our bags, though,” said Geoff.

“Ah! Maybe that explains it. Anyway, I’m authorized to pay you seven hundred.”

“All donations are welcome,” Gwen said, opening her purse and accepting the money. “But if I were you, in future I’d use someone else. This Spiros isn’t a particularly pleasant fellow.”

“Well he does seem to have a problem with the ouzo,” Julie answered. “On the other hand—”

“He has several problems!” Geoff was sharper than he meant to be. After all, it wasn’t her fault.

“—He also has the best beach,” Julie finished.

“Beach?” Geoff raised an eyebrow. “He has a beach?”

“Didn’t we tell you?” Petula spoke up. “Two or three of the locals have small boats in the harbour. For a few hundred drachmas they’ll take you to one of a handful of private beaches along the coast. They’re private because no one lives there, and there’s no way in except by boat. The boatmen have their favourite places, which they guard jealously and call ‘their’ beaches, so that the others don’t poach on them. They take you in the morning or whenever, collect you in the evening. Absolutely private . . . ideal for picnics . . . romance!” She sighed.

“What a lovely idea,” said Gwen. “To have a beach of your own for the day!”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned,” Geoff told her, “Spiros can keep his beach.”

“Oh-oh!” said George. “Speak of the devil . . .”

Spiros had returned. He averted his face and made straight for the kitchens in the back. He was noticeably steadier on his feet now. Dimitrios came bowling out to meet him and a few low-muttered words passed between them. Their conversation quickly grew more heated, becoming rapid-fire Greek in moments, and Spiros appeared to be pleading his case. Finally Dimitrios shrugged, came lumbering toward the corner table with Spiros in tow.

“Spiros, he sorry,” Dimitrios said. “For tonight. Too much ouzo. He just want be friendly.”

“Is right,” said Spiros, lifting his head. He shrugged helplessly. “Thee ouzo.”

Geoff nodded. “Okay, forget it,” he said, but coldly.

“Is . . . okay?” Spiros lifted his head a little more. He looked at Gwen.

Gwen forced herself to nod. “It’s okay.”

Now Spiros beamed, or as close as he was likely to get to it. But still Geoff had this feeling that there was something cold and calculating in his manner.

“I make it good!” Spiros declared, nodding. “One day, I take you thee best beach! For thee picnic. Very private. Two peoples, no more. I no take thee money, nothing. Is good?”

“Fine,” said Geoff. “That’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Spiros smiled his unsmile, nodded, turned away. Going out, he looked back. “I sorry,” he said again; and again his shrug. “Thee ouzo . . .”

“Hardly eloquent,” said Petula, when he’d disappeared.

“But better than nothing,” said George.

“Things are looking up!” Gwen was happier now.

Geoff was still unsure how he felt. He said nothing . . .

“Breakfast is on us,” George announced the next morning. He smiled down on Geoff and Gwen where they drank coffee and tested the early morning sunlight at a garden table on the patio. They were still in their dressing-gowns, eyes bleary, hair tousled.

Geoff looked up, squinting his eyes against the hurtful blue of the sky, and said: “I see what you mean about that donkey! What the hell time is it, anyway?”

“Eight-fifteen,” said George. “You’re lucky. Normally he’s at it, oh, an hour earlier than this!” From somewhere down in the maze of alleys, as if summoned by their conversation, the hideous braying echoed yet again as the village gradually came awake.

Just before nine they set out, George and Petula guiding them to a little place bearing the paint-daubed legend: BREKFAS BAR. They climbed steps to a pine-railed patio set with pine tables and chairs, under a varnished pine frame supporting a canopy of split bamboo. Service was good; the “English” food hot, tasty, and very cheap; the coffee dreadful!

“Yechh!” Gwen commented, understanding now why George and Petula had ordered tea. “Take a note, Mr Hammond,” she said. “Tomorrow, no coffee. Just fruit juice.”

“We thought maybe it was us being fussy,” said Petula. “Else we’d have warned you.”

“Anyway,” George sighed. “Here’s where we have to leave you. For tomorrow we fly – literally. So today we’re shopping, picking up our duty-frees, gifts, the postcards we never sent, some Greek cigarettes.”

“But we’ll see you tonight, if you’d care to?” said Petula.

“Delighted!” Geoff answered. “What, Zorba’s Dance, moussaka, and a couple or three of those giant Metaxas that Dimi serves? Who could refuse?”

“Not to mention the company,” said Gwen.

“About eight-thirty, then,” said Petula. And off they went.

“I shall miss them,” said Gwen.

“But it will be nice to be on our own for once,” Geoff leaned over to kiss her.

“Hallo!” came a now familiar, gurgling voice from below. Spiros stood in the street beyond the rail, looking up at them, the sun striking sparks from the lenses of his sunglasses. Their faces fell and he couldn’t fail to notice it. “Is okay,” he quickly held up a hand. “I no stay. I busy. Today I make thee taxi. Later, thee boat.”

Gwen gave a little gasp of excitement, clutched Geoff’s arm. “The private beach!” she said. “Now that’s what I’d call being on our own!” And to Spiros: “If we’re ready at one o’clock, will you take us to your beach?”

“Of course!” he answered. “At one o’clock, I near Dimi’s. My boat, him called Spiros like me. You see him.”

Gwen nodded. “We’ll see you then.”

“Good!” Spiros nodded. He looked up at them a moment longer, and Geoff wished he could fathom where the man’s eyes were. Probably up Gwen’s dress. But then he turned and went on his way.

“Now we shop!” Gwen said.

They shopped for picnic items. Nothing gigantic, mainly small things. Slices of salami, hard cheese, two fat tomatoes, fresh bread, a bottle of light white wine, some feta, eggs for boiling, and a litre of crystal-clear bottled water. And as an afterthought: half-a-dozen small pats of butter, a small jar of honey, a sharp knife and a packet of doilies. No wicker basket; their little plastic coolbox would have to do. And one of their pieces of shoulder luggage for the blanket, towels, and swim-things. Geoff was no good for details; Gwen’s head, to the contrary, was only happy buzzing with them. He let her get on with it, acted as beast of burden. In fact there was no burden to mention. After all, she was shopping for just the two of them, and it was as good a way as any to explore the village stores and see what was on offer. While she examined this and that, Geoff spent the time comparing the prices of various spirits with those already noted in the booze shop. So the morning passed.

At eleven-thirty they went back to the Villa Eleni for you know and a shower, and afterwards Gwen prepared the foodstuffs while Geoff lazed under the awning. No sign of George and Petula; eighty-four degrees of heat as they idled their way down to the harbour; the village had closed itself down through the hottest part of the day, and they saw no one they knew. Spiros’s boat lolled like a mirrored blot on the stirless ocean, and Geoff thought: even the fish will be finding this a bit much! Also: I hope there’s some shade on this blasted beach!

Spiros appeared from behind a tangle of nets. He stood up, yawned, adjusted his straw hat like a sunshade on his head. “Thee boat,” he said, in his entirely unnecessary fashion, as he helped them climb aboard. Spiros “thee boat” was hardly a hundred per cent seaworthy, Geoff saw that immediately. In fact, in any other ocean in the world she’d be condemned. But this was the Mediterranean in July.

Barely big enough for three adults, the boat rocked a little as Spiros yanked futilely on the starter. Water seeped through boards, rotten and long since sprung, black with constant damp and badly caulked. Spiros saw Geoff’s expression where he sat with his sandals in half an inch of water. He shrugged. “Is nothings,” he said.

Finally the engine coughed into life, began to purr, and they were off. Spiros had the tiller; Geoff and Gwen faced him from the prow, which now lifted up a little as they left the harbour and cut straight out to sea. It was then, for the first time, that Geoff noticed Spiros’s furtiveness: the way he kept glancing back toward Achladi, as if anxious not to be observed. Unlikely that they would be, for the village seemed fast asleep. Or perhaps he was just checking land marks, avoiding rocks or reefs or what have you. Geoff looked overboard. The water seemed deep enough to him. Indeed, it seemed much too deep! But at least there were no sharks . . .

Well out to sea, Spiros swung the boat south and followed the coastline for maybe two and a half to three miles. The highest of Achladi’s houses and apartments had slipped entirely from view by the time he turned in towards land again and sought a bight in the seemingly unbroken march of cliffs. The place was landmarked: a fang of rock had weathered free, shaping a stack that reared up from the water to form a narrow, deep channel between itself and the cliffs proper. In former times a second, greater stack had crashed oceanward and now lay like a reef just under the water across the entire frontage. In effect, this made the place a lagoon: a sandy beach to the rear, safe water, and the reef of shattered, softly matted rocks where the small waves broke.

There was only one way in. Spiros gentled his boat through the deep water between the crooked outcrop and the overhanging cliff. Clear of the channel, he nosed her into the beach and cut the motor; as the keel grated on grit he stepped nimbly between his passengers and jumped ashore, dragging the boat a few inches up onto the sand. Geoff passed him the picnic things, then steadied the boat while Gwen took off her sandals and made to step down where the water met the sand. But Spiros was quick off the mark.

He stepped forward, caught her up, carried her two paces up the beach and set her down. His left arm had been under her thighs, his right under her back, cradling her. But when he set her upon her own feet his right hand had momentarily cupped her breast, which he’d quite deliberately squeezed.

Gwen opened her mouth, stood gasping her outrage, unable to give it words. Geoff had got out of the boat and was picking up their things to bring them higher up the sand. Spiros, slapping him on the back, stepped round him and shoved the boat off, splashed in shallow water a moment before leaping nimbly aboard. Gwen controlled herself, said nothing. She could feel the blood in her cheeks but hoped Geoff wouldn’t notice. Not here, miles from anywhere. Not in this lonely place. No, there must be no trouble here.

For suddenly it had dawned on her just how very lonely it was. Beautiful, unspoiled, a lovers’ idyll – but oh so very lonely . . .

“You all right, love?” said Geoff, taking her elbow. She was looking at Spiros standing silent in his boat. Their eyes seemed locked, it was as if she didn’t see him but the mind behind the sunglasses, behind those disparate, dispassionate eyes. A message had passed between them. Geoff sensed it but couldn’t fathom it. He had almost seemed to hear Spiros say “yes”, and Gwen answer “no”.

“Gwen?” he said again.

“I see you,” Spiros called, grinning. It broke the spell. Gwen looked away, and Geoff called out:

“Six-thirty, right?”

Spiros waggled a hand this way and that palm-down, as if undecided. “Six, six-thirty – something,” he said, shrugging. He started his motor, waved once, chugged out of the bay between the jutting sentinel rock and the cliffs. As he passed out of sight the boat’s engine roared with life, its throaty growl rapidly fading into the distance . . .

Gwen said nothing about the incident; she felt sure that if she did, then Geoff would make something of it. Their entire holiday could so easily be spoiled. It was bad enough that for her the day had already been ruined. So she kept quiet, and perhaps a little too quiet. When Geoff asked her again if anything was wrong she told him she had a headache. Then, feeling a little unclean, she stripped herself quite naked and swam while he explored the beach.

Not that there was a great deal to explore. He walked the damp sand at the water’s rim to the southern extreme and came up against the cliffs where they curved out into the sea. They were quite unscalable, towering maybe eighty or ninety feet to their jagged rim. Walking the hundred or so yards back the other way, the thought came to Geoff that if Spiros didn’t come back for them – that is, if anything untoward should happen to him – they’d just have to sit it out until they were found. Which, since Spiros was the only one who knew they were here, might well be a long time. Having thought it, Geoff tried to shake the idea off but it wouldn’t go away. The place was quite literally a trap. Even a decent swimmer would have to have at least a couple of miles in him before considering swimming out of here.

Once lodged in Geoff’s brain, the concept rapidly expanded itself. Before . . . he had looked at the faded yellow and bone-white facade of the cliffs against the incredible blue of the sky with admiration; the beach had been every man’s dream of tranquility, privacy, Eden with its own Eve; the softly lapping ocean had seemed like a warm, soothing bath reaching from horizon to horizon. But now . . . the place was so like Cape Greco. Except at Greco there had always been a way down to the sea – and up from it . . .

The northern end of the beach was much like the southern, the only difference being the great fang of rock protruding from the sea. Geoff stripped, swam out to it, was aware that the water here was a great deal deeper than back along the beach. But the distance was only thirty feet or so, nothing to worry about. And there were hand and footholds galore around the base of the pillar of upthrusting rock. He hauled himself up onto a tiny ledge, climbed higher (not too high), sat on a projecting fist of rock with his feet dangling and called to Gwen. His voice surprised him, for it seemed strangely small and panting. The cliffs took it up, however, amplified and passed it on. His shout reached Gwen where she splashed; she spotted him, stopped swimming and stood up. She waved, and he marvelled at her body, her tip-tilted breasts displayed where she stood like some lovely Mediterranean nymph, all unashamed. Venus rising from the waves. Except that here the waves were little more than ripples.

He glanced down at the water and was at once dizzy: the way it lapped at the rock and flowed so gently in the worn hollows of the stone, all fluid and glinting motion; and Geoff’s stomach following the same routine, seeming to slosh loosely inside him. Damn this terror of his! What was he but eight, nine feet above the sea? God, he might as well feel sick standing on a thick carpet!

He stood up, shouted, jumped outward, toward Gwen.

Down he plunged into cool, liquid blue, and fought his way to the surface, and swam furiously to the beach. There he lay, half-in, half-out of the water, his heart and lungs hammering, blood coursing through his body. It had been such a little thing – something any ten-year-old child could have done – but to him it had been such an effort. And an achievement!

Elated, he stood up, sprinted down the beach, threw himself into the warm, shallow water just as Gwen was emerging. Carried back by him she laughed, splashed him, finally submitted to his hug. They rolled in twelve inches of water and her legs went round him; and there where the water met the sand they grew gentle, then fierce, and when it was done the sea laved their heat and rocked them gently, slowly dispersing their passion . . .

About four o’clock they ate, but very little. They weren’t hungry; the sun was too hot; the silence, at first enchanting, had turned to a droning, sun-scorched monotony that beat on the ears worse than a city’s roar. And there was a smell. When the light breeze off the sea swung in a certain direction, it brought something unpleasant with it.

To provide shade, Geoff had rigged up his shirt, slacks, and a large beach towel on a frame of drifted bamboo between the brittle, sandpapered branches of an old tree washed halfway up the sand. There in this tatty, makeshift teepee they’d spread their blanket, retreated from the pounding sun. But as the smell came again Geoff crept out of the cramped shade, stood up and shielded his eyes to look along the wall of the cliffs. “It comes . . . from over there,” he said, pointing.

Gwen joined him. “I thought you’d explored?” she said.

“Along the tideline,” he answered, nodding slowly. “Not along the base of the cliffs. Actually, they don’t look too safe, and they overhang a fair bit in places. But if you’ll look where I’m pointing – there, where the cliffs are cut back – is that water glinting?”

“A spring?” she looked at him. “A waterfall?”

“Hardly a waterfall,” he said. “More a dribble. But what is it that’s dribbling? I mean, springs don’t stink, do they?”

Gwen wrinkled her nose. “Sewage, do you think?”

“Yecchh!” he said. “But at least it would explain why there’s no one else here. I’m going to have a look.”

She followed him to the place where the cliffs were notched in a V. Out of the sunlight, they both shivered a little. They’d put on swimwear for simple decency’s sake, in case a boat should pass by, but now they hugged themselves as the chill of damp stone drew off their stored heat and brought goose-pimples to flesh which sun and sea had already roughened. And there, beneath the overhanging cliff, they found in the shingle a pool formed of a steady flow from on high. Without a shadow of a doubt, the pool was the source of the carrion stench; but here in the shade its water was dark, muddied, rippled, quite opaque. If there was anything in it, then it couldn’t be seen.

