Sleep is the watering place of
The soul to which it hastens at night
To drink at the sources of life.
In sleep we receive confirmation…
That we must go on living.
Abram Tertz
Everybody feels better after a good night’s sleep. Sleep is medicine for the mind. No matter how terrible or traumatic the events of the previous night are, no matter how emotionally fucked up and physically drained they leave you, upon waking you discover that whatever it was has been filed away neatly in the archives of the mind labeled ‘it could have been worse’. Because, let’s face it… it could always be worse.
By the morning, we have resigned ourselves to the fact that what has happened cannot be changed, that we just have to go ahead and deal with it. It is in sleep that this process of self-healing begins.
Besides, I was one hundred percent sure of one thing.
I knew that Charlie was still very much alive.
***
There were six messages on the answering machine when I went down for my breakfast the next morning – six messages which must have been left for me the night before while I was out with Rachael and that I had been too shattered to check for when I got home. Switching on the kettle, I hunkered down by the telephone and pressed the play button. After a few seconds of static, a very quiet female voice filtered out through the small grey speaker.
‘Charlie? Pick up if you’re there’.
There was a pause, during which I could hear an indistinct male voice droning on in the background. I made out the words ‘…stated today that if…’ and realised that the voice was coming from a television set. The news. I knew what was coming next, even before the female voice continued.
‘… I guess you’re out then. Look, I… um… I was just watching the news and there was your car… at least, it looked like your car… I’m just calling to see if you’re okay. Call me back when you get this…’ There was another pause, then… ‘It’s Amber. Bye’.
Click.
“Nine hours and eight minutes”, came the robotic monotone of the recorded time-check function.
The second caller was Daryl. His voice sounded urgent.
‘Joey? Give me a call when you get in, will you? Doesn’t matter what time. It’s important. About Charlie’. Pause, then ‘bye’.
The kettle clicked off at the same time as the message. I straightened up and crossed into the kitchen as the machine said “Ten hours and twelve minutes” in the same flat and indifferent tones. I poured hot water into my mug and watched it turn black as the third message started.
Someone breathing – deep, slow breaths, as if waiting, anticipating. Tinny music in the background. It was a tune I recognised but couldn’t place.
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… one minutes”, came the recording.
I hated it when people didn’t speak. Why bother waiting for the beep if you weren’t going to leave a message? I stirred my coffee and waited for the next…
The same sound of someone breathing. The same tinny music. The same song. I stopped stirring and stood like a statue, listening, trying to make out the words. Whoever it was hadn’t waited long between one phone call and the next.
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… two minutes”.
I put my coffee down on the kitchen top and crossed back over to the telephone. I watched suspiciously as the neon yellow display switched from four to five.
‘… the way the camera follows us in slo-mo…’
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… four minutes”.
It was a Paul Simon song – I couldn’t remember the name but I had it on CD somewhere. Something about days of miracle and wonder.
The machine reached the last message. I was not entirely surprised to hear the last strains of the same song coming through the speaker.
There was a clicking sound, as of a door opening. Then came a voice, a male voice, muffled and far away. It said one word. It didn’t belong to the caller – it sounded as if it was coming from across the room. A sharp intake of breath. Then…
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… five minutes”.
I pressed play again, and skipped forward to the last message.
Paul Simon humming as the song faded.
The click of the door.
I closed my eyes and held my breath.
‘Calling?’
The intake of breath, as if the caller had been surprised, as if whoever it was hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t been expecting anyone to walk in… I pressed the repeat button.
‘The Boy in the Bubble’. That was the name of the Paul Simon track.
Click went the door.
That one word.
The startled breath – not, I realised, because the caller had been surprised, but because he had inadvertently left his name on my machine.
I opened my eyes and frowned.
Not ‘Calling?’
Colin.
***
I was just about to leave the house – had, in fact, already started reaching for the front door – when, on the other side, somebody rang the doorbell, startling twelve kinds of shit out of me. I blinked, my heart thudding in my chest as if an insane drummer had taken up residence there, then lowered my arm slowly. It would be Colin, I was sure, looking more like an angry bear than ever, a dark frown creasing his forehead and thunderbolts blazing in his eyes as he reached out and grabbed me by the neck, lifting me off my feet, pulling me forward until I was inches from those eyes, eyes that had the fires of hell burning in them, and bellowing ‘Rachael’s mine, Rachael’s mine, mine, d’you hear me, mine…’ And all the time, with every syllable, he would be slamming me from doorpost to doorpost, my teeth rattling in my head like bingo chips. And then Colin would draw back his mighty fist and ram it down my throat…
The bell rang again.
‘You sad, sad bastard’ said the alien in my head. ‘You know it’s not Colin’.
I reached out and opened the door.
‘Probably’, added the alien.
It wasn’t. It was Daryl.
“Thought you’d already left for work”, he said, stepping past me and into the house. He turned to look at me, and his eyes rested on my face.
“You saw it too then?”
“Huh?”
“The news? Charlie’s car?”
“Oh”. I realised that Daryl had misinterpreted the dazed look on my face. “Yeah. Last night while I was out with Rachael. At Da Quiri’s”.
I followed Daryl into the kitchen and dumped my rucksack on the floor – I knew I wouldn’t be going to work today. Daryl pulled out a chair and dumped himself unceremoniously at the dining-room table.
“Coffee?”
“Sure. Strong. I’m knackered. Didn’t get much sleep last night”.
It showed. There were dark rings under his eyes and his hair was sticking up all over the place. I was about to toss in a wisecrack about him looking like shit when he added,
“Again. Bed seems too big”.
I handed him the coffee in silence. He cupped his hands around it as if they were cold and blew gently into the mug. A thin cloud of steam puffed out lazily and disappeared.
“Where’s Amy?” I asked as I poured myself a second cup in half an hour. What the hell – hyperactivity was the least of my problems.
“Round at Catherine’s. She’s taking her kids to the beach this afternoon, and Amy’s going with them”.
I dragged out a chair and sat opposite Daryl, carefully placing my coffee on the table in front of me.
“So… what d’you think?” I said, reaching for my cigarettes. With anyone else I would have had to clarify the question, but Daryl and I had known each other long enough to share the same frequency.
“I’m not sure. I know what I don’t think though. I don’t think he was in the car when it went under”.
“Neither do I”. I lit the cigarette and took a long drag. Daryl reached out and took the packet. I raised an inquiring eyebrow at him – Daryl had quit smoking the day he had found out that Claire was pregnant. He caught my look and shrugged awkwardly.
“What difference does it make?” he said gruffly. “We’re here today and gone tomorrow anyway”.
I found myself wishing that he would stop referring to Claire all the time – however indirectly. It made me feel uncomfortable and useless, not knowing what to say. I felt like shouting out ‘okay already! She’s dead! I know she’s dead. You don’t have to keep on reminding me, dammit!’ but I felt ashamed of the thought even as it entered my head. Instead, I took a deep breath, and started,
“Daryl. I’m not very good at this comforting of the bereaved stuff, but…”
I stopped there because Daryl was waving his hand at me as if swatting an invisible fly. My voice faltered as he spoke,
“You don’t need to give me a speech, Joey. Over the past two weeks I’ve had speeches up to here…” He touched the edge of his hand to his forehead to indicate exactly how many speeches he’d had to sit through, then went on, “You’ve always been there when I needed you, when Claire needed you, and when Amy needed you, and all I’m hoping is that you’ll be there still…”
“Of course I will”, I said. “You know that”. My voice shook a little as, unbidden, Rachael’s voice came back to haunt me from the night before… ‘you weren’t around… and I needed you, Joey… I needed you…’
Daryl smiled at me, a smile which encompassed a lifetime of friendship, ups and downs, happiness and sorrow, fiddles and violins.
“Then that’s all you need to say”, he said.
He plucked the cigarette lighter out of my unresisting hand and lit his cigarette. He took a deep drag and exhaled with a sigh of obvious satisfaction.
“Ten years of abstinence down the drain”, he said, studying the tip of the cigarette with a smile playing on his lips, “…and it feels gooooood”.
His eyes locked onto mine.
“Remember that time we went diving together last year?” he asked.
We were on the same frequency again.
I nodded.
“The blue van”, I said.
He grinned.
“Lachrymose Bay”, he said.
***
Lachrymose Bay was so called because of its shape. From a bird-eye view, it looked as if God, perhaps as a creative afterthought while creating the island, had taken a colossal teardrop-shaped pastry cutter and pressed down firmly, carving out an enormous chunk of rock to allow the sea water to flood in via the relatively narrow gap at the tapered end of the tear.
Lachrymose Bay was the official name for the inlet – the name found on maps of the island. The local fishermen, whose colourful fishing boats dotted the shoreline in a plethora of reds, yellows, blues and greens and whose prows were all adorned with the Eye of Osiris in order to keep away evil sea spirits, simply called it Martha’s Harbour. There was a story behind the name, as there is a story behind the namesake of every fishing village everywhere in the world.
Daryl and I had first heard the story from an old fisherman – who looked as if he had come straight out of a storybook, white beard, battered cap, pipe and all – one evening last summer. A born story-teller, his voice rising and falling as naturally as the sea he made a living from, he had effortlessly transported us back to the time of a 'young local lass' called Martha...
'... who was as beautiful as the rising sun, as innocent as a newborn and as pure as pure could be. Her eyes were the shape of almonds and the colour of the most luxurious dark chocolate, her hair was a silky cascade of ebony curls, her lips as red as cherries. Many a young suitor would lurk anxiously beneath her window, waiting for the day when a plant pot of fresh basil would appear on the sill, put proudly there by Martha’s mother, indicating, as was the custom in those days, that her daughter had come of age and was ready for marriage.
When the long-awaited plant finally appeared, the number of hopeful young swains vying for Martha’s attention under that window, declaring their wealth and crooning home-made ballads of love, was a sight to be seen. Yet it was a certain young man, David Allgood by name, who stole Martha’s heart and made it his own. A fisherman by trade, as had been his father and his father’s father before him, David often set out in conditions where no sane fisherman would venture, with waves towering fifty feet high and winds raging strong enough to bring the rain slashing down like lead pellets. He took no heed of his colleagues’ somber warnings, shrugging off their forebodings like a snake shrugging off its skin. There were those in the village who considered him a fearless young hero who laughed in the face of danger; others who thought he was a fool who would one day tempt the Fates too far and get his comeuppance, which was far overdue.
The day came towards the end of summer, a week before the wedding was to take place. The sky was dark and brooding as David made his way down to the water’s edge where his tiny boat was moored. Laden with fishing nets and lobster pots, and in a hurry to be off, David ignored, as he had done many a time before, the dire warnings of the other fisherfolk.
“Only a madman would venture out this evening”, they cried as he boarded his boat. “Open your eyes and see, the sea-bed is waiting hungrily for a fool to join it tonight! Are you sure that you want to be that fool?”
David threw back his head and laughed merrily.
“This madman will return”, he claimed, “and with a boat fair bursting with fish, I’ll wager”.
The fisherfolk shook their heads ominously, and muttered to themselves as they headed back to the safety of the local tavern.
“The sea loves a tragedy”, they told each other in doom-laden voices. “A week before the wedding too… he tempts the Fates too far”.
That night, all hell broke loose. The winds bellowed through the village with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding on its tail, tearing the roofs off houses and uprooting trees with malignant indifference. Lightning forked down from the heavens like the tongues of serpents as needle-sharp rain battered down and thunder roared. Waves rolled, crashed and broke on the shore – white foam spraying hundreds of feet into the air like the dying howl of some huge rabid beast. It was the cruelest, most vindictive storm in living memory, and young David Allgood was never seen again.
Martha – poor, beautiful, bereaved Martha – never fell in love again. Every day for the rest of her long life, she would go down to the shore and weep in sorrow for what could have been and never was. And, it is said, all the salty, bitter tears that rolled down her lovely cheeks and fell to the ground wore away at the rock little by little, eventually forming what today is known as Lachrymose Bay, a safe harbour for all fishermen caught in a storm.
So goes the legend of Martha’s Harbour.'
***
Lachrymose Bay, Daryl had been told by one of the waiters where he worked, was a veritable diver’s paradise, where the fish practically ‘throw themselves onto your harpoon and the octopi are the size of submarines’. Apparently, the fish followed the boats into the bay, feeding on a trail of guts and other scraps thrown overboard, and then were too fat, lazy and stupid to find their way out through the narrow inlet again. Our usual diving spot, along the coastline of Serenity, had been temporarily ruined by the construction of yet another waterside hotel, polluting the water with cement dust and other debris of human indifference, so we had decided to give it a try.
We got to the bay at quarter to eight, when the sun was disappearing over the horizon and the sky was as colourful as a handful of melted Smarties clasped in a child’s fist – faded reds, yellows, purples and blues. The moon was already visible, a pale spotlight which would grow brighter as the day got darker. It was still too light to dive – the fish would still be alert and any octopi that might reside in the bay would not yet have slid cautiously out of their hidey-holes to feed – so we stopped for a coffee in a small bar called ‘The Blue Grotto’. It was here that we met the fisherman, whose name we never found out (but would always refer to as Popeye), who told us the legend of Martha’s Harbour for the price of a beer. He had the air of one who had told the story a thousand times, and a sparkle in his weathered old eyes that revealed that he wouldn’t mind telling it a thousand times more.
The sea was as calm as a Sunday morning in spring as Daryl and I struggled into our wetsuits – mine purple and black, Daryl’s a neon yellow and black, both of them of the short armed, short legged variety known as ‘shorties’. The water was a warm twenty-four degrees Celsius, but after an hour or so the sea had a tendency to reach out with chilly fingers and grab hold of your heart, freezing you from the inside out.
We sat by the water’s edge and, pulling back the thick rubber of our harpoons, loaded them and tossed them into the water – twin splashes which turned into ripples and then back to a halcyon calm. Having put on our facemasks and flippers, we finally flicked on our torches and slid silently into the water like wraiths.
I flicked my torch off again as the water seeped through the neoprene of my suit, gently caressing me all over like a refreshing liquid massage. The moonlight glimmered and shimmered off the rocky seabed as I floated, enjoying the calm weightless feeling. This was how I imagined Neil Armstrong had felt when he stepped out onto the moon’s surface – alone in a magical, hypnotic world, millions of miles away from anything that mattered. I was nudged back into reality by Daryl, who had retrieved my harpoon from below. My thumb swiveled the dial which turned my torch on again, and the dancing moonlight vanished.
We paddled lazily along the coastline, our eyes following the torches’ beams as they swooped across the seabed, catching a movement here and there – the gentle waving of seaweed, the darting glow of small fish as they scooted forward to eat something, and then flitted away to avoid being eaten in turn. Crabs scuttled across algae-covered rocks. A moray stopped and glared at me with yellow-eyed malevolence, mouth agape, before winding off gracefully to some hidden nook. A small octopus, caught in the beam of my torch, faded slowly to the colour of the rock it was resting on, and gave me a nervous stare.
I dove down and prodded it playfully with my finger. In a tangle of tentacles, it glided a short distance and stopped again, the pigment in its skin turning it white, its mantle expanding as it tried to make itself look bigger. Without going up for breath, I followed it and poked it again. This time, the octopus opened out umbrella-like, let off a cloud of ink, and then, in one fluid, boneless movement, jetted away like a tiny, bullet-headed rocket. I followed its passage with my torch, fascinated, and that’s when I saw…
… it.
It stood on the seabed like a fossilized monster, a vivid blue, and my first confused thought was ‘shark!’ because, although it was too still, too angular, and so obviously not a shark, it was also so out of place and so big that I couldn’t see what else it could possibly be. It also seemed to be breathing, slowly, like a sleeping ogre, an effect which I realised, after a split-second of heart-pounding shock, was caused by the undulating seaweed belly-dancing around it.
It was the blue van.
***
“Must be an insurance scam”, said Daryl as we were packing up later that night. “Dump the van in the sea, claim it was stolen and giggle all the way to the bank, carrying large moneybags with dollar-signs printed on them”.
“You read way too many comics”, I told him, hopping on one leg as I peeled off my wetsuit, cigarette clamped between my lips.
Daryl grinned and poured us both a cup of coffee from the thermos we carried with us every time we went diving. At his feet, our neon yellow net squirmed and bulged as our catch inside tried to make a bid for freedom. The occasional tentacle popped out, feebly waving goodbye to the world.
“It scared the hell out of me when I saw it”, I told him, finally getting out of the wetsuit and stuffing it into a black garbage bag before tossing it into the back of the car. Wrapping a towel round my waist, I gratefully took the coffee from him and took a large gulp, burning my tongue and throat in the process. “It looked like it had been neatly parked there by a desperate valet who’d run out of options”.
Which, of course, was the whole point.
It looked as if it had been neatly parked there…
***
… whereas Charlie’s car looked as if it had taken the long route through Hell and back. The tyres had been slashed, the bonnet had been ripped off, the engine smashed to smithereens. Every inch of the car’s body had been dented, scratched and bludgeoned as if a gang of hoodlums with baseball bats and an incredible hatred for Porsches had been let loose on it. There was no way that being driven into the reservoir could have damaged the car that badly. Even David Allgood’s most violent storm in living memory wouldn’t have caused that much destruction.
Which meant that the car had been annihilated before it ever touched the water.
Which meant that it had been pushed into the reservoir, not driven.
Which meant that Charlie hadn’t been in the driver’s seat, and was not currently lying bloated underwater on a muddy bed amidst rusty tin cans and discarded refrigerators.
Even the legend of Martha’s Harbour was easier to believe than that.
***
“So what d’you think happened?” I asked Daryl, “another insurance scam, like the blue van?”
“What, Charlie?” Daryl shook his head. “Nah. Why bother destroying the car? Why not just dump it?”
A funny feeling came over me then, a feeling of unreality, as if we were two kids playing at cops and robbers, solving crime while the authorities stood around scratching their heads and muttering, “Those pesky kids…” under their breaths, the way they did in all the best Scooby Doo cartoons. I half expected some guy in a gorilla costume to come bursting in through the door and start chasing us around the house with outstretched arms and yelling ‘Gaarrgh!’ Then later, when he was booby-trapped and wrapped head to toe in rope, we would pull off the mask (it was always a mask) and Charlie would grin at us, that familiar sparkle in his piercing blue eyes and a roll-up clenched in his teeth, and he would say “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!”
Jinkies.
“Joyriders then?” I said. “Stole the car, killed it for kicks, then scuttled it?”
Daryl shrugged. “Could be. I don’t know. Only Charlie knows, and he isn’t around to tell us”.
We sat in gloomy silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the kitchen clock as it chopped minutes up into seconds.
A sudden thought occurred to me. The hand holding my cigarette froze halfway to my lips, and I frowned.
“What is it?” asked Daryl.
“You know something?” I asked him. I stubbed the remaining half of the cigarette out in the ashtray and stood up. “Hundreds of people watch the news every night, but only you and Amber phoned”. And good old Colin dot com, I added silently, but I’m too hyped up to worry about that right now. That’s something I can freak out over later.
“Amber?” Daryl asked, puzzled.
“Amber. Charlie’s ex. From seven years ago”.
“Meaning what? That Charlie didn’t have any friends?”
“Yes…” I paused, then corrected myself, “well… no. Meaning that we were Charlie’s friends. You, me, Claire, Rachael, Amy… we were the people… I mean… we are the people that Charlie cared… cares about. He didn’t have anyone