The Nonesuch and Others Read online

  “Kevin sometimes worked the bar: oh aye, servin’ drinks was one of the few things he was good at. In fact he was verra good at it! For every drink I bought in the bar when I was done with mah work in the kitchen, there’d be another ‘on the house’ frae him. And for every free one Kevin served me, he’d serve another tae himsel’. The bar was scarcely makin’ a penny because he was drinkin’ it up as fast as he took it in!

  “But though his eyes might glaze and his speech slur a wee, he was rarely anythin’ other than steady as a rock on his feet. That’s the kind o’ drunk he was, aye. Which I suppose makes his passin’ just a might more peculiar. I mean, it was unlike Kevin tae fall, no matter how much he’d put down his neck…But fall he did. Cracked his skull, broke his back, and even crushed his ribs, though how that last came about is anybody’s guess…!”

  When McCann paused to sip at his drink I took the opportunity to get a few questions in. “Kevin’s passing? You mean there was as accident: he got drunk, fell and died? My God! But with all those injuries…that must have been some fall, and from one hell of a height!”

  “Ye’d think so, would ye no?” McCann cocked his head on one side enquiringly. “But no, not really. No more than nine or ten feet, actually; or maybe thirteen, if ye include the balcony wall.”

  The balcony wall? And then, as certain of the Seaview’s hitherto unexplained curiosities—its mysteries—began slotting themselves uneasily into place, suddenly I saw it coming. But to be absolutely certain:

  “And what balcony would that be?” I asked, my own voice and question distant in my ears, as if spoken by some other.

  “The one on the corner there,” he answered. “The balcony on room number seven, which Janet lets stand empty now, though for no good reason that I can see. A room’s a room, is it no? If we were all tae shun rooms or houses where kith and kin died, why, there’d be nowhere left for us tae live! I mean, a body has tae die somewhere, does he no?”

  To which, for a moment or two, I could find no answer…

  He had obviously seen the look on my face and sensed the change in me. And: “Ah hah!” he gasped. “But…ye came in today, did ye no? And ye found the place full tae brimmin’, all except room seven. Well, well! And she actually let ye have it, did she? So then, maybe things are lookin’ up after all. And no before time at that.”

  While I now understood something of what had happened here, there were still several vague areas. Since McCann had intimate knowledge of the Andersons, however—since he’d known them and worked for them all those years—it seemed more than likely he would be able to fill in the blank spots.

  Unfortunately, before I could get anything more out of him, Janet Anderson herself came into the bar-room, smiling and nodding at myself and her chef as she crossed to the bar where one of the Czech girls was serving. The pair spoke briefly over the bar, before Mrs. Anderson headed back our way and paused to have a word with us, or rather with McCann. But:

  “Do excuse me,” she spoke to me first. And then to McCann: “Gavin, I know you’re off-duty and I so dislike disturbing you, but would you mind doing up some sandwiches—say nine or ten rounds—for an evening fishing party? I would have asked you earlier, but they’ve only just spoken to me. And of course you may keep the proceeds.”

  McCann was up on his feet at once. “No problem at all, mah bonny,” he said. And to me, as he turned to go: “I’m obliged to ye for ye’re company—” with a knowing wink and a finger to his nose, “—But now ye must excuse me.” With which he was gone…

  I too had stood up at Janet Anderson’s approach. Now I offered her a seat and asked if she would like something: a soft drink, perhaps? But she shook her head, saying: “It’s kind of you, but there’s always work: things to be done, problems to solve.” And yet, seeming uncertain of herself and of two minds, she continued to hover there, until finally I felt I had to inquire:

  “Is there perhaps, er, something…?”

  “Oh, no!” She smiled, her hand on my arm, where I sensed a tremor coming through the sleeve of my light jacket. But in another moment the smile left her face, and taking a deep breath, as if suddenly arriving at a decision, she said, “Please do sit down, Mr. Smith.” And as I seated myself she quickly, nervously continued: “You see, I…well, it’s just that I’ve been wondering about…about your room. Room number seven hasn’t had a paying guest for quite a while, and empty rooms often develop a sort of neglected, even unfriendly atmosphere. I mean, what I’m trying to say is: do you find the room comfortable enough? Have you any complaints? Does the room feel, well, right for you?”

  “Why, yes!” I replied. “Everything feels just fine!” Which wasn’t exactly true, and I would have preferred to answer: “Why are you asking me such odd questions, Mrs. Anderson? I mean, what else is there about that room—other than what I already know of your troubles—that so concerns you?” But since I did know at least that much, and since it was obvious that she was close to the edge, I was naturally unwilling to risk pushing her over. And anyway, if anything remained to be discovered, I believed I could probably find out about it later from McCann.

  But for the moment, because she was still standing there, I added, “In fact you needn’t be at all concerned, because I find the room private and very pleasant. As for complaints: I simply don’t have any! I would have to be very fussy to call one small fault a complaint, now wouldn’t I? And—”

  “—A fault?” she cut me off. “Something…well, not quite right? Something you find just a little, er, odd, perhaps?” Her voice was beginning to shake along with her hands.

  “No,” I quickly answered, finding her nervousness—or perhaps more properly her anxiety—disconcerting. “Nothing at all that you might call ‘odd.’” Which again wasn’t the entire truth. “It’s just the view, Mrs. Anderson! Just the view from the balcony.” By which I meant the partial or sidelong view of the sea-front, the beach, and the blue expanse of the bay itself.

  But she obviously thought I meant something else. “The view across the road,” she said with a knowing nod. “And up the hill to that awful old place.” And even though she was steadier now, still her words had come out as breathless as a whisper.

  “No, really—” I began, shaking my head. “I’m only talking about—”

  But she had already turned and was moving a little unsteadily away; and over her shoulder, interrupting me before I could continue, she very quietly said, “Well if I were you, Mr. Smith, I wouldn’t look at it. Yes, it’s best not to look at it, that’s all…”

  And that did it. Whatever this thing is in me—this lodestone that forever seeks to point me toward the strange and the nonesuch—I was feeling it now as an almost tangible force. And of course I knew that having begun to investigate I must follow it through and track the mystery down. Because if once again I was about to come face to face with…well whatever, then I damn well wanted to know everything there was to know about it!

  And so I stayed there at that corner table, nursing nothing like a real drink, for at least another hour; until it was dark out and the bar had all but emptied; and still Gavin McCann had not returned. Finally, as the last few guests went off to their rooms or wherever, and the Czech girl was shuttering the bar, I went to her and inquired after the Seaview’s chef.

  “Gavin?” she said, smiling. “Oh, he’ll have gone into town. I think there a place where they playing the jazz musics. Gavin like a lot these musics. He going most nights.”

  More than a little frustrated, I said my thanks, goodnight, and went up to my room. There was always tomorrow…perhaps I could find this jazz bar tomorrow night. But in any case, right now I was feeling tired. It had been a long day.

  And a weird one…

  I went out on my balcony, sat in the deckchair in the darkness, with only the street lighting, the glimmer of myriad stars in a clear sky, and the sweeping headlights of vehicles on the steep road for company. Though the flow of the traffic wasn’t especially heavy, still the engine s
ounds of the cars seemed subdued. Which wasn’t so strange really, because as I had already noted—and as McCann had pointed out in detailing Kevin Anderson’s tragic fall—the balcony was some nine or ten feet above the pavement. This meant that most of the noise was muffled, contained within the road’s canyon-like cutting, while the rest of it was deflected upwards by the balcony’s wall.

  With Anderson’s demise in mind, I went to the low wall and looked over. Hard to imagine that someone toppling to the road from here could actually kill himself. Or maybe not, not if he fell on his head. But as for broken ribs: well, that was difficult to picture. Was it possible he’d slipped and fallen with his chest across the wall before he toppled over?

  I shook my head, went and sat down again.

  The night was refreshingly cool now. To my right, far down below, the glow of seafront illuminations fell on a straggle of couples in holiday finery, strolling arm in arm along the promenade. But I was straining my neck again, and in a little while I averted my gaze, repositioned and reclined my deckchair, and lay back more or less at ease.

  Looking across the road and up at a steep angle, I saw the upper reaches of the hillside silhouetted as a solid black mass set against a faint blue nimbus: the glow from the town centre, nestled in a shallow valley lying just beyond the ridge. But as my eyes gradually adjusted, so the silhouette took on a variety of dusky shapes, the most recognizable being that of the derelict hotel.

  Where before warm summer sunlight had come slanting through the flat roof’s ornamental gables, now there was only the glow of the hidden town’s lights…like huge three-cornered eyes, burning faintly in the night. And the longer I looked the more acute my night vision became, so that soon the hotel’s entire façade was visible to me, if only in degrees of grey and black shade. But…that feeling, that sensation, of other, perhaps inimical eyes staring at me was back, and it was persistent. I gave myself a shake, told myself to wake up, laughed at my own fancies. But then, when the chuckles had died away, I strained my eyes more yet to penetrate the night, the smoky frontage of that forsaken old place. And as before I examined its façade—or what I could see of it—from top to toe.

  First the flat roof and false gables with their background glow: ghostly but lifeless, inert. Next the face of the place: its window eyes—yet more eyes, yes, but glazed and blind—staring sightlessly out over their balconies. And three floors down the balustraded patio with its trio of guardian parasols.

  Except now they were no longer a trio, only a pair…

  I stared harder yet. On the far right, as before, that one leaned like a bowsprit or a slender figurehead over the corner of the parapet wall. At the far left its opposite number—the one with the partly collapsed canopy—continued to stand upright, but in the still of the night its torn canvas no longer flapped but simply hung there like a dislodged bandage.

  So then, maybe the third member of the watch, the one that had seemed intact, had finally fallen over, the victim of gravity or a rotted, broken pole, or both.

  But here an odd and fanciful thought. Perhaps there was a reason—albeit a hitherto subconscious one—why I imagined and likened these inanimate things to sentinels, guardians, or more properly yet guardian angels: simply that there was something about them. But what? At which point in my introspection, as my gaze continued its semi-automatic descent down the overgrown hillside’s night dark terraces, I discovered the missing parasol.

  It stood half-way down the terraces facing in my direction. Now I say “facing” because in the darkness it had taken on the looks of a basically human figure that seemed to be gazing out across the bay…or perhaps not. Perhaps it was staring down at me?

  Let me explain, because I’m pretty sure that you will know what I mean—that you will have seen and even sheltered from the sun under any number of these eight-foot-tall umbrellas in as many hotel gardens and forecourts home and abroad—and so will recognize the following description and understand what I am trying to say.

  At the apex of a parasol, its spokes are hinged on a tough wire ring threaded through a circular wooden block. Now this is a vulnerable junction of moving parts—indeed the most important part of the entire ensemble—for which reason it is protected overhead by a scalloped canvas cowl which also serves to overlap the main canopy, keeping unseasonal rains out. When the parasol is not in use and folded down, however, this cowl often looks like a small tent atop the main body of the thing.

  Now, though, with visibility limited by the dark of night, and the canvas canopy not quite fully collapsed, it looked like something else entirely and loaned the contraption this vaguely human shape. The cowl had transformed into a peaked hood, while the partly folded canopy had become a cloak or cassock, so that overall the parasol’s appearance was now that of a stylized anthropomorph: it looked “human” but to much the same degree as a snowman looks human. It could be argued, however, that the snowman looks more nearly human on account of having eyes—albeit that they’re made from lumps of coal.

  And as for my having endowed this parasol thing with sight: I think that happened when a motorcyclist coming down the hill rounded a bend higher up, and for a split second his headlight beam lit up the figure on the terrace. Just a split second, in which the shadow under the parasol’s hood was briefly dispelled and some bright item or items—in fact two of them—reflected the electric glare of the headlight.

  Moreover that same headlight beam continued to sweep, until a moment later it swept me! Momentarily dazzled—as the motorcycle and rider passed beneath my balcony on their descent—I quickly withdrew from whatever reverie or fantasy it was that I had allowed to engulf me. And as my eyes once more adjusted, so the figure halfway down the high terraces was once more a parasol. And nothing more…

  While it should come as no surprise, there followed one of the most restless nights I have ever known. I dreamed of unfriendly eyes drilling into me, and the inexorable approach of the floating, pulsating owner of those eyes which I knew—despite that its actual nature remained shrouded and obscure—was nevertheless intent upon harming me. A nightmare, yes, but a persistent one that had me starting awake on more than one occasion.

  The last time this happened I got out of bed and closed the balcony’s sliding doors, which I had left half open against the warmth of the night. A breeze had come up, causing the curtains to flutter and tap against the glass panes. This must have been the billowing motion I had sensed subconsciously, which my mind had translated into the approach of a fiendish alien power.

  So I reasoned to myself, but still it was unsettling…

  The next morning following an early breakfast, with the strange events of the previous day and night quickly fading, I set out on foot to go up the hill and down into the valley, exploring the centre of the town; and I came across McCann’s jazz bar haunt less than half a mile from the Seaview. It sat out of the way in a cul-de-sac housing various indifferent enterprises—a charity shop, barbershop, hardware store, chemist’s shop, etc—and as I arrived it was being slopped out by a fat gentleman in a waistcoat, apron, and rolled-up shirt-sleeves, who went on to sweep up and bin the somewhat more solid debris of last night’s entertainment: some bottle glass and pieces of a glass ashtray, empty cigarette packs and cigarette ends, and the flimsy packaging from various fast foods.

  Answering my casual enquiry, this fellow told me the place should now be considered closed for a week to ten days: it was being refurbished. Which put paid to any plan I had entertained about finding and questioning McCann here; for the time being I would have to put the mystery of Janet Anderson and room number seven aside. But then again, now that McCann’s favourite watering-hole had dried up, as it were, perhaps he would stick more closely to home and the bar at the Seaview. I could always test out this theory tonight.

  And I did, but of course that was several hours later. And meanwhile…

  …Shortly after dinner, finding the bar empty, I walked downhill to the promenade and turned east along the coast roa
d.

  On rounding the point, there, hidden from sight of the Seaview beyond Jurassic cliffs of Devon’s unique red rock, I found various amusement arcades, cafes, and fish-n’-chip shops lining the road below the cliffs; and, on the opposite side toward the sea, a modern theatre and a quarter-mile of public flower gardens bordered (astonishingly) by palm trees that flourished here by virtue of Torbay’s semi-temperate climate. All very pleasant fare for holidaymakers on the so-called English Riviera, making their all too brief, annual escapes from often drab Midland and northern cities.

  But for all that I myself was now a holidaymaker or tourist of sorts, and for all that I should be enjoying the adventure—these new sights and pleasing surroundings, and the soft, salty wafts off the sea—still there was something on my mind. And as I retraced my steps along the seafront my thoughts returned to the parasol as I had seen it last night up on the high terraces; and finally, curiously for the first time, I found myself wondering how it had accomplished its migration from the derelict hotel’s patio to its new location.

  Well, of course I at once recognized at least one perfectly obvious answer to this riddle: for some reason, someone or ones had moved the thing! But as for what reason that might be…

  It was summer, the nights were warm, and there were plenty of young lovers in the town: I had seen and envied lots of them strolling on the promenade. Local folks would certainly know of the deserted hotel, whose empty grounds must surely make an excellent trysting place; and as for the privacy of the neglected terraces and rampant shrubbery…perhaps the shrubbery wasn’t the only thing in rampant mode up there!

  I’ll leave that last to your imagination.

  But in any case, that seemed the best answer to the riddle: that some enterprising young lover had moved the parasol to its current location in order to invite his lady-love to a night or nights of passion beneath its sheltering canopy.