As for the waterfall: it forked high up in the cliff, fell in twin streams, one of which was a trickle. Leaning out over the pool at its narrowest, shallowest point, Geoff cupped his hand to catch a few droplets. He held them to his nose, shook his head. “Just water,” he said. “It’s the pool itself that stinks.”

“Or something back there?” Gwen looked beyond the pool, into the darkness of the cave formed of the V and the overhang.

Geoff took up a stone, hurled it into the darkness and silence. Clattering echoes sounded, and a moment later—

Flies! A swarm of them, disturbed where they’d been sitting on cool, damp ledges. They came in a cloud out of the cave, sent Geoff and Gwen yelping, fleeing for the sea. Geoff was stung twice, Gwen escaped injury; the ocean was their refuge, shielding them while the flies dispersed or returned to their vile-smelling breeding ground.

After the murky, poisonous pool the sea felt cool and refreshing. Muttering curses, Geoff stood in the shallows while Gwen squeezed the craters of the stings in his right shoulder and bathed them with salt water. When she was done he said, bitterly: “I’ve had it with this place! The sooner the Greek gets back the better.”

His words were like an invocation. Towelling themselves dry, they heard the roar of Spiros’s motor, heard it throttle back, and a moment later his boat came nosing in through the gap between the rock and the cliffs. But instead of landing he stood off in the shallow water. “Hallo,” he called, in his totally unnecessary fashion.

“You’re early,” Geoff called back. And under his breath: Thank God!

“Early, yes,” Spiros answered. “But I have thee troubles.” He shrugged.

Gwen had pulled her dress on, packed the last of their things away. She walked down to the water’s edge with Geoff. “Troubles?” she said, her voice a shade unsteady.

“Thee boat,” he said, and pointed into the open, lolling belly of the craft, where they couldn’t see. “I hitting thee rock when I leave Achladi. Is okay, but—” And he made his fifty-fifty sign, waggling his hand with the fingers open and the palm down. His face remained impassive, however.

Geoff looked at Gwen, then back to Spiros. “You mean it’s unsafe?”

“For three peoples, unsafe – maybe.” Again the Greek’s shrug. “I thinks, I take thee lady first. Is Okay, I come back. Is bad, I find other boat.”

“You can’t take both of us?” Geoff’s face fell.

Spiros shook his head. “Maybe big problems,” he said.

Geoff nodded. “Okay,” he said to Gwen. “Go just as you are. Leave all this stuff here and keep the boat light.” And to Spiros: “Can you come in a bit more?”

The Greek made a clicking sound with his tongue, shrugged apologetically. “Thee boat is broked. I not want thee more breakings. You swim?” He looked at Gwen, leaned over the side and held out his hand. Keeping her dress on, she waded into the water, made her way to the side of the boat. The water only came up to her breasts, but it turned her dress to a transparent, clinging film. She grasped the upper strake with one hand and made to drag herself aboard. Spiros, leaning backwards, took her free hand.

Watching, Geoff saw her come half out of the water – then saw her freeze. She gasped loudly and twisted her wet hand in Spiros’s grasp, tugged free of his grip, flopped back down into the water. And while the Greek regained his balance, she quickly swam back ashore. Geoff helped her from the sea. “Gwen?” he said.

Spiros worked his starter, got the motor going. He commenced a slow, deliberate circling of the small bay.

“Gwen?” Geoff said again. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She was pale, shivering.

“He . . .” she finally started to speak. “He . . . had an erection! Geoff, I could see it bulging in his shorts, throbbing. My God – and I know it was for me! And the boat . . .”

“What about the boat?” Anger was building in Geoff’s heart and head, starting to run cold in his blood.

“There was no damage – none that I could see, anyway. He . . . he just wanted to get me into that boat, on my own!”

Spiros could see them talking together. He came angling close into the beach, called out: “I bring thee better boat. Half-an-hour. Is safer. I see you.” He headed for the channel between the rock and the cliff and in another moment passed from sight . . .

“Geoff, we’re in trouble,” Gwen said, as soon as Spiros had left. “We’re in serious trouble.”

“I know it,” he said. “I think I’ve known it ever since we got here. That bloke’s as sinister as they come.”

“And it’s not just his eye, it’s his mind,” said Gwen. “He’s sick.” Finally, she told her husband about the incident when Spiros had carried her ashore from the boat.

“So that’s what that was all about,” he growled. “Well, something has to be done about him. We’ll have to report him.”

She clutched his arm. “We have to get back to Achladi before we can do that,” she said quietly. “Geoff, I don’t think he intends to let us get back!”

That thought had been in his mind, too, but he hadn’t wanted her to know it. He felt suddenly helpless. The trap seemed sprung and they were in it. But what did Spiros intend, and how could he possibly hope to get away with it – whatever “it” was? Gwen broke into his thoughts:

“No one knows we’re here, just Spiros.”

“I know,” said Geoff. “And what about that couple who . . .” He let it tail off. It had just slipped from his tongue. It was the last thing he’d wanted to say.

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” Gwen hissed, gripping his arm more tightly yet. “He was the last one to see them – getting on a ferry, he said. But did they?” She stripped off her dress.

“What are you doing?” he asked, breathlessly.

“We came in from the north,” she answered, wading out again into the water. “There were no beaches between here and Achladi. What about to the south? There are other beaches than this one, we know that. Maybe there’s one just half a mile away. Maybe even less. If I can find one where there’s a path up the cliffs . . .”

“Gwen,” he said. “Gwen!” Panic was rising in him to match his impotence, his rage and terror.

She turned and looked at him, looked helpless in her skimpy bikini – and yet determined, too. And to think he’d considered her naïve! Well, maybe she had been. But no more. She managed a small smile, said, “I love you.”

“What if you exhaust yourself?” He could think of nothing else to say.

“I’ll know when to turn back,” she said. Even in the hot sunlight he felt cold, and knew she must, too. He started towards her, but she was already into a controlled crawl, heading south, out across the submerged rocks. He watched her out of sight round the southern extreme of the jutting cliffs, stood knotting and unknotting his fists at the edge of the sea . . .

For long moments Geoff stood there, cold inside and hot out. And at the same time cold all over. Then the sense of time fleeting by overcame him. He ground his teeth, felt his frustration overflow. He wanted to shout but feared Gwen would hear him and turn back. But there must be something he could do. With his bare hands? Like what? A weapon – he needed a weapon.

There was the knife they’d bought just for their picnic. He went to their things and found it. Only a three-inch blade, but sharp! Hand to hand it must give him something of an advantage. But what if Spiros had a bigger knife? He seemed to have a bigger or better everything else.

One of the drifted tree’s branches was long, straight, slender. It pointed like a mocking, sandpapered wooden finger at the unscalable cliffs. Geoff applied his weight close to the main branch. As he lifted his feet from the ground the branch broke, sending him to his knees in the sand. Now he needed some binding material. Taking his unfinished spear with him, he ran to the base of the cliffs. Various odds and ends had been driven back there by past storms. Plastic Coke bottles, fragments of driftwood, pieces of cork . . . a nylon fishing net tangled round a broken barrel!

Geoff cut lengths of tough nylon line from the net, bound the knife in position at the end of his spear. Now he felt he had a real advantage. He looked around. The sun was sinking leisurely towards the sea, casting his long shadow on the sand. How long since Spiros left? How much time left till he got back? Geoff glanced at the frowning needle of the sentinel rock. A sentinel, yes. A watcher. Or a watchtower!

He put down his spear, ran to the northern point and sprang into the sea. Moments later he was clawing at the rock, dragging himself from the water, climbing. And scarcely a thought of danger, not from the sea or the climb, not from the deep water or the height. At thirty feet the rock narrowed down; he could lean to left or right and scan the sea to the north, in the direction of Achladi. Way out on the blue, sails gleamed white in the brilliant sunlight. On the far horizon, a smudge of smoke. Nothing else.

For a moment – the merest moment – Geoff’s old nausea returned. He closed his eyes and flattened himself to the rock, gripped tightly where his fingers were bedded in cracks in the weathered stone. A mass of stone shifted slightly under the pressure of his right hand, almost causing him to lose his balance. He teetered for a second, remembered Gwen . . . the nausea passed, and with it all fear. He stepped a little lower, examined the great slab of rock which his hand had tugged loose. And suddenly an idea burned bright in his brain.

Which was when he heard Gwen’s cry, thin as a keening wind, shrilling into his bones from along the beach. He jerked his head round, saw her there in the water inside the reef, wearily striking for the shore. She looked all in. His heart leaped into his mouth, and without pause he launched himself from the rock, striking the water feet first and sinking deep. No fear or effort to it this time; no time for any of that; surfacing, he struck for the shore. Then back along the beach, panting his heart out, flinging himself down in the small waves where she kneeled, sobbing, her face covered by her hands.

“Gwen, are you all right? What is it, love? What’s happened? I knew you’d exhaust yourself!”

She tried to stand up, collapsed into his arms and shivered there; he cradled her where earlier they’d made love. And at last she could tell it.

“I . . . I stayed close to the shore,” she gasped, gradually getting her breath. “Or rather, close to the cliffs. I was looking . . . looking for a way up. I’d gone about a third of a mile, I think. Then there was a spot where the water was very deep and the cliffs sheer. Something touched my legs and it was like an electric shock – I mean, it was so unexpected there in that deep water. To feel something slimy touching my legs like that. Ugh!” She drew a deep breath.

“I thought: God, sharks! But then I remembered: there are no sharks in the Med. Still, I wanted to be sure. So . . . so I turned, made a shallow dive and looked to see what . . . what . . .” She broke down into sobbing again.

Geoff could do nothing but warm her, hug her tighter yet.

“Oh, but there are sharks in the Med, Geoff,” she finally went on. “One shark, anyway. His name is Spiros! A spider? No, he’s a shark! Under the sea there, I saw . . . a girl, naked, tethered to the bottom with a rope round her ankle. And down in the deeps, a stone holding her there.”

“My God!” Geoff breathed.

“Her thighs, belly, were covered in those little green swimming crabs. She was all bloated, puffy, floating upright on her own internal gasses. Fish nibbled at her. Her nipples were gone . . .”

“The fish!” Geoff gasped. But Gwen shook her head.

“Not the fish,” she rasped. “Her arms and breasts were black with bruises. Her nipples had been bitten through – right through! Oh, Geoff, Geoff!” She hugged him harder than ever, shivering hard enough to shake him. “I know what happened to her. It was him, Spiros.” She paused, tried to control her shivering, which wasn’t only the after-effect of the water.

And finally she continued: “After that I had no strength. But somehow I made it back.”

“Get dressed,” he told her then, his voice colder than she’d ever heard it. “Quickly! No, not your dress – my trousers, shirt. The slacks will be too long for you. Roll up the bottoms. But get dressed, get warm.”

She did as he said. The sun, sinking, was still hot. Soon she was warm again, and calmer. Then Geoff gave her the spear he’d made and told her what he was going to do . . .

There were two of them, as like as peas in a pod. Geoff saw them, and the pieces fell into place. Spiros and his brother. The island’s codes were tight. These two looked for loose women; loose in their narrow eyes, anyway. And from the passports of the honeymooners it had been plain that they weren’t married. Which had made Gwen a whore, in their eyes. Like the Swedish girl, who’d met a man and gone to bed with him. As easy as that. So Spiros had tried it on, the easy way at first. By making it plain that he was on offer. Now that that hadn’t worked, now it was time for the hard way.

Geoff saw them coming in the boat and stopped gouging at the rock. His fingernails were cracked and starting to bleed, but the job was as complete as he could wish. He ducked back out of sight, hugged the sentinel rock and thought only of Gwen. He had one chance and mustn’t miss it.

He glanced back, over his shoulder. Gwen had heard the boat’s engine. She stood halfway between the sea and the waterfall with its foul pool. Her spear was grasped tightly in her hands. Like a young Amazon, Geoff thought. But then he heard the boat’s motor cut back and concentrated on what he was doing.

The put-put-put of the boat’s exhaust came closer. Geoff took a chance, glanced round the rim of the rock. Here they came, gentling into the channel between the rock and the cliffs. Spiros’s brother wore slacks; both men were naked from the waist up; Spiros had the tiller. And his brother had a shotgun!

One chance. Only one chance.

The boat’s nose came inching forward, began to pass directly below. Geoff gave a mad yell, heaved at the loose wedge of rock. For a moment he thought it would stick and put all his weight into it. But then it shifted, toppled.

Below, the two Greeks had looked up, eyes huge in tanned, startled faces. The one with the shotgun was on his feet. He saw the falling rock in the instant before it smashed down on him and drove him through the bottom of the boat. His gun went off, both barrels, and the shimmering air near Geoff’s head buzzed like a nest of wasps. Then, while all below was still in a turmoil, he aimed himself at Spiros and jumped.

Thrown about in the stern of his sinking boat, Spiros was making ready to dive overboard when Geoff’s feet hit him. He was hurled into the water, Geoff narrowly missing the swamped boat as he, too, crashed down into the sea. And then a mad flurry of water as they both struck out for the shore.

Spiros was there first. Crying out, wild, outraged, frightened, he dragged himself from the sea. He looked round and saw Geoff coming through the water – saw his boat disappear with only ripples to mark its passing, and no sign of his brother – and started at a lopsided run up the beach. Towards Gwen. Geoff swam for all he was worth, flew from the sea up onto the land.

Gwen was running, heading for the V in the cliff under the waterfall. Spiros was right behind her, arms reaching. Geoff came last, the air rasping in his lungs, hell’s fires blazing in his heart. He’d drawn blood and found it to his liking. But he stumbled, fell, and when he was up again he saw Spiros closing on his quarry. Gwen was backed up against the cliff, her feet in the water at the shallow end of the vile pool. The Greek made a low, apish lunge at her and she struck at him with her spear.

She gashed his face even as he grabbed her. His hand caught in the loose material of Geoff’s shirt, tearing it from her so that her breasts lolled free. Then she stabbed at him again, slicing him across the neck. His hands flew to his face and neck; he staggered back from her, tripped, and sat down in chest-deep water; Geoff arrived panting at the pool and Gwen flew into his arms. He took the spear from her, turned it towards Spiros.

But the Greek was finished. He shrieked and splashed in the pool like the madman he was, seemed incapable of getting to his feet. His wounds weren’t bad, but the blood was everywhere. That wasn’t the worst of it: the thing he’d tripped on had floated to the surface. It was beginning to rot, but it was – or had been – a young man. Rubbery arms and legs tangled with Spiros’s limbs; a ghastly, gaping face tossed with his frantic threshing; a great black hole showed where the bloated corpse had taken a shotgun blast to the chest, the shot that had killed him.

For a little while longer Spiros fought to be rid of the thing – screamed aloud as its gaping, accusing mouth screamed horribly, silently at him – then gave up and flopped back half-in, half-out of the water. One of the corpse’s arms was draped across his heaving, shuddering chest. He lay there with his hands over his face and cried, and the flies came swarming like a black, hostile cloud from the cave to settle on him.

Geoff held Gwen close, guided her away from the horror down the beach to a sea which was a deeper blue now. “It’s okay,” he kept saying, as much for himself as for her. “It’s okay. They’ll come looking for us, sooner or later.”

As it happened, it was sooner . . .

 

1990

 

The Man Who Drew Cats

Michael Marshall Smith

THE FIRST VOLUME OF Best New Horror won both the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award. This helped establish the series amongst the readers and some publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, although it has always remained a struggle to convince people to submit material for consideration.

Back in the early days, Ramsey Campbell and I found ourselves spending quite considerable amounts of our own money acquiring books and magazines just so that we could read stories for the anthology. In fact, twenty years later I still have to do the same thing.

This time our Introduction had expanded to nine pages and the Necrology was up to thirteen. Ramsey and I were concerned about the much-hyped recessions in the movie and publishing industries (apparently some things never change), and we warned that the mid-list was under threat. Once again, we were scarily prophetic.

The publishers once again reused my Letraset logo, now embossed and with an added 2. This time the cover was an original piece by Spanish-Mexican illustrator Luis Rey, who lived in London. As with the first book, Robinson did it in trade paperback and Carroll & Graf went with a hardcover. However, a couple of years later I found an American paperback that neither Robinson nor I had been aware of. G&G claimed it was not a reprint, but a rebinding of their earlier edition, until I pointed out that it was, in fact, a larger format than the hardcover . . .!

For this second compilation we found ourselves working with some of the Big Names in genre publishing. Out of the twenty-eight stories in the book, we included work by such established authors as Peter Straub, Jonathan Carroll, Harlan Ellison, F. Paul Wilson, Gene Wolfe and Gahan Wilson.

However, the story I have chosen to represent this particular volume was from a relative newcomer. In fact, it was Michael Marshall Smith’s first published story.

One of the most rewarding experiences about being an editor is discovering and nurturing new talent. I have always tried to leave slots for new or upcoming writers in Best New Horror and the other anthologies I have edited. Which is why it was such a thrill when David A. Sutton and I plucked “The Man Who Drew Cats” out of the submission pile for Dark Voices 2: The Pan Book of Horror.

Rarely have I ever encountered a voice so assured or a writing style so effortless in a first tale. Remarkably, Mike wrote the story in a day. More than anyone else, it reminded me of the work of Stephen King, and given the accolades that both the tale and its author have subsequently received, I can only presume that I was not the only one . . .

TOM WAS A VERY TALL MAN, so tall he didn’t even have a nickname for it. Ned Black, who was at least a head shorter, had been “Tower Block” since the sixth grade, and Jack had a sign up over the door saying MIND YOUR HEAD, NED. But Tom was just Tom. It was like he was so tall it didn’t bear mentioning even for a joke: be a bit like ragging someone for breathing.

Course there were other reasons too for not ragging Tom about his height or anything else. The guys you’ll find perched on stools round Jack’s bar watching the game and buying beers, they’ve known each other forever. Gone to Miss Stadler’s school together, gotten under each other’s Mom’s feet, double-dated right up to giving each other’s best man’s speech. Kingstown is a small place, you understand, and the old boys who come regular to Jack’s mostly spent their childhoods in the same tree-house. Course they’d since gone their separate ways, up to a point: Pete was an accountant now, had a small office down Union Street just off the Square and did pretty good, whereas Ned was still pumping gas and changing oil and after forty years he did that pretty good too. Comes a time when men have known each other so long they forget what they do for a living most the time, because it just don’t matter. When you talk there’s a little bit of skimming stones down the quarry in second grade, a whisper of dolling up to go to that first dance, a tad of going to the housewarming when they moved ten years back. There’s all that, so much more than you can say, and none of it’s important except for having happened.

So we’ll stop by and have a couple of beers and talk about the town and rag each other, and the pleasure’s just in shooting the breeze and it don’t really matter what’s said, just the fact that we’re all still there to say it.

But Tom, he was different. We all remember the first time we saw him. It was a long hot summer like we haven’t seen in the ten years since, and we were lolling under the fans at Jack’s and complaining about the tourists. Kingstown does get its share in the summer, even though it’s not near the sea and we don’t have a McDonald’s and I’ll be damned if I can figure out why folk’ll go out of their way to see what’s just a quiet little town near some mountains. It was as hot as Hell that afternoon and as much as a man could do to sit in his shirtsleeves and drink the coolest beer he could find, and Jack’s is the coolest for us, and always will be, I guess.

Then Tom walked in. His hair was already pretty white back then, and long, and his face was brown and tough with grey eyes like diamonds set in leather. He was dressed mainly in black with a long coat that made you hot just to look at it, but he looked comfortable like he carried his very own weather around with him and he was just fine.

He got a beer, and sat down at a table and read the town Bugle, and that was that.

It was special because there wasn’t anything special about it. Jack’s Bar isn’t exactly exclusive and we don’t all turn round and stare at anyone new if they come in, but that place is like a monument to shared times. If a tourist couple comes in out of the heat and sits down, nobody says anything – and maybe nobody even notices at the front of their mind – but it’s like there’s a little island of the alien in the water and the currents just don’t ebb and flow the way they usually do, if you get what I mean. Tom just walked in and sat down and it was all right because it was like he was there just like we were, and could’ve been for thirty years. He sat and read his paper like part of the same river, and everyone just carried on downstream the way they were.

Pretty soon he goes up for another beer and a few of us got talking to him. We got his name and what he did – painting, he said – and after that it was just shooting the breeze. That quick. He came in that summer afternoon and just fell into the conversation like he’d been there all his life, and sometimes it was hard to imagine he hadn’t been. Nobody knew where he came from, or where he’d been, and there was something real quiet about him. A stillness, a man in a slightly different world. But he showed enough to get along real well with us, and a bunch of old friends don’t often let someone in like that.

Anyway, he stayed that whole summer. Rented himself a place just round the corner from the square, or so he said: I never saw it. I guess no one did. He was a private man, private like a steel door with four bars and a couple of six-inch padlocks, and when he left the square at the end of the day he could have vanished as soon as he turned the corner for all we knew. But he always came from that direction in the morning, with his easel on his back and paintbox under his arm, and he always wore that black coat like it was a part of him. But he always looked cool, and the funny thing was when you stood near him you could swear you felt cooler yourself. I remember Pete saying over a beer that it wouldn’t surprise him none if, assuming it ever rained again, Tom would walk round in his own column of dryness. He was just joking, of course, but Tom made you think things like that.

Jack’s bar looks right out onto the square, the kind of square towns don’t have much anymore: big and dusty with old roads out each corner, tall shops and houses on all the sides and some stone paving in the middle round a fountain that ain’t worked in living memory. Well in the summer that old square is just full of out-of-towners in pink towelling jump-suits and nasty jackets standing round saying “Wow ” and taking pictures of our quaint old hall and our quaint old stores and even our quaint old selves if we stand still too long. Tom would sit out near the fountain and paint and those people would stand and watch for hours – but he didn’t paint the houses or the square or the old Picture House. He painted animals, and painted them like you’ve never seen. Birds with huge blue speckled wings and cats with cutting green eyes; and whatever he painted it looked like it was just coiled up on the canvas ready to fly away. He didn’t do them in their normal colours, they were all reds and purples and deep blues and greens – and yet they fair sparkled with life. It was a wonder to watch: he’d put up a fresh paper, sit looking at nothing in particular, then dip his brush into his paint and draw a line, maybe red, maybe blue. Then he’d add another, maybe the same colour, maybe not. Stroke by stroke you could see the animal build up in front of your eyes and yet when it was finished you couldn’t believe it hadn’t always been there. When he’d finished he’d spray it with some stuff to fix the paints and put a price on it and you can believe me those paintings were sold before they hit the ground. Spreading businessmen from New Jersey or some such and their bored wives would come alive for maybe the first time in years, and walk away with one of those paintings and their arms round each other, looking like they’d found a bit of something they’d forgotten they’d lost.

Come about six o’clock Tom would finish up and walk across to Jack’s, looking like a sailing ship amongst rowing boats and saying yes he’d be back again tomorrow and yes, he’d be happy to do a painting for them. He’d get a beer and sit with us and watch the game and there’d be no paint on his fingers or his clothes, not a spot. I figured he’d got so much control over that paint it went where it was told and nowhere else.

I asked him once how he could bear to let those paintings go. I know if I’d been able to make anything that good in my whole life I couldn’t let it out of my sight, I’d want to keep it to look at sometimes. He thought for a moment and then he said he believed it depends how much of yourself you’ve put into it. If you’ve gone deep down and pulled up what’s inside and put it down, then you don’t want to let it go: you want to keep it, so’s you can check sometimes that it’s still safely tied down. Comes a time when a painting’s so right and so good that it’s private, and no one’ll understand it except the man who put it down. Only he is going to know what he’s talking about. But the everyday paintings, well they were mainly just because he liked to paint animals, and liked for people to have them. He could only put a piece of himself into something he was going to sell, but they paid for the beers and I guess it’s like us fellows in Jack’s Bar: if you like talking, you don’t always have to be saying something important.

Why animals? Well if you’d seen him with them I guess you wouldn’t have to ask. He loved them, is all, and they loved him right back. The cats were always his favourites. My old Pa used to say that cats weren’t nothing but sleeping machines put on the earth to do some of the human’s sleeping for them, and whenever Tom worked in the square there’d always be a couple curled up near his feet. And whenever he did a chalk drawing, he’d always do a cat.

Once in a while, you see, Tom seemed to get tired of painting on paper, and he’d get out some chalks and sit down on the baking flagstones and just do a drawing right there on the dusty rock. Now I’ve told you about his paintings, but these drawings were something else again. It was like because they couldn’t be bought but would be washed away, he was putting more of himself into it, doing more than just shooting the breeze. They were just chalk on dusty stone and they were still in these weird colours, but I tell you children wouldn’t walk near them because they looked so real, and they weren’t the only ones, either. People would stand a few feet back and stare and you could see the wonder in their eyes. If they could’ve been bought there were people who would have sold their houses. I’m telling you. And it’s a funny thing but a couple of times when I walked over to open the store up in the mornings I saw a dead bird or two on top of those drawings, almost like they had landed on it and been so terrified to find themselves right on top of a cat they’d dropped dead of fright. But they must have been dumped there by some real cat, of course, because some of those birds looked like they’d been mauled a bit. I used to throw them in the bushes to tidy up and some of them were pretty broken up.

Old Tom was a godsend to a lot of mothers that summer, who found they could leave their little ones by him, do their shopping in peace and have a soda with their friends and come back to find the kids still sitting quietly watching Tom paint. He didn’t mind them at all and would talk to them and make them laugh, and kids of that age laughing is one of the best sounds there is. It’s the kind of sound that makes the trees grow. They’re young and curious and the world spins round them and when they laugh the world seems a brighter place because it takes you back to the time when you knew no evil and everything was good, or if it wasn’t, it would be over by tomorrow.

And here I guess I’ve finally come down to it, because there was one little boy who didn’t laugh much, but just sat quiet and watchful, and I guess he probably understands more of what happened that summer than any of us, though maybe not in words he could tell.

His name was Billy McNeill, and he was Jim Valentine’s kid. Jim used to be a mechanic, worked with Ned up at the gas station and raced beat-up cars after hours. Which is why his kid is called McNeill now: one Sunday Jim took a corner a mite too fast and the car rolled and the gas tank caught and they never did find all the wheels. A year later his Mary married again. God alone knows why, her folks warned her, her friends warned her, but I guess love must just have been blind. Sam McNeill’s work schedule was at best pretty empty, and mostly he just drank and hung out with friends who maybe weren’t always this side of the law. I guess Mary had her own sad little miracle and got her sight back pretty soon, because it wasn’t long before Sam got free with his fists when the evenings got too long and he’d had a lot too many. You didn’t see Mary around much anymore. In these parts people tend to stare at black eyes on a woman, and a deaf man could hear the whisperings of “We Told Her So”.

One morning Tom was sitting painting as usual, and little Billy was sitting watching him. Usually he just wandered off after a while but this morning Mary was at the doctor’s and she came over to collect him, walking quickly with her face lowered. But not low enough. I was watching from the store, it was kind of a slow day. Tom’s face never showed much. He was a man for a quiet smile and a raised eyebrow, but he looked shocked that morning. Mary’s eyes were puffed and purple and there was a cut on her cheek an inch long. I guess we’d sort of gotten used to seeing her like that and if the truth be known some of the wives thought she’d got remarried a bit on the soon side and I suppose we may all have been a bit cold towards her, Jim Valentine having been so well-liked and all.

Tom looked from the little boy who never laughed much, to his mom with her tired unhappy eyes and her beat-up face, and his own face went from shocked to stony and I can’t describe it any other way but that I felt a cold chill cross my heart from right across the square.

But then he smiled and ruffled Billy’s hair and Mary took Billy’s hand and they went off. They turned back once and Tom was still looking after them and he gave Billy a little wave and he waved back and mother and child smiled together.

That night in Jack’s Tom put a quiet question about Mary and we told him the story. As he listened his face seemed to harden from within, his eyes growing flat and dead. We told him that old Lou Lachance, who lived next door to the McNeill’s, said that sometimes you could hear him shouting and her pleading till three in the morning and on still nights the sound of Billy crying for even longer than that. Told him it was a shame, but what could you do? Folks keep themselves out of other people’s faces round here, and I guess Sam and his drinking buddies didn’t have much to fear from nearly-retireders like us anyhow. Told him it was a terrible thing, and none of us liked it, but these things happened and what could you do.

Tom listened and didn’t say a word. Just sat there in his black coat and listened to us pass the buck. After a while the talk sort of petered out and we all sat and watched the bubbles in our beers. I guess the bottom line was that none of us had really thought about it much except as another chapter of small-town gossip, and Jesus Christ did I feel ashamed about that by the time we’d finished telling it. Sitting there with Tom was no laughs at all. He had a real edge to him, and seemed more unknown than known that night. He stared at his laced fingers for a long time, and then he began, real slow, to talk.

He’d been married once, he said, a long time ago, and he’d lived in a place called Stevensburg with his wife Rachel. When he talked about her the air seemed to go softer and we all sat quiet and supped our beers and remembered how it had been way back when we first loved our own wives. He talked of her smile and the look in her eyes and when we went home that night I guess there were a few wives who were surprised at how tight they got hugged, and who went to sleep in their husband’s arms feeling more loved and contented than they had in a long while.

He’d loved her and she him and for a few years they were the happiest people on earth. Then a third party had got involved. Tom didn’t say his name, and he spoke real neutrally about him, but it was a gentleness like silk wrapped round a knife. Anyway his wife fell in love with him, or thought she had, or leastways she slept with him. In their bed, the bed they’d come to on their wedding night. As Tom spoke these words some of us looked up at him, startled, like we’d been slapped across the face.

Rachel did what so many do and live to regret till their dying day. She was so mixed up and getting so much pressure from the other guy that she decided to plough on with the one mistake and make it the biggest in the world.

She left Tom. He talked with her, pleaded even. It was almost impossible to imagine Tom ever doing that, but I guess the man we knew was a different guy from the one he was remembering. The pleading made no difference.

And so Tom had to carry on living in Stevensburg, walking the same tracks, seeing them around, wondering if she was as free and easy with him, if the light in her eyes was shining on him now. And each time the man saw Tom he’d look straight at him and crease a little smile, a grin that said he knew about the pleading and he and his cronies had had a good laugh over the wedding bed – and yes, I’m going home with your wife tonight and I know just how she likes it, you want to compare notes?

And then he’d turn and kiss Rachel on the mouth, his eyes on Tom, smiling. And she let him do it.

It had kept stupid old women in stories for weeks, the way Tom kept losing weight and his temper and the will to live. He took three months of it and then left without bothering to sell the house. Stevensburg was where he’d grown up and courted and loved and now wherever he turned the good times had rotted and hung like fly-blown corpses in all the cherished places. He’d never been back.

It took an hour to tell, and then he stopped talking a while and lit a hundredth cigarette and Pete got us all some more beers. We were sitting sad and thoughtful, tired like we’d lived it ourselves. And I guess most of us had, some little bit of it. But had we ever loved anyone the way he’d loved her? I doubt it, not all of us put together. Pete set the beers down and Ned asked Tom why he hadn’t just beaten the living shit out of the guy. Now, no one else would have actually asked that, but Ned’s a good guy, and I guess we were all with him in feeling a piece of that oldest and most crushing hatred in the world, the hate of a man who’s lost the woman he loves to another, and we knew what Ned was saying. I’m not saying it’s a good thing and I know you’re not supposed to feel like that these days but show me a man who says he doesn’t and I’ll show you a liar. Love is the only feeling worth a tin shit but you’ve got to know that it comes from both sides of a man’s character and the deeper it runs the darker the pools it draws from.

My guess is he just hated the man too much to hit him. Comes a time when that isn’t enough, when nothing is ever going to be enough, and so you can’t do anything at all. And as he talked the pain just flowed out like a river that wasn’t ever going to be stopped, a river that had cut a channel through every corner of his soul. I learnt something that night that you can go your whole life without realizing: that there are things that can be done that can mess someone up so badly, for so long, that they just cannot be allowed; that there are some kinds of pain that you cannot suffer to be brought into the world.

And then Tom was done telling and he raised a smile and said that in the end he hadn’t done anything to the man except paint him a picture, which I didn’t understand, but Tom looked like he’d talked all he was going to.

So we got some more beers and shot some quiet pool before going home. But I guess we all knew what he’d been talking about.

Billy McNeill was just a child. He should have been dancing through a world like a big funfair full of sunlight and sounds, and instead he went home at night and saw his mom being beaten up by a man with shit for brains who struck out at a good woman because he was too stupid to deal with the world. Most kids go to sleep thinking about bikes and climbing apple trees and skimming stones, and he was lying there hearing his mom get smashed in the stomach and then hit again as she threw up in the sink. Tom didn’t say any of that, but he did. And we knew he was right.

The summer kept up bright and hot, and we all had our businesses to attend to. Jack sold a lot of beer and I sold a lot of ice cream (Sorry ma’am, just the three flavours, and no, Bubblegum Pistachio ain’t one of them) and Ned fixed a whole bunch of cracked radiators. Tom sat right out there in the square with a couple of cats by his feet and a crowd around him, magicking up animals in the sun.

And I think that after that night Mary maybe got a few more smiles as she did her shopping, and maybe a few more wives stopped to talk to her. She looked a lot better too: Sam had a job by the sound of it and her face healed up pretty soon. You could often see her standing holding Billy’s hand as they watched Tom paint for a while before they went home. I think she realized they had a friend in him. Sometimes Billy was there all afternoon, and he was happy there in the sun by Tom’s feet and oftentimes he’d pick up a piece of chalk and sit scrawling on the pavement. Sometimes I’d see Tom lean over and say something to him and he’d look up and smile a simple child’s smile that beamed in the sunlight. The tourists kept coming and the sun kept shining and it was one of those summers that go on forever and stick in a child’s mind, and tell you what summer should be like for the rest of your life. And I’m damn sure it sticks in Billy’s mind, just like it does in all of ours.

Because one morning Mary didn’t come into the store, which had gotten to being a regular sort of thing, and Billy wasn’t out there in the square. After the way things had been the last few weeks that could only be bad news, and so I left the boy John in charge of the store and hurried over to have a word with Tom. I was kind of worried.

I was no more than halfway across to him when I saw Billy come running from the opposite corner of the square, going straight to Tom. He was crying fit to burst and just leapt up at Tom and clung to him, his arms wrapped tight round his neck. Then his mother came across from the same direction, running as best she could. She got to Tom and they just looked at each other. Mary’s a real pretty girl but you wouldn’t have believed it then. It looked like he’d actually broken her nose this time, and blood was streaming out of her lip. She started sobbing, saying Sam had lost his job because he was back on the drink and what could she do and then suddenly there was a roar and I was shoved aside and Sam was standing there, still wearing his slippers, weaving back and forth and radiating that aura of violence that keeps men like him safe. He started shouting at Mary to take the kid the fuck back home and she just flinched and cowered closer to Tom like she was huddling round a fire to keep out the cold. This just got Sam even wilder and he staggered forward and told Tom to get the fuck out of it if he knew what was good for him, and grabbed Mary’s arm and tried to yank her towards him, his face terrible with rage.

Then Tom stood up. Now Tom was a tall man, but he wasn’t a young man, and he was thin. Sam was thirty and built like the town hall. When he did work it usually involved moving heavy things from one place to another, and his strength was supercharged by a whole pile of drunken nastiness.

But at that moment the crowd stepped back as one and I suddenly felt very afraid for Sam McNeill. Tom looked like you could take anything you cared to him and it would just break, like he was a huge spike of granite wrapped in skin with two holes in the face where the rock showed through. And he was mad, not hot and blowing like Sam, but mad and cold.

There was a long pause. Then Sam weaved back a step and shouted:

“You just come on home, you hear? Gonna be real trouble if you don’t, Mary. Real trouble,” and then stormed off across the square the way he came, knocking his way through the tourist vultures soaking up the spicy local colour.

Mary turned to Tom, so afraid it hurt to see, and said she guessed she’d better be going. Tom looked at her for a moment and then spoke for the first time.

“Do you love him?”

Even if you wanted to, you ain’t going to lie to eyes like that, for fear something inside you will break.

Real quiet she said: “No,” and began crying softly as she took Billy’s hand and walked slowly back across the square.

Tom packed up his stuff and walked over to Jack’s. I went with him and had a beer but I had to get back to the shop and Tom just sat there like a trigger, silent and strung up tight as a drum. Somewhere down near the bottom of those still waters something was stirring. Something I thought I didn’t want to see.

About an hour later it was lunchtime and I’d just left the shop to have a break when suddenly something whacked into the back of my legs and nearly knocked me down. It was Billy. It was Billy and he had a bruise round his eye that was already closing it up.

I knew what the only thing to do was and I did it. I took his hand and led him across to the Bar, feeling a hard anger pushing against my throat. When he saw Tom, Billy ran to him again and Tom took him in his arms and looked over Billy’s shoulder at me, and I felt my own anger collapse utterly in the face of a fury I could never have generated. I tried to find a word to describe it but they all just seemed like they were in the wrong language. All I can say is I wanted to be somewhere else and it felt real cold standing there facing that stranger in a black coat.

Then the moment passed and Tom was holding the kid close, ruffling his hair and talking to him in a low voice, murmuring the words I thought only mothers knew. He dried Billy’s tears and checked his eye and then he got off his stool, smiled down at him and said:

“I think it’s time we did some drawing, what d’you say?” and, taking the kid’s hand, he picked up his chalkbox and walked out into the square.

I don’t know how many times I looked up and watched them that afternoon. They were sitting side by side on the stone, Billy’s little hand wrapped round one of Tom’s fingers, and Tom doing one of his chalk drawings. Every now and then Billy would reach across and add a little bit and Tom would smile and say something and Billy’s gurgling laugh would float across the square. The store was real busy that afternoon and I was chained to that counter, but I could tell by the size of the crowd that a lot of Tom was going into that picture, and maybe a bit of Billy too.

It was about four o’clock before I could take a break. I walked across the crowded square in the mid-afternoon heat and shouldered my way through to where they sat with a couple of cold Cokes. And when I saw it my mouth just dropped open and took a five-minute vacation while I tried to take it in.

It was a cat all right, but not a normal cat. It was a life-size tiger. I’d never seen Tom do anything near that big before, and as I stood there in the beating sun trying to get my mind round it, it almost seemed to stand in three dimensions, a nearly living thing. Its stomach was very lean and thin, its tail seemed to twitch with colour, and as Tom worked on the eyes and jaws, his face set with a rigid concentration quite unlike his usual calm painting face, the snarling mask of the tiger came to life before my eyes. And I could see that he wasn’t just putting a bit of himself in at all. This was a man at full stretch, giving all of himself and reaching down for more, pulling up bloody fistfuls and throwing them down. The tiger was all the rage I’d seen in his eyes, and more, and like his love for Rachel that rage just seemed bigger than any other man could comprehend. He was pouring it out and sculpting it into the lean and ravenous creature coming to pulsating life in front of us on the pavement, and the weird purples and blues and reds just made it seem more vibrant and alive.

I watched him working furiously on it, the boy sometimes helping, adding a tiny bit here and there that strangely seemed to add to it, and thought I understood what he’d meant that evening a few weeks back. He said he’d done a painting for the man who’d given him so much pain. Then, as now, he must have found what I guess you’d call something fancy like “catharsis” through his skill with chalks, had wrenched the pain up from within him and nailed it down onto something solid that he could walk away from. Now he was helping that little boy do the same, and the boy did look better, his bruised eye hardly showing with the wide smile on his face as he watched the big cat conjured up from nowhere in front of him.

We all just stood and watched, like something out of an old story, the simple folk and the magical stranger. It always feels like you’re giving a bit of yourself away when you praise someone else’s creation, and its often done grudgingly, but you could feel the awe that day like a warm wind. Comes a time when you realize something special is happening, something you’re never going to see again, and there isn’t anything you can do but watch.

Well I had to go back to the store after a while. I hated to go but, well, John is a good boy, married now of course, but in those days his head was full of girls and it didn’t do to leave him alone in a busy shop for too long.

And so the long hot day drew slowly to a close. I kept the store open till eight, when the light began to turn and the square emptied out with all the tourists going away to write postcards and see if we didn’t have even just a little McDonald’s hidden away someplace. I suppose Mary had troubles enough at home, realized where the boy would be and figured he was safer there than anywhere else, and I guess she was right.

Tom and Billy finished up drawing and then Tom sat and talked to him for some time. Then they got up and the kid walked slowly off to the corner of the square, looking back to wave at Tom a couple times. Tom stood and watched him go and when Billy had gone he stayed there a while, head down, like a huge black statue in the gathering dark. He looked kind of creepy out there and I don’t mind telling you I was glad when he finally moved and started walking over towards Jack’s. I ran out to catch up with him and drew level just as we passed the drawing. And then I had to stop. I just couldn’t look at that and move at the same time.

Finished, the drawing was like nothing on earth, and I suppose that’s exactly what it was. I can’t hope to describe it to you, although I’ve seen it in my dreams many times in the last ten years. You had to be there, on that heavy summer night, had to know what was going on. Otherwise it’s going to sound like it was just a drawing.

That tiger was out and out terrifying. It looked so mean and hungry, Christ I don’t know what: it just looked like the darkest parts of mankind, the pain and the fury and the vengeful hate nailed down in front of you for you to see, and I just stood there and shivered in the humid evening air.

“We did him a picture,” Tom said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said, and nodded. Like I said, I know what “catharsis” means and I thought I understood what he was saying. But I really didn’t want to look at it much longer. “Let’s go have a beer, hey?”

The storm in Tom hadn’t passed, I could tell, and he still seemed to thrum with crackling emotions looking for an earth, but I thought the clouds might be breaking and I was glad.

And so we walked slowly over to Jack’s and had a few beers and watched some pool being played. Tom seemed pretty tired, but still alert, and I relaxed a little. Come eleven most of the guys started going on their way and I was surprised to see Tom get another beer. Pete, Ned and I stayed on, and Jack of course, though we knew our loving wives would have something to say about that. It just didn’t seem time to go. Outside it had gotten pretty dark, though the moon was keeping the square in a kind of twilight and the lights in the bar threw a pool of warmth out of the front window.

Then, about twelve o’clock, it happened, and I don’t suppose any of us will ever see the same world we grew up in again. I’ve told this whole thing like it was just me who was there, but we all were, and we remember it together.

Because suddenly there was a wailing sound outside, a thin cutting cry, getting closer. Tom immediately snapped to his feet and stared out the window like he’d been waiting for it. As we looked out across the square we saw little Billy come running and we could see the blood on his face from there. Some of us got to get up but Tom snarled at us to stay there and so I guess we just stayed put, sitting back down like we’d been pushed. He strode out the door and into the square and the boy saw him and ran to him and Tom folded him in his cloak and held him close and warm. But he didn’t come back in. He just stood there, and he was waiting for something.

Now there’s a lot of crap talked about silences. I read novels when I’ve the time and you see things like “Time stood still” and so on and you think bullshit it did. So I’ll just say I don’t think anyone in the world breathed in that next minute. There was no wind, no movement. The stillness and silence were there like you could touch them, but more than that: they were like that’s all there was and all there ever had been.

We felt the slow red throb of violence from right across the square before we could even see the man. Then Sam came staggering into view waving a bottle like a flag and cursing his head off. At first he couldn’t see Tom and the boy because they were the opposite side of the fountain, and he ground to a wavering halt, but then he started shouting, rough jags of sound that seemed to strike against the silence and die instead of breaking it, and he began charging across the square – and if ever there was a man with murder in his thoughts then it was Sam McNeill. He was like a man who’d given his soul the evening off. I wanted to shout to Tom to get the hell out of the way, to come inside, but the words wouldn’t come out of my throat and we all just stood there, knuckles whitening as we clutched the bar and stared, our mouths open like we’d made a pact never to use them again. Tom just stood there, watching Sam come towards him, getting closer, almost as far as the spot where Tom usually painted. It felt like we were looking out of the window at a picture of something that happened long ago in another place and time, and the closer Sam got the more I began to feel very afraid for him.

It was at that moment that Sam stopped dead in his tracks, skidding forward like in some kid’s cartoon, his shout dying off in his ragged throat. He was staring at the ground in front of him, his eyes wide and his mouth a stupid circle. Then he began to scream.

It was a high shrill noise like a woman, and coming out of that bull of a man it sent fear racking down my spine. He started making thrashing movements like he was trying to move backwards, but he just stayed where he was.

His movements became unmistakable at about the same time his screams turned from terror to agony. He was trying to get his leg away from something.

Suddenly he seemed to fall forward on one knee, his other leg stuck out behind him, and he raised his head and shrieked at the dark skies and we saw his face then and I’m not going to forget that face so long as I live. It was a face from before there were any words, the face behind our oldest fears and earliest nightmares, the face we’re terrified of seeing on ourselves one night when we’re alone in the dark and It finally comes out from under the bed to get us, like we always knew it would.

Then Sam fell on his face, his leg buckled up – and still he thrashed and screamed and clawed at the ground with his hands, blood running from his broken fingernails as he twitched and struggled. Maybe the light was playing tricks, and my eyes were sparkling anyway on account of being too paralysed with fear to even blink, but as he thrashed less and less it became harder and harder to see him at all, and as the breeze whipped up stronger his screams began to sound a lot like the wind. But still he writhed and moaned and then suddenly there was the most godawful crunching sound and then there was no movement or sound anymore.

Like they were on a string our heads all turned together and we saw Tom still standing there, his coat flapping in the wind. He had a hand on Billy’s shoulder and as we looked we could see that Mary was there too now and he had one arm round her as she sobbed into his coat.

I don’t know how long we just sat there staring but then we were ejected off our seats and out of the bar. Pete and Ned ran to Tom but Jack and I went to where Sam had fallen, and we stared down, and I tell you the rest of my life now seems like a build up to and a climb down from that moment.

We were standing in front of a chalk drawing of a tiger. Even now my scalp seems to tighten when I think of it, and my chest feels like someone punched a hole in it and tipped a gallon of ice water inside. I’ll just tell you the facts: Jack was there and he knows what we saw and what we didn’t see.

What we didn’t see was Sam McNeill. He just wasn’t there. We saw a drawing of a tiger in purples and greens, a little bit scuffed, and there was a lot more red round the mouth of that tiger than there had been that afternoon and I’m sure that if either of us could have dreamed of reaching out and touching it, it would have been warm too.

And the hardest part to tell is this. I’d seen that drawing in the afternoon, and Jack had too, and we knew that when it was done it was lean and thin.

I swear to God that tiger wasn’t thin any more. What Jack and I were looking at was one fat tiger.

After a while I looked up and across at Tom. He was still standing with Mary and Billy, but they weren’t crying anymore. Mary was hugging Billy so tight he squawked and Tom’s face looked calm and alive and creased with a smile. And as we stood there the skies opened for the first time in months and a cool rain hammered down. At my feet colours began to run and lines became less distinct. Jack and I stood and watched till there was just pools of meaningless colours and then we walked slowly over to the others, not even looking at the bottle lying on the ground, and we all stayed there a long time in the rain, facing each other, not saying a word.

Well that was ten years ago, near enough. After a while Mary took Billy home and they turned to give us a little wave before they turned the corner. The cuts on Billy’s face healed real quick, and he’s a good looking boy now: he looks a lot like his dad and he’s already fooling about in cars. Helps me in the store sometimes. His mom ain’t aged a day and looks wonderful. She never married again, but she looks real happy the way she is.

The rest of us just said a simple goodnight. Goodnight was all we could muster and maybe that’s all there was to say. Then we walked off home in the directions of our wives. Tom gave me a small smile before he turned and walked off alone. I almost followed him, I wanted to say something, but the end I just stayed where I was and watched him go. And that’s how I’ll always remember him best, because for a moment there was a spark in his eyes and I knew that some pain had been lifted deep down inside somewhere.

Then he walked and no one has seen him since, and like I said it’s been about ten years now. He wasn’t there in the square the next morning and he didn’t come in for a beer. Like he’d never been, he just wasn’t there. Except for the hole in our hearts: it’s funny how much you can miss a quiet man.

We’re all still here, of course, Jack, Ned, Pete and the boys, and all much the same, though even older and greyer. Pete lost his wife and Ned retired but things go on the same. The tourists come in the summer and we sit on the stools and drink our cold beers and shoot the breeze about ballgames and families and how the world’s going to shit, and sometimes we’ll draw close and talk about a night a long time ago, and about paintings and cats, and about the quietest man we ever knew, wondering where he is, and what he’s doing. And we’ve had a six-pack in the back of the fridge for ten years now, and the minute he walks through that door and pulls up a stool, that’s his.

 

1991

 

The Same in Any Language

Ramsey Campbell

BEST NEW HORROR 2 was the only book I have ever had censored by a publisher.

Ramsey and I had selected and contracted Roberta Lannes’ disturbing serial-killer story “Apostate in Denim” (from the first issue of Iniquities magazine) for the volume. However, when we delivered the book manuscript to Robinson, certain people in the company vehemently objected to the content of the story and refused to include it. Despite our protestations (how could a horror story be too horrific?), we were overruled. At least Roberta was very understanding about the whole matter, and she later included the tale in her 1997 collection The Mirror of Night.

For the third volume, Robinson once again used a cover painting by Luis Rey (of a werewolf-like monster crashing through a window) and added a 3 to the embossed Letraset logo. Carroll & Graf went a much classier route, completely redesigning the jacket for its hardcover and subsequent trade paperback editions.

This time our Introduction had crept up to eleven pages, while the Necrology had blossomed to fifteen. In our editorial summation, Ramsey and I took a reviewer for Locus magazine to task for his ill-informed assertion that the horror field was “limited in its relevance to anything”.

The twenty-nine stories included return appearances by Robert R. McCammon, Thomas Ligotti, Karl Edward Wagner and Kim Newman, amongst others. Rising star Michael Marshall Smith was represented with a second contribution (the British Fantasy Award-winning “The Dark Land”), and we even featured a tale by award-winning Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison (“The Braille Encyclopedia”).

However, the story I have chosen from this 1992 volume is by my co-editor, Ramsey Campbell. Over the past twenty years, Ramsey has been represented in Best New Horror more than any other author. In fact, he has had stories in sixteen out of the twenty editions (including two in volume seventeen).

As anyone familiar with my Introductions knows, I usually frown upon editors including their own stories in their anthologies but, in the case of collaborative works, I think it is fine if it is the other editor who makes the selection. Over the five volumes I co-edited with Ramsey, he always disassociated himself when it came to his own work, and it was left up to me to make the final decision.

“The Same in Any Language” is another of those “fish out of water” travelogue tales that I love so dearly. The story was inspired by a visit Ramsey made to the Crete island of Spinalonga, the site of an abandoned leper colony, and the final paragraph is intended as a tribute to Stephen King . . .

THE DAY MY FATHER is to take me where the lepers used to live is hotter than ever. Even the old women with black scarves wrapped around their heads sit inside the bus station instead of on the chairs outside the tavernas. Kate fans herself with her straw hat like a basket someone’s sat on and gives my father one of those smiles they’ve made up between them. She’s leaning forwards to see if that’s our bus when he says “Why do you think they call them lepers, Hugh?”

I can hear what he’s going to say, but I have to humour him. “I don’t know.”

“Because they never stop leaping up and down.”

It takes him much longer to say the first four words than the rest of it. I groan because he expects me to, and Kate lets off one of her giggles I keep hearing whenever they stay in my father’s and my room at the hotel and send me down for a swim. “If you can’t give a grin, give a groan,” my father says for about the millionth time, and Kate pokes him with her freckly elbow as if he’s too funny for words. She annoys me so much that I say “Lepers don’t rhyme with creepers, dad.”

“I never thought they did, son. I was just having a laugh. If we can’t laugh we might as well be dead, ain’t that straight, Kate?” He winks at her thigh and slaps his own instead, and says to me “Since you’re so clever, why don’t you find out when our bus is coming.”

“That’s it now.”

“And I’m Hercules.” He lifts up his fists to make his muscles bulge for Kate and says “You’re telling us that tripe spells A Flounder?”

“Elounda, dad. It does. The letter like a Y upside down is how they write an L.”

“About time they learned how to write properly, then,” he says, staring around to show he doesn’t care who hears. “Well, there it is if you really want to trudge round another old ruin instead of having a swim.”

“I expect he’ll be able to do both once we get to the village,” Kate says, but I can tell she’s hoping I’ll just swim. “Will you two gentlemen see me across the road?”

My mother used to link arms with me and my father when he was living with us. “I’d better make sure it’s the right bus,” I say and run out so fast I can pretend I didn’t hear my father calling me back.

A man with skin like a boot is walking backwards in the dust behind the bus, shouting “Elounda” and waving his arms as if he’s pulling the bus into the space in line. I sit on a seat opposite two Germans who block the aisle until they’ve taken off their rucksacks, but my father finds three seats together at the rear. “Aren’t you with us, Hugh?” he shouts, and everyone on the bus looks at him.

When I see him getting ready to shout again I walk down the aisle. I’m hoping nobody notices me, but Kate says loudly “It’s a pity you ran off like that, Hugh. I was going to ask if you’d like an ice cream.”

“No thank you,” I say, trying to sound like my mother when she was only just speaking to my father, and step over Kate’s legs. As the bus rumbles uphill I turn as much of my back on her as I can, and watch the streets.

Aghios Nikolaos looks as if they haven’t finished building it. Some of the tavernas are on the bottom floors of blocks with no roofs, and sometimes there are more tables on the pavements outside than in. The bus goes downhill again as if it’s hiccuping, and when it reaches the bottomless pool where young people with no children stay in the hotels with discos, it follows the edge of the bay. I watch the white boats on the blue water, but really I’m seeing the conductor coming down the aisle and feeling as if a lump is growing in my stomach from me wondering what my father will say to him.

The bus is climbing beside the sea when he reaches us. “Three for leper land,” my father says.

The conductor stares at him and shrugs. “As far as you go,” Kate says, and rubs herself against my father. “All the way.”

When the conductor pushes his lips forwards out of his moustache and beard my father begins to get angry, unless he’s pretending. “Where you kept your lepers. Spiny Lobster or whatever you call the damned place.”

“It’s Spinalonga, dad, and it’s off the coast from where we’re going.”

“I know that, and he should.” My father is really angry now. “Did you get that?” he says to the conductor. “My ten-year-old can speak your lingo, so don’t tell me you can’t speak ours.”

The conductor looks at me, and I’m afraid he wants me to talk Greek. My mother gave me a little computer that translates words into Greek when you type them, but I’ve left it at the hotel because my father said it sounded like a bird which only knew one note. “We’re going to Elounda, please,” I stammer.

“Elounda, boss,” the conductor says to me. He takes the money from my father without looking at him and gives me the tickets and change. “Fish is good by the harbour in the evening,” he says, and goes to sit next to the driver while the bus swings round the zigzags of the hill road.

My father laughs for the whole bus to hear. “They think you’re so important, Hugh, you won’t be wanting to go home to your mother.”

Kate strokes his head as if he’s her pet, then she turns to me. “What do you like most about Greece?”

She’s trying to make friends with me like when she kept saying I could call her Kate, only now I see it’s for my father’s sake. All she’s done is make me think how the magic places seemed to have lost their magic because my mother wasn’t there with me, even Knossos where Theseus killed the Minotaur. There were just a few corridors left that might have been the maze he was supposed to find his way out of, and my father let me stay in them for a while, but then he lost his temper because all the guided tours were in foreign languages and nobody could tell him how to get back to the coach. We nearly got stuck overnight in Heraklion, when he’d promised to take Kate for dinner that night by the bottomless pool. “I don’t know,” I mumble, and gaze out the window.

“I like the sun, don’t you? And the people when they’re being nice, and the lovely clear sea.”

It sounds to me as if she’s getting ready to send me off swimming again. They met while I was, our second morning at the hotel. When I came out of the sea my father had moved his towel next to hers and she was giggling. I watch Spinalonga Island float over the horizon like a ship made of rock and grey towers, and hope she’ll think I’m agreeing with her if that means she’ll leave me alone. But she says “I suppose most boys are morbid at your age. Let’s hope you’ll grow up to be like your father.”

She’s making it sound as if the leper colony is the only place I’ve wanted to visit, but it’s just another old place I can tell my mother I’ve been. Kate doesn’t want to go there because she doesn’t like old places – she said if Knossos was a palace she was glad she’s not a queen. I don’t speak to her again until the bus has stopped by the harbour.

There aren’t many tourists, even in the shops and tavernas lined up along the winding pavement. Greek people who look as if they were born in the sun sit drinking at tables under awnings like stalls in a market. Some priests who I think at first are wearing black hatboxes on their heads march by, and fishermen come up from their boats with octopuses on sticks like big kebabs. The bus turns round in a cloud of dust and petrol fumes while Kate hangs onto my father with one hand and flaps the front of her flowery dress with the other. A boatman stares at the tops of her boobs which make me think of spotted fish and shouts “Spinalonga” with both hands round his mouth.

“We’ve hours yet,” Kate says. “Let’s have a drink. Hugh may even get that ice cream if he’s good.”

If she’s going to talk about me as though I’m not there I’ll do my best not to be. She and my father sit under an awning and I kick dust on the pavement outside until she says “Come under, Hugh. We don’t want you with sunstroke.”

I don’t want her pretending she’s my mother, but if I say so I’ll only spoil the day more than she already has. I shuffle to the table next to the one she’s sharing with my father and throw myself on a chair. “Well, Hugh,” she says, “do you want one?”

“No thank you,” I say, even though the thought of an ice cream or a drink starts my mouth trying to drool.

“You can have some of my lager if it ever arrives,” my father says at the top of his voice, and stares hard at some Greeks sitting at a table. “Anyone here a waiter?” he says, lifting his hand to his mouth as if he’s holding a glass.

When all the people at the table smile and raise their glasses and shout cheerily at him, Kate says “I’ll find someone and then I’m going to the little girls’ room while you men have a talk.”

My father watches her crossing the road and gazes at the doorway of the taverna once she’s gone in. He’s quiet for a while, then he says “Are you going to be able to say you had a good time?”

I know he wants me to enjoy myself when I’m with him, but I also think what my mother stopped herself from saying to me is true – that he booked the holiday in Greece as a way of scoring off her by taking me somewhere she’d always wanted to go. He stares at the taverna as if he can’t move until I let him, and I say “I expect so, if we go to the island.”

“That’s my boy. Never give in too easily.” He smiles at me with one side of his face. “You don’t mind if I have some fun as well, do you?”

He’s making it sound as though he wouldn’t have had much fun if it had just been the two of us, and I think that was how he’d started to feel before he met Kate. “It’s your holiday,” I say.

He’s opening his mouth after another long silence when Kate comes out of the taverna with a man carrying two lagers and a lemonade on a tray. “See that you thank her,” my father tells me.

I didn’t ask for lemonade. He said I could have some lager. I say “Thank you very much,” and feel my throat tightening as I gulp the lemonade, because her eyes are saying that she’s won.

“That must have been welcome,” she says when I put down the empty glass. “Another? Then I should find yourself something to do. Your father and I may be here for a while.”

“Have a swim,” my father suggests.

“I haven’t brought my cossy.”

“Neither have those boys,” Kate says, pointing at the harbour. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen boys wearing less.”

My father smirks behind his hand, and I can’t bear it. I run to the jetty the boys are diving off, and drop my T-shirt and shorts on it and my sandals on top of them, and dive in.

The water’s cold, but not for long. It’s full of little fish that nibble you if you only float, and it’s clearer than tap water, so you can see down to the pebbles and the fish pretending to be them. I chase fish and swim underwater and almost catch an octopus before it squirms out to sea. Then three Greek boys about my age swim over, and we’re pointing at ourselves and saying our names when I see Kate and my father kissing.

I know their tongues are in each other’s mouths – getting some tongue, the kids at my school call it. I feel like swimming away as far as I can go and never coming back. But Stavros and Stathis and Costas are using their hands to tell me we should see who can swim fastest, so I do that instead. Soon I’ve forgotten my father and Kate, even when we sit on the jetty for a rest before we have more races. It must be hours later when I realise Kate is calling “Come here a minute.”

The sun isn’t so hot now. It’s reaching under the awning, but she and my father haven’t moved back into the shadow. A boatman shouts “Spinalonga” and points at how low the sun is. I don’t mind swimming with my new friends instead of going to the island, and I’m about to tell my father so when Kate says “I’ve been telling your dad he should be proud of you. Come and see what I’ve got for you.”

They’ve both had a lot to drink. She almost falls across the table as I go to her. Just as I get there I see what she’s going to give me, but it’s too late. She grabs my head with both hands and sticks a kiss on my mouth.

She tastes of old lager. Her mouth is wet and bigger than mine, and when it squirms it makes me think of an octopus. “Mmm-mwa,” it says, and then I manage to duck out of her hands, leaving her blinking at me as if her eyes won’t quite work. “Nothing wrong with a bit of loving,” she says. “You’ll find that out when you grow up.”

My father knows I don’t like to be kissed, but he’s frowning at me as if I should have let her. Suddenly I want to get my own back on them in the only way I can think of. “We need to go to the island now.”

“Better go to the loo first,” my father says. “They wouldn’t have one on the island when all their willies had dropped off.”

Kate hoots at that while I’m getting dressed, and I feel as if she’s laughing at the way my ribs show through my skin however much I eat. I stop myself from shivering in case she or my father makes out that’s a reason for us to go back to the hotel. I’m heading for the toilet when my father says “Watch out you don’t catch anything in there or we’ll have to leave you on the island.”

I know there are all sorts of reasons why my parents split up, but just now this is the only one I can think of – my mother not being able to stand his jokes and how the more she told him to finish the more he would do it, as if he couldn’t stop himself. I run into the toilet, trying not to look at the pedal bin where you have to drop the used paper, and close my eyes once I’ve taken aim.

Is today going to be what I remember about Greece? My mother brought me up to believe that even the sunlight here had magic in it, and I expected to feel the ghosts of legends in all the old places. If there isn’t any magic in the sunlight, I want there to be some in the dark. The thought seems to make the insides of my eyelids darker, and I can smell the drains. I pull the chain and zip myself up, and then I wonder if my father sent me in here so we’ll miss the boat. I nearly break the hook on the door, I’m so desperate to be outside.

The boat is still tied to the harbour, but I can’t see the boatman. Kate and my father are holding hands across the table, and my father’s looking around as though he means to order another drink. I squeeze my eyes shut so hard that when I open them everything’s gone black. The blackness fades along with whatever I wished, and I see the boatman kneeling on the jetty, talking to Stavros. “Spinalonga,” I shout.

He looks at me, and I’m afraid he’ll say it’s too late. I feel tears building up behind my eyes. Then he stands up and holds out a hand towards my father and Kate. “One hour,” he says.

Kate’s gazing after a bus that has just begun to climb the hill. “We may as well go over as wait for the next bus,” my father says, “and then it’ll be back to the hotel for dinner.”

Kate looks sideways at me. “And after all that he’ll be ready for bed,” she says like a question she isn’t quite admitting to.

“Out like a light, I reckon.”

“Fair enough,” she says, and uses his arm to get herself up.

The boatman’s name is Iannis, and he doesn’t speak much English. My father seems to think he’s charging too much for the trip until he realises it’s that much for all three of us, and then he grins as if he thinks Iannis has cheated himself. “Heave ho then, Janice,” he says with a wink at me and Kate.

The boat is about the size of a big rowing-boat. It has a cabin at the front and benches along the sides and a long box in the middle that shakes and smells of petrol. I watch the point of the boat sliding through the water like a knife and feel as if we’re on our way to the Greece I’ve been dreaming of. The white buildings of Elounda shrink until they look like teeth in the mouth of the hills, and then Spinalonga floats up ahead.

It makes me think of an abandoned ship bigger than a liner, a ship so dead that it’s standing still in the water without having to be anchored. The evening light seems to shine out of the steep rusty sides and the bony towers and walls high above the sea. I know it was a fort to begin with, but I think it might as well have been built for the lepers. I can imagine them trying to swim to Elounda and drowning because there wasn’t enough left of them to swim with, if they didn’t just throw themselves off the walls because they couldn’t bear what they’d turned into. If I say these things to Kate I bet more than her mouth will squirm – but my father gets in first. “Look, there’s the welcoming committee.”

Kate gives a shiver that reminds me I’m trying not to feel cold. “Don’t say things like that. They’re just people like us, probably wishing they hadn’t come.”

I don’t think she can see them any more clearly than I can. Their heads are poking over the wall at the top of the cliff above the little pebbly beach which is the only place a boat can land. There are five or six of them, only I’m not sure they’re heads; they might be stones someone has balanced on the wall – they’re almost the same colour. I’m wishing I had some binoculars when Kate grabs my father so hard the boat rocks and Iannis waves a finger at her, which doesn’t please my father. “You keep your eye on your steering, Janice,” he says.

Iannis is already taking the boat towards the beach. He didn’t seem to notice the heads on the wall, and when I look again they aren’t there. Maybe they belonged to some of the people who are coming down to a boat bigger than Iannis’s. That boat chugs away as Iannis’s bumps into the jetty. “One hour,” he says. “Back here.”

He helps Kate onto the jetty while my father glowers at him, then he lifts me out of the boat. As soon as my father steps onto the jetty Iannis pushes the boat out again. “Aren’t you staying?” Kate pleads.

He shakes his head and points hard at the beach. “Back here, one hour.”

She looks as if she wants to run into the water and climb aboard the boat, but my father shoves his arm round her waist. “Don’t worry, you’ve got two fellers to keep you safe, and neither of them with a girl’s name.”

The only way up to the fort is through a tunnel that bends in the middle so you can’t see the end until you’re nearly halfway in. I wonder how long it will take for the rest of the island to be as dark as the middle of the tunnel. When Kate sees the end she runs until she’s in the open and stares at the sunlight, which is perched on top of the towers now. “Fancying a climb?” my father says.

She makes a face at him as I walk past her. We’re in a kind of street of stone sheds that have mostly caved in. They must be where the lepers lived, but there are only shadows in them now, not even birds. “Don’t go too far, Hugh,” Kate says.

“I want to go all the way round, otherwise it wasn’t worth coming.”

“I don’t, and I’m sure your father expects you to consider me.”

“Now, now, children,” my father says. “Hugh can do as he likes as long as he’s careful and the same goes for us, eh, Kate?”

I can tell he’s surprised when she doesn’t laugh. He looks unsure of himself and angry about it, the way he did when he and my mother were getting ready to tell me they were splitting up. I run along the line of huts and think of hiding in one so I can jump out at Kate. Maybe they aren’t empty after all; something rattles in one as if bones are crawling about in the dark. It could be a snake under part of the roof that’s fallen. I keep running until I come to steps leading up from the street to the top of the island, where most of the light is, and I’ve started jogging up them when Kate shouts “Stay where we can see you. We don’t want you hurting yourself.”

“It’s all right, Kate, leave him be,” my father says. “He’s sensible.”

“If I’m not allowed to speak to him I don’t know why you invited me at all.”

I can’t help grinning as I sprint to the top of the steps and duck out of sight behind a grassy mound that makes me think of a grave. From up here I can see the whole island, and we aren’t alone on it. The path I’ve run up from leads all round the island, past more huts and towers and a few bigger buildings, and then it goes down to the tunnel. Just before it does it passes the wall above the beach, and between the path and the wall there’s a stone yard full of slabs. Some of the slabs have been moved away from holes like long boxes full of soil or darkness. They’re by the wall where I thought I saw heads looking over at us. They aren’t there now, but I can see heads bobbing down towards the tunnel. Before long they’ll be behind Kate and my father.

Iannis is well on his way back to Elounda. His boat is passing one that’s heading for the island. Soon the sun will touch the sea. If I went down to the huts I’d see it sink with me and drown. Instead I lie on the mound and look over the island, and see more of the boxy holes hiding behind some of the huts. If I went closer I could see how deep they are, but I quite like not knowing – if I was Greek I expect I’d think they lead to the underworld where all the dead live. Besides, I like being able to look down on my father and Kate and see them trying to see me.

I stay there until Iannis’s boat is back at Elounda and the other one has almost reached Spinalonga, and the sun looks as if it’s gone down to the sea for a drink. Kate and my father are having an argument. I expect it’s about me, though I can’t hear what they’re saying; the darker it gets between the huts the more Kate waves her arms. I’m getting ready to let my father see me when she screams.

She’s jumped back from a hut which has a hole behind it. “Come out, Hugh. I know it’s you,” she cries.

I can tell what my father’s going to say, and I cringe. “Is that you, Hugh? Yoo-hoo,” he shouts.

I won’t show myself for a joke like that. He leans into the hut through the spiky stone window, then he turns to Kate. “It wasn’t Hugh. There’s nobody.”

I can only just hear him, but I don’t have to strain to hear Kate. “Don’t tell me that,” she cries. “You’re both too fond of jokes.”

She screams again, because someone’s come running up the tunnel. “Everything all right?” this man shouts. “There’s a boat about to leave if you’ve had enough.”

“I don’t know what you two are doing,” Kate says like a duchess to my father, “but I’m going with this gentleman.”

My father calls me twice. If I go to him I’ll be letting Kate win. “I don’t think our man will wait,” the new one says.

“It doesn’t matter,” my father says, so fiercely that I know it does. “We’ve our own boat coming.”

“If there’s a bus before you get back I won’t be hanging around,” Kate warns him.

“Please yourself,” my father says, so loud that his voice goes into the tunnel. He stares after her as she marches away; he must be hoping she’ll change her mind. But I see her step off the jetty into the boat, and it moves out to sea as if the ripples are pushing it to Elounda.

My father puts a hand to his ear as the sound of the engine fades. “So every bugger’s left me now, have they?” he says in a kind of shout at himself. “Well, good riddance.”

He’s waving his fists as if he wants to punch something, and he sounds as if he’s suddenly got drunk. He must have been holding it back while Kate was there. I’ve never seen him like this. It frightens me, so I stay where I am.

It isn’t only my father that frightens me. There’s only a little bump of the sun left above the water now, and I’m afraid how dark the island may be once that goes. Bits of sunlight shiver on the water all the way to the island, and I think I see some heads above the wall of the yard full of slabs, against the light. Which side of the wall are they on? The light’s too dazzling, it seems to pinch the sides of the heads so they look thinner than any heads I’ve ever seen. Then I notice a boat setting out from Elounda, and I squint at it until I’m sure it’s Iannis’s boat.

He’s coming early to fetch us. Even that frightens me, because I wonder why he is. Doesn’t he want us to be on the island now he realises how dark it’s getting? I look at the wall, and the heads have gone. Then the sea puts the sun out, and it feels as if the island is buried in darkness.

I can still see my way down – the steps are paler than the dark – and I don’t like being alone now I’ve started shivering. I back off from the mound, because I don’t like to touch it, and almost back into a shape with bits of its head poking out and arms that look as if they’ve dropped off at the elbows. It’s a cactus. I’m just standing up when my father says “There you are, Hugh.”

He can’t see me yet. He must have heard me gasp. I go to the top of the steps, but I can’t see him for the dark. Then his voice moves away. “Don’t start hiding again. Looks like we’ve seen the last of Kate, but we’ve got each other, haven’t we?”

He’s still drunk. He sounds as if he’s talking to somebody nearer to him than I am. “All right, we’ll wait on the beach,” he says, and his voice echoes. He’s gone into the tunnel, and he thinks he’s following me. “I’m here, dad,” I shout so loud that I squeak.

“I heard you, Hugh. Wait there. I’m coming.” He’s walking deeper into the tunnel. While he’s in there my voice must seem to be coming from beyond the far end. I’m sucking in a breath that tastes dusty, so I can tell him where I am, when he says “Who’s that?” with a laugh that almost shakes his words to pieces.

He’s met whoever he thought was me when he was heading for the tunnel. I’m holding my breath – I can’t breathe or swallow, and I don’t know if I feel hot or frozen. “Let me past,” he says as if he’s trying to make his voice as big as the tunnel. “My son’s waiting for me on the beach.”

There are so many echoes in the tunnel I’m not sure what I’m hearing besides him. I think there’s a lot of shuffling, and the other noise must be voices, because my father says “What kind of language do you call that? You sound drunker than I am. I said my son’s waiting.”

He’s talking even louder as if that’ll make him understood. I’m embarrassed, but I’m more afraid for him. “Dad,” I nearly scream, and run down the steps as fast as I can without falling.

“See, I told you. That’s my son,” he says as if he’s talking to a crowd of idiots. The shuffling starts moving like a slow march, and he says “All right, we’ll all go to the beach together. What’s the matter with your friends, too drunk to walk?”

I reach the bottom of the steps, hurting my ankles, and run along the ruined street because I can’t stop myself. The shuffling sounds as though it’s growing thinner, as if the people with my father are leaving bits of themselves behind, and the voices are changing too – they’re looser. Maybe the mouths are getting bigger somehow. But my father’s laughing, so loud that he might be trying to think of a joke. “That’s what I call a hug. No harder, love, or I won’t have any puff left,” he says to someone. “Come on then, give us a kiss. They’re the same in any language.”

All the voices stop, but the shuffling doesn’t. I hear it go out of the tunnel and onto the pebbles, and then my father tries to scream as if he’s swallowed something that won’t let him. I scream for him and dash into the tunnel, slipping on things that weren’t on the floor when we first came through, and fall out onto the beach.

My father’s in the sea. He’s already so far out that the water is up to his neck. About six people who look stuck together and to him are walking him away as if they don’t need to breathe when their heads start to sink. Bits of them float away on the waves my father makes as he throws his arms about and gurgles. I try to run after him, but I’ve got nowhere when his head goes underwater. The sea pushes me back on the beach, and I run crying up and down it until Iannis comes.

It doesn’t take him long to find my father once he understands what I’m saying. Iannis wraps me in a blanket and hugs me all the way to Elounda and the police take me back to the hotel. Kate gets my mother’s number and calls her, saying she’s someone at the hotel who’s looking after me because my father’s drowned, and I don’t care what she says, I just feel numb. I don’t start screaming until I’m on the plane back to England, because then I dream that my father has come back to tell a joke. “That’s what I call getting some tongue,” he says, leaning his face close to mine and showing me what’s in his mouth.

 

1992

 

Norman Wisdom and the Angel of Death

Christopher Fowler

FOR THE FOURTH EDITION, Robinson Publishing foiled the now-familiar logo for the UK trade paperback. Thankfully, Carroll & Graf adapted the uncredited cover art for another classy-looking hardcover in the US.

Oddly, this time there was no American softcover edition (at least that I am aware of), but Best New Horror 4 did become the first book in the series to get a foreign reprinting, although translation rights in other individual volumes have been sold to Japan and Russia over the years. Horror: Il Meglio (a phrase I’ve always wanted reproduced on a T-shirt) was published in Italy the following year in trade paperback with a dust-jacket painting by my old friend Les Edwards.

At seventeen pages, the Introduction expanded for the first time beyond the eleven pages of the Necrology. Having had a go at a Locus reviewer the previous year, Ramsey and I strongly disputed comments made by Paul Brazier in the British SF magazine Nexus, in which he claimed that “the abattoir aspect of horror fiction has come to dominate the genre, until it seems we can expect blood to drip from every page . . .”

Roberta Lannes belatedly made it into the series with her tale “Dancing on a Blade of Dreams”, and the twenty-four stories included Hellraiser alumni Clive Barker and Peter Atkins’ first appearances in Best New Horror. M. John Harrison was represented with two stories, including a collaboration with Simon Ings.

Ramsey and I have always agreed that humour can be a very important element in horror fiction and, when used well, has the ability to heighten the impact of the most gruesome tale. As an editor, I have also always felt that an anthology should comprise various different types of storytelling – not only to keep the reader off-balance, but also to offer differing moods and styles that hopefully complement each other over the length of the book.

Norman Wisdom may not be all that familiar a name to American readers (he was something of an acquired taste in the UK as well), but for his debut in Best New Horror, Christopher Fowler used the British comedian as the inspiration for his tale of maniacal obsession.

Not only did the author watch every single Norman Wisdom movie before writing the story but – perhaps even more disturbingly – Chris admitted that he happened to find the comic really funny. It is unlikely that you will ever hear many people willing to admit to that . . .!

Diary Entry #1 Dated 2 July

THE PAST is safe.

The future is unknown.

The present is a bit of a bastard.

Let me explain. I always think of the past as a haven of pleasant recollections. Long ago I perfected the method of siphoning off bad memories to leave only those images I still feel comfortable with. What survives in my mind is a seamless mosaic of faces and places that fill me with warmth when I choose to consider them. Of course, it’s as inaccurate as those retouched Stalinist photographs in which comrades who have become an embarrassment have been imperfectly erased so that the corner of a picture still shows a boot or a hand. But it allows me to recall times spent with dear friends in the happy England that existed in the 1950s; the last era of innocence and dignity, when women offered no opinion on sexual matters and men still knew the value of a decent winter overcoat. It was a time that ended with the arrival of the Beatles, when youth replaced experience as a desirable national quality.

I am no fantasist. Quite the reverse; this process has a practical value. Remembering the things that once made me happy helps to keep me sane.

I mean that in every sense.

The future, however, is another kettle of fish. What can possibly be in store for us but something worse than the present? An acceleration of the ugly, tasteless, arrogant times in which we live. The Americans have already developed a lifestyle and a moral philosophy entirely modelled on the concept of shopping. What is left but to manufacture more things we don’t need, more detritus to be thrown away, more vicarious thrills to be selfishly experienced? For a brief moment the national conscience flickered awake when it seemed that green politics was the only way to stop the planet from becoming a huge concrete turd. And what happened? Conversation was hijacked by the advertising industry and turned into a highly suspect sales concept.

No, it’s the past that heals, not the future.

So what about the present? I mean right now.

At this moment, I’m standing in front of a full-length mirror reducing the knot of my tie and contemplating my frail, rather tired appearance. My name is Stanley Morrison, born March 1950, in East Finchley, North London. I’m a senior sales clerk for a large shoe firm, as they say on the quiz programmes. I live alone and have always done so, having never met the right girl. I have a fat cat called Hattie, named after Hattie Jacques, for whom I have a particular fondness in the role of Griselda Pugh in Series Five, Programmes One to Seven of Hancock’s Half Hour, and a spacious but somewhat cluttered flat situated approximately 150 yards from the house in which I was born. My hobbies include collecting old radio shows and British films, of which I have an extensive collection, as well as a nigh-inexhaustible supply of amusing, detailed anecdotes about the forgotten British stars of the past. There’s nothing I enjoy more than to recount these lengthy tales to one of my ailing, lonely patients and slowly destroy his will to live.

I call them my patients, but of course they aren’t. I merely bring these poor unfortunates good cheer in my capacity as an official council HVF, that’s a Hospital Visiting Friend. I am fully sanctioned by Haringey Council, an organisation filled with people of such astounding narrow-minded stupidity that they cannot see beyond their lesbian support groups to keeping the streets free of dogshit.

But back to the present.

I am rather tired at the moment because I was up half the night removing the remaining precious moments of life from a seventeen-year-old boy named David Banbury who had been in a severe motorcycle accident. Apparently he jumped the lights at the top of Shepherd’s Hill and vanished under a truck conveying half-price personal stereos to the Asian shops in Tottenham Court Road. His legs were completely crushed, so much so that the doctor told me they couldn’t separate his cycle leathers from his bones, and his spine was broken, but facial damage had been minimal, and the helmet he was wearing at the time of the collision had protected his skull from injury.

He hasn’t had much of a life, by all accounts, having spent the last eight years in care, and has no family to visit him.

Nurse Clarke informed me that he might well recover to lead a partially normal life, but would only be able to perform those activities involving a minimal amount of agonisingly slow movement, which would at least qualify him for a job in the Post Office.

Right now he could not talk, of course, but he could see and hear and feel, and I am reliably informed that he could understand every word I said, which was of great advantage as I was able to describe to him in enormous detail the entire plot of Norman Wisdom’s 1965 masterpiece The Early Bird, his first colour film for the Rank Organisation, and I must say one of the finest examples of post-war British slapstick to be found on the face of this spinning planet we fondly call home.

On my second visit to the boy, my richly delineated account of the backstage problems involved in the production of an early Wisdom vehicle, Trouble in Store, in which the Little Comedian Who Won the Hearts of the Nation co-starred for the first time with his erstwhile partner and straight-man Jerry Desmonde, was rudely interrupted by a staff nurse who chose a crucial moment in my narration to empty a urine bag that seemed to be filling with blood. Luckily I was able to exact my revenge by punctuating my description of the film’s highlights featuring Moira Lister and Margaret Rutherford with little twists of the boy’s drip-feed to make sure that he was paying the fullest attention.

At half-past-seven yesterday evening I received a visit from the mentally disorientated liaison officer in charge of appointing visitors. Miss Chisholm is the kind of woman who has pencils in her hair and NUCLEAR WAR – NO THANKS stickers on her briefcase. She approaches her council tasks with the dispiriting grimness of a sailor attempting to plug leaks in a fast-sinking ship.

“Mr Morrison,” she said, trying to peer around the door of my flat, presumably in the vain hope that she might be invited in for a cup of tea, “you are one of our most experienced Hospital Helpers” – this part she had to check in her brimming folder to verify – “so I wonder if we could call upon you for an extracurricular visit at rather short notice.” She searched through her notes with the folder wedged under her chin and her case balanced on a raised knee. I did not offer any assistance. “The motorcycle boy . . .” She attempted to locate his name and failed.

“David Banbury,” I said, helpfully supplying the information for her.

“He’s apparently been telling the doctor that he no longer wishes to live. It’s a common problem, but they think his case is particularly serious. He has no relatives.” Miss Chisholm – if she has a Christian name I am certainly not privy to it – shifted her weight from one foot to the other as several loose sheets slid from her folder to the floor.

“I understand exactly what is needed,” I said, watching as she struggled to reclaim her notes. “An immediate visit is in order.”

As I made my way over to the hospital to comfort the poor lad, I thought of the ways in which I could free the boy from his morbid thoughts. First, I would recount all of the plot minutiae, technicalities and trivia I could muster surrounding the big-screen career and off-screen heartache of that Little Man Who Won All Our Hearts, Charlie Drake, climaxing with a detailed description of his 1966 magnum opus The Cracksman, in which he starred opposite a superbly erudite George Sanders, a man who had the good sense to kill himself when he grew bored with the world, and then I would encourage the boy to give up the fight, do the decent thing and die in his sleep.

As it happens, the evening turned out quite nicely.

By eleven-thirty I had concluded my description of the film, and detected a distinct lack of concentration on behalf of the boy, whose only response to my description of the frankly hysterical sewer-pipe scene was to blow bubbles of saliva from the corner of his mouth. In my frustration to command his attention, I applied rather more pressure to the sutures on his legs than I intended, causing the crimson blossom of a haemorrhage to appear through the blankets covering his pitifully mangled limbs.

I embarked upon a general plot outline of the classic 1962 Norman Wisdom vehicle On the Beat, never shifting my attention from the boy’s eyes, which were now swivelling frantically in his waxen grey face, until the ruptured vessels of his leg could no longer be reasonably ignored. Then I summoned the night nurse. David Banbury died a few moments after she arrived at the bedside.

That makes eleven in four years

Some didn’t require any tampering with on my part, but simply gave up the ghost, losing the will to go on. I went home and made myself a cup of Horlicks, quietly rejoicing that another young man had gone to meet his maker with a full working knowledge of the later films of Norman Wisdom (not counting What’s Good For the Goose, a prurient “adult” comedy directed by Menahem Golan which I regard as an offensive, embarrassing travesty unworthy of such a superb family performer).

Now, standing before the mirror attempting to comb the last straggling wisps of hair across my prematurely balding pate, I prepare to leave the house and catch the bus to work, and I do something I imagine most people have done from time to time when faced with their own reflection. I calm myself for the day ahead by remembering the Royal Variety Performance stars of 1952. The familiar faces of Naughton & Gold, Vic Oliver, Jewel & Warriss, Ted Ray, Winifred Atwell, Reg Dixon and the Tiller Girls crowd my mind as I steel myself to confront the self-centred young scum with whom I am forced to work.

It is no secret that I have been passed over for promotion in my job on a number of occasions, but the most terrible slap-in-the-face yet performed by our new (foreign) management was administered last week, when a boy of just twenty-four was appointed as my superior! He likes people to call him Mick, walks around smiling like an idiot, travels to work wearing a Walkman, on which he plays percussive rubbish consisting of black men shouting at each other, and wears tight black jeans which seem specifically designed to reveal the contours of his genitalia. He shows precious little flair for the job, and has virtually no knowledge whatsoever of the pre-1960 British radio comedy scene. Amazingly, everyone seems to like him.

Of course, he will have to go.

Diary Entry #2 Dated 23 August

Mick is a threat no more

I simply waited until the appropriate opportunity arose, as I knew it eventually should. While I watched and listened, patiently enduring the oh-so-clever remarks he made to the office girls (most of whom resemble prostitutes from Michael Powell’s excessively vulgar and unnecessary 1960 film Peeping Tom) about me, I comforted myself with memories of a happy, sunlit childhood, recalling a row of terraced houses patrolled by smiling policemen, uniformed milkmen and lollipop-ladies, a place in the past where Isobel Barnet was still guessing contestants’ professions on What’s My Line, Alma Cogan was singing “Fly Me to the Moon” on the radio, cornflakes had red plastic guardsmen in their packets and everyone knew his place and damned well stayed in it. Even now when I hear the merry tinkle of “Greensleeves” heralding the arrival of an ice-cream van beset by clamouring tots I get a painful, thrilling erection.

But I digress.

Last Tuesday, while shifting a wire-meshed crate in the basement workroom, Mick dislocated his little finger, cutting it rather nastily, so naturally I offered to accompany him to the casualty ward. As my flat is conveniently situated on the route to the hospital I was able to stop by for a moment, trotting out some absurd excuse for the detour.

After waiting for over an hour to be seen, my nemesis was finally examined by Dr MacGregor, an elderly physician of passing acquaintance whose name I only remember because it is also that of John Le Mesurier’s character in The Radio Ham. My experience as an HVF had familiarised me with basic casualty procedures, and I knew that the doctor would most likely inject an antibiotic into the boy’s hand to prevent infection.

The needles for the syringes come in paper packets, and are sealed inside little plastic tubes that must be broken only by the attending physician. This is to prevent blood-carried infections from being transmitted.

It was hard to find a way around this, and indeed had taken dozens of attempts over the preceding months. The packets themselves were easy enough to open and reseal, but the tubes were a problem. After a great deal of practice, I found that I was able to melt the end of a tube closed without leaving any traces of tampering. To be on the safe side I had prepared three such needles in this fashion. (You must remember that, as well as having access to basic medical supplies – those items not actually locked away – I also possess an unlimited amount of patience, being willing to wait years if necessary to achieve my goals.)

While we waited for Dr MacGregor to put in an appearance, the boy prattled on to me about work, saying how much he “truly valued my input”. While he was thus distracted, it was a simple matter for me to replace the loose needles lying on the doctor’s tray with my specially prepared ones.

A little while ago I throttled the life out of a very sick young man whose habit of nightly injecting drugs in the toilet of my local tube station had caused him to become ravaged with terminal disease. I would like to say that he died in order to make the world a safer, cleaner place, but the truth is that we went for a drink together and I killed him in a sudden fit of rage because he had not heard of Joyce Grenfell. How the Woman Who Won the Hearts of the Nation in her thrice-reprised role as Ruby Gates in the celebrated St Trinians films could have passed by him unnoticed is still a mystery to me.

Anyway, I strangled the disgusting urchin with his own scarf and removed about a cupful of blood from his arm, into which I dropped a number of needles, filling their capillaries with the poisoned fluid. I then carefully wiped each one clean and inserted it into a tube, neatly resealing the plastic.

Dr MacGregor was talking nineteen to the dozen as he inserted what he thought was a fresh needle into a vein on the back of Mick’s hand. He barely even looked down to see what he was doing. Overwork and force of habit had won the day. Thank God for our decaying National Health Service, because I’d never have managed it if the boy had possessed private medical insurance. My unsuspecting adversary maintained an attitude of perky bravery as his finger was stitched up, and I laughed all the way home.

Mick has been feeling unwell for several weeks now. A few days ago he failed to turn up for work. Apparently he has developed a complex and highly dangerous form of Hepatitis B.

As they say, age and treachery will always overcome youth and enthusiasm.

Diary Entry #3 Dated 17 October

The hopeless liaison officer has returned with a new request.

Yesterday evening I opened the door of my flat to find her hovering on the landing uncertainly, as if she could not even decide where she felt comfortable standing.

“Can I help you?” I asked suddenly, knowing that my voice would make her jump. She had not caught me in a good mood. A month ago, Mick had been forced to resign through ill-health, but my promotion had still not been announced for consideration.

“Oh, Mr Morrison, I didn’t know if you were in,” she said, her free hand rising to her flat chest.

“The best way to find out is by ringing the doorbell, Miss Chisholm.” I opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”

“Thank you.” She edged gingerly past me with briefcase and folders, taking in the surroundings. Hattie took one look at her and shot off to her basket. “Oh, what an unusual room,” she said, studying the walnut sideboard and armchairs, the matching butter-yellow standard lamps either side of the settee. “Do you collect art deco?”

“No,” I said tersely. “This is my furniture. I suppose you’d like a cup of tea.” I went to put the kettle on, leaving her hovering uncomfortably in the lounge. When I returned she was still standing, her head tilted on one side as she examined the spines of my post-war Radio Times collection.

“Please sit down, Miss Chisholm,” I insisted. “I won’t bite.” And I really don’t because teethmarks can be easily traced.

At this instigation she perched herself on the edge of the armchair and nibbled at a bourbon. She had obviously rehearsed the speech that followed.

“Mr Morrison, I’m sure you’ve read in the papers that the health cuts are leaving hospitals in this area with an acute shortage of beds.”

“I fear I haven’t read a newspaper since they stopped printing The Flutters on the comic page of the Daily Mirror,” I admitted, “but I have heard something of the sort.”

“Well, it means that some people who are required to attend hospital for tests cannot be admitted as overnight patients any more. As you have been so very helpful in the past, we wondered if you could take in one of these patients.”

“For how long?” I asked. “And what sort of patient?”

“It would be for two weeks at the most, and the patient I have in mind for you—” she churned up the contents of her disgusting briefcase trying to locate her poor victim’s folder “—is a very nice young lady. She’s a severe diabetic, and she’s in a wheelchair. Apart from that, she’s the same as you or I.” She gave me a warm smile, then quickly looked away, sensing perhaps that I was not like other people. She handed me a dog-eared photograph of the patient, attached to a medical history that had more pages than an average weekly script of The Clitheroe Kid, a popular BBC radio show which for some reason has never been reissued on audio cassette.

“Her name is Saskia,” said Miss Chisholm. “She has no family to speak of, and lives a long way from London. Ours is one of the few hospitals with the necessary equipment to handle complex drug and therapy trials for people like her. She desperately needs a place to stay. We can arrange to have her collected each day. We’d be terribly grateful if you could help. She really has nowhere else to go.”

I studied the photograph carefully. The girl was pitifully small-boned, with sallow, almost translucent skin. But she had attractive blonde hair, and well-defined features reminiscent of a young Suzy Kendall in Robert Hartford-Davis’ patchy 1966 comedy portmanteau The Sandwich Man, in which Our Norman, playing an Irish priest, was not seen to his best advantage. What’s more, she fitted in perfectly with my plans. A woman. That would certainly be different.

I returned the photograph with a smile. ‘I think we can work something out,” I said.

Diary Entry #4 Dated 23 October

Saskia is here, and I must say that for someone so ill she is quite a tonic. The night she arrived, I watched as she struggled to negotiate her wheelchair around the flat without damaging the paintwork on the skirting boards, and despite many setbacks she managed it without a single protestation. Indeed, she has been here for two days now, and never seems to complain about anything or anyone. Apparently all of her life she has been prone to one kind of disease or another, and few doctors expected her to survive her childhood, so she is simply happy to be alive.

I have installed her in the spare room, which she insisted on filling with flowers purchased from the stall outside the hospital. Even Hattie, never the most amenable of cats, seems to have taken to her.

As my flat is on the second floor of a large Victorian house, she is a virtual prisoner within these walls during the hours outside her hospital visits. At those times the ambulance men carry her and the folded wheelchair up and down the stairs.

On her very first night here I entered the lounge to find her going through my catalogued boxes of BBC comedy archive tapes. I was just beginning to grow annoyed when she turned to me and asked if she could play some of them. No one had ever shown the least interest in my collection before. To test her, I asked which shows she would most enjoy hearing.

“I like Leslie Phillips in The Navy Lark, and the Fraser Hayes Four playing on Round the Horne,” she said, running a slim finger across the spines of the tape boxes. “And of course, Hancock’s Half Hour, although I prefer the shows after Andrée Melly had been replaced by Hattie Jacques.”

Suddenly I was suspicious.

This tiny girl could not be more than twenty-two years of age. How could she possibly be so familiar with radio programmes that had scarcely been heard in thirty years?

“My father was a great collector,” she explained, as if she had just read my thoughts. “He used to play the old shows nearly every evening after dinner. It’s one of the few lasting memories I have of my parents.”

Well naturally, my heart went out to the poor girl. “I know exactly how you feel,” I said. “I only have to hear Kenneth Williams say ‘Good Evening’ and I’m reminded of home and hearth. They were such happy times for me.”

For the next hour or so I sounded her out on other favourite film and radio memories of the past, but although there seemed no other common ground between us, she remained willing to listen to my happy tales and learn. At eleven o’clock she yawned and said that she would like to go to bed, and so I let her leave the lounge.

Last night Saskia was kept late at the hospital, and I was in bed by the time the heavy tread of the ambulance man was heard upon the stair. This morning she asked me if I would like her to cook an evening meal. After some initial concern with the hygiene problems involved in allowing one’s meal to be cooked by someone else, I agreed. (In restaurants I assiduously question the waitresses about their sanitary arrangements.) Furthermore, I offered to buy produce for the projected feast, but she insisted on stopping by the shops on her way home from the hospital. Although she is frail, she demands independence. I will buy a bottle of wine. After being alone with my memories for so long, it is unnerving to have someone else in the apartment.

And yet it is rather wonderful.

Diary Entry #5 Dated 24 October

What an enthralling evening!

I feel as if I am truly alive for the first time in my life. Saskia returned early tonight – looking drawn and pale, but still vulnerably beautiful, with her blonde hair tied in a smart plait – and headed straight into the kitchen, where she stayed for several hours. I had arranged a ramp of planks by the cooker so that she could reach the hobs without having to rise from her chair.

Hattie, sensing that something tasty was being prepared, hung close to the base of the door, sniffing and licking her chops. To amuse Saskia while she cooked I played dialogue soundtracks which I had recorded in my local cinema as a child during performances of Passport To Pimlico and The Lavender Hill Mob, but the poor quality of the tapes (from a small reel-to-reel recorder I had smuggled into the auditorium) was such that I imagine the subtleties of these screenplays were rather lost to her, especially as she had the kitchen door shut and was banging saucepans about.

The meal was a complete delight. We had a delicious tomato and basil soup to start with, and a truly spectacular salmon en croute as the main course, followed by cheese and biscuits.

Saskia told me about herself, explaining that her parents had been killed in a car crash when she was young. This tragedy had forced her to live with a succession of distant and ancient relatives. When the one she was staying with died, she was shunted into a foster home. No one was willing to take her, though, as the complications arising from her diabetes would have made enormous demands on any foster-parent.

As she talked she ate very little, really only toying with her food. The diabetes prevents her from enjoying much of anything, but hopefully the tests she is undergoing will reveal new ways of coping with her restricted lifestyle.

The dining table is too low to comfortably incorporate Saskia’s wheelchair, so I have promised to raise it for tomorrow’s dinner, which I have insisted on cooking. I was rather nervous at the prospect, but then I thought: if a cripple can do it, so can I.

Saskia is so kind and attentive, such a good listener. Perhaps it is time for me to introduce my pet topic into the dinner conversation.

Diary Entry #6 Dated 25 October

Disaster has struck!

Right from the start everything went wrong – and just as we were getting along so well. Let me set it out from the beginning.

The meal. I cooked a meal tonight that was not as elaborate as the one she had prepared, and nothing like as good. This was partly because I was forced to work late (still no news of my promotion), so most of the shops were shut, and partly because I have never cooked for a woman before. The result was a microwaved dinner that was still freezing cold in the centre of the dish, but if Saskia didn’t like it she certainly didn’t complain. Instead she gave a charming broad smile (one which she is using ever more frequently with me) and slowly chewed as she listened to my detailed description of the indignities daily heaped upon me at the office.

I had bought another bottle of wine, and perhaps had drunk a little too much of it by myself (Saskia being unable to drink for the rest of the week), because I found myself introducing the subject of him, Our Norman, the Little Man Who Won All Our Hearts, before we had even finished the main course. Wishing to present the topic in the correct context I chose to start with a basic chronology of Norman’s film appearances, beginning with his thirteen-and-a-half-second appearance in A Date with a Dream in 1948. I had made an early decision to omit all but the most essential stage and television appearances of the Little Man for fear of tiring her, and in my description of the films stuck mainly to the classic set pieces, notably the marvellous “Learning to Walk” routine from On the Beat and the ten-minute “Teamaking” sequence from the opening of The Early Bird.

I was about to mention Norman’s 1956 appearance with Ruby Murray at the Palladium in Painting the Town when I became distinctly aware of her interest waning. She was fidgeting about in her chair as if anxious to leave the table.

“Anyone would think you didn’t like Norman Wisdom,” I said, by way of a joke.

“Actually, I’m not much of a fan, no,” she said suddenly, then added, “Forgive me, Stanley, but I’ve suddenly developed a headache.” And with that she went to her room, without even offering to do the washing up. Before I went to bed I stood outside her door listening, but could hear nothing.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Diary Entry #7 Dated 27 October

She is avoiding me.

It sounds hard to believe, I know, but there can be no other explanation. Last night she returned to the flat and headed directly to her room. When I put my head around the door to see if she wanted a late-night cup of cocoa (I admit this was at three o’clock in the morning, but I could not sleep for worrying about her), it seemed that she could barely bring herself to be polite. As I stepped into the room, her eyes widened and she pulled the blankets around her in a defensive gesture, which seemed to suggest a fear of my presence. I must confess I am at a loss to understand her.

Could she have led me on, only pretending to share my interests for some secret purpose of her own?

Diary Entry #8 Dated 1 November

At work today we were informed that Mick had died. Complications from the hepatitis, annoyingly unspecified, but I gained the distinct impression that they were unpleasant. When one of the secretaries started crying I made a passing flippant remark that was, I fear, misconstrued, and the girl gave me a look of utter horror. She’s a scruffy little tart who was sweet on Mick, and much given to conspiring with him about me. I felt like giving her something to be horrified about, and briefly wondered how she would look tied up with baling wire, hanging in a storm drain. The things we think about to get us through the day.

At home the situation has worsened. Saskia arrived tonight with a male friend, a doctor whom she had invited back for tea. While she was in the kitchen the two of us were left alone in the lounge, and I noticed that he seemed to be studying me from the corner of his eye. It was probably just an occupational habit, but it prompted me to wonder if Saskia had somehow voiced her suspicions to him (assuming she has any, which I consider unlikely).

After he had gone, I explained that it was not at all permissible for her to bring men into the house no matter how well she knew them, and she had the nerve to turn in her chair and accuse me of being old-fashioned!

“What on earth do you mean?” I asked her.

“It’s not healthy, Stanley, surrounding yourself with all this,” she explained, indicating the alphabetised film and tape cassettes that filled the shelves on the wall behind us. “Most of these people have been dead for years.”

“Shakespeare has been dead for years,” I replied, “and people still appreciate him.”

“But he wrote plays and sonnets of lasting beauty,” she persisted. “These people you listen to were just working comics. It’s lovely to collect things, Stanley, but this stuff was never meant to be taken so seriously. You can’t base your life around it.” There was an irritating timbre in her voice that I had not noticed before. She sat smugly back in her wheelchair, and for a moment I wanted to smother her. I could feel my face growing steadily redder with the thought.

“Why shouldn’t these people still be admired?” I cried, running to the shelves and pulling out several of my finest tapes. “Most of them had dreary lives filled with hardship and pain, but they made people laugh, right through the war and the years of austerity that followed. They carried on through poverty and ill-health and misery. Everyone turned on the radio to hear them. Everyone went to the pictures to see them. It was something to look forward to. They kept people alive. They gave the country happy memories. Why shouldn’t someone remember them for what they did?”

“All right, Stanley. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said, reaching out her hand, but I pushed it away. It was then that I realised my cheeks were wet, and I turned aside in shame. To think that I had been brought to this state, forced to defend myself in my own home, by a woman, and a wheelchair-bound one at that.

“This is probably a bad time to mention it,” said Saskia, “but I’m going to be leaving London earlier than I first anticipated. In fact, I’ll be going home tomorrow. The tests haven’t taken as long as the doctors thought.”

“But what about the results?” I asked.

“They’ve already made arrangements to send them to my local GP. He’ll decide whether further treatment is necessary.”

I hastily pulled myself together and made appropriate polite sounds of disappointment at the idea of her departure, but inside a part of me was rejoicing. You see, I had been watching her hands as they rested on the arms of her wheelchair. They were trembling.

And she was lying.

Diary Entry #9 Dated 2 November

I have much to relate.

After our altercation last night, both of us knew that a new level in our relationship had been reached. The game had begun. Saskia refused my conciliatory offer of tea and went straight to her bedroom, quietly locking the door behind her. I know because I tried to open it at two o’clock this morning, and I heard her breath catch in the darkness as I twisted the knob from side to side.

I returned to my room and forced myself to stay there. The night passed slowly, with both of us remaining uncomfortably awake on our respective beds. In the morning, I left the house early so that I would not be forced to trade insincere pleasantries with her over breakfast. I knew she would be gone by the time I returned, and that, I think, suited both of us. I was under no illusions – she was a dangerous woman, too independent, too free-minded to ever become my friend. We could only be adversaries. And I was dangerous to her. I had enjoyed her company, but now she would only be safe far away from me. Luckily, I would never see her again. Or so I thought. For, fast as the future, everything changed between us.

Oh, how it changed.

This morning, I arrived at work to find a terse note summoning me to my supervisor’s office. Naturally I assumed that I was finally being notified of my promotion. You may imagine my shock when, in the five-minute interview that followed, it emerged that far from receiving advancement within the company, I was being fired! I did not “fit in” with the new personnel, and as the department was being “streamlined” they were “letting me go”. Depending on my attitude to this news, they were prepared to make me a generous cash settlement if I left at once, so that they could immediately begin “implementing procedural changes”.

I did not complain. This sort of thing has happened many times before. I do not fit in. I say this not to gain sympathy, but as a simple statement of fact. Intellect always impedes popularity. I accepted the cash offer. Disheartened, but also glad to be rid of my vile “colleagues”, I returned home.

It was raining hard when I arrived at the front gate. I looked up through the dark sycamores and was surprised to find a light burning in the front room. Then I realised that Saskia was reliant on the council for arranging her transport, and as they were never able to specify an exact collection time, she was still in the house. I knew I would have to use every ounce of my control to continue behaving in a correct and civilised manner.

As I turned the key in the lock I heard a sudden scuffle of movement inside the flat. Throwing the door wide, I entered the lounge and found it empty. The sound was coming from my bedroom. A terrible deadness flooded through my chest as I tiptoed along the corridor, carefully avoiding the boards that squeaked.

Slowly, I moved into the doorway. She was on the other side of the room with her back to me. The panels of the wardrobe were folded open, and she had managed to pull one of the heavy-duty bin-liners out on the floor. Somehow she sensed that I was behind her, and the wheelchair spun around. The look on her face was one of profound disturbance.

“What have you done with the rest of them?” she said softly, her voice wavering. She had dislodged a number of air fresheners from the sacks, and the room stank of lavender.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” I explained as reasonably as possible. “This is my private room.”

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. She looked up at the pinned pictures surrounding her. The bleak monochrome of a thousand celebrity photographs seemed to absorb the light within the room.

“Saskia. You’re an intelligent girl. You’re modern. But you have no respect for the past.”

“The past?” Her lank hair was falling in her eyes, as she flicked it aside I could see she was close to tears. “What has the past to do with this?” She kicked out uselessly at the plastic sack and it fell to one side, spilling its rotting human contents onto the carpet.

“Everything,” I replied, moving forward. I was not advancing on her, I just needed to get to the bedside cabinet. “The past is where everything has its rightful place.”

“I know about your past, Stanley,” she cried, pushing at the wheels of her chair, backing herself up against the wardrobe, turning her face from the stinking mess. “Nurse Clarke told me all about you.”

“What did she say?” I asked, coming to a halt. I was genuinely curious. Nurse Clarke had hardly ever said more than two words to me.

“I know what happened to you. That’s why I came here.” She started to cry now, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Something plopped obscenely onto the floor as the sack settled. “She says you had the worst childhood a boy could ever have. Sexual abuse, violence. You lived in terror every day. Your father nearly killed you before the authorities took charge. Don’t you see? That’s why you’re so obsessed with this stuff, this trivia, it’s like a disease. You’re just trying to make things all right again.”

“That’s a damn lie!” I shouted at her. “My childhood was perfect. You’re making it up!”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, snot flying from her nose. “I saw the marks when you were in the kitchen that first night. Cigarette burns on your arms. Cuts too deep to ever heal. I thought I knew how you must have felt. Like me, always shoved around, always towered over, always scared. I didn’t expect anything like this. What were you thinking of?”

“Are you sure you don’t know?” I asked, advancing towards the cabinet. “I’m the kind of person nobody notices. I’m invisible until I’m pointed out. I’m in a private world. I’m not even ordinary. I’m somewhere below that.”

I had reached the cabinet, and now slowly pulled open the drawer, groping inside as she tried to conceal her panic, tried to find somewhere to wheel the chair.

“But I’m not alone,” I explained. “There are many like me. I see them begging on the streets, soliciting in pubs, injecting themselves in alleyways. For them childhood is a scar that never heals, but still they try to stumble on. I end their stumbling, Saskia. Miss Chisholm says I’m an angel.”

My fingers closed around the handle of the carving knife, but the point was stuck in the rear wall of the drawer. I gave it my attention and pulled it free, lowering the blade until it was flat against my leg. A sound from behind made me turn. With a dexterity that amazed me, the infuriating girl had opened the door and slipped through.

I ran into the lounge to find her wheelchair poised before the tape archives and Saskia half out of the seat, one hand pincering a stack of irreplaceable 78s featuring the vocal talents of Flanagan and Allen.

“Leave those alone!” I cried. “You don’t understand.”

She turned to me with what I felt as a look of deliberate malice on her face and raised the records high above her head. If I attacked her now, she would surely drop them.

“Why did you kill those people?” she asked simply. For a moment I was quite at a loss. She deserved an explanation. I ran my left thumb along the blade of the knife, drawing in my breath as the flesh slowly parted and the pain showed itself.

“I wanted to put their pasts right,” I explained. “To give them the things that comfort. Tony Hancock. Sunday roast. Family Favourites. Smiling policemen. Norman Wisdom. To give them the freedom to remember.”

I must have allowed the knife to come into view, because her grip on the records faltered and they slid from her hands to the floor. I don’t think any smashed, but the wheels of her chair cracked several as she rolled forward.

“I can’t give you back the past, Saskia,” I said, walking towards her, smearing the knife blade with the blood from my stinging thumb. “I’m sorry, because I would have liked to.”

She cried out in alarm, pulling stacks of records and tapes down upon herself, scattering them across the threadbare carpet. Then she grabbed the metal frame of the entire cabinet, as if trying to shake it loose from the wall. I stood and watched, fascinated by her fear.

When I heard the familiar heavy boots quickening on the stairs, I turned the knife over and pushed the blade hard into my chest. It was a reflex action, as if I had been planning to do this all along. Just as I had suspected, there was no pain. To those like us who suffered so long, there is no more pain.

Diary Entry #10 Dated 16 November

And now I am sitting here on a bench with a clean elastic bandage patching up my stomach, facing the bristling cameras and microphones, twenty enquiring faces before me, and the real probing questions have begun.

The bovine policewoman who interrogated me so unimaginatively during my initial detainment period bore an extraordinary resemblance to Shirley Abicair, the Australian zither player who performed superbly as Norman’s love interest in Rank’s 1954 hit comedy One Good Turn, although the Evening News critic found their sentimental scenes together an embarrassment.

I think I am going to enjoy my new role here. Newspapers are fighting for my story. They’re already comparing me to Nilsen and Sutcliffe, although I would rather be compared to Christie or Crippen. Funny how everyone remembers the name of a murderer, but no one remembers the victim.

If they want to know, I will tell them everything. Just as long as I can tell them about my other pet interests.

My past is safe.

My future is known.

My present belongs to Norman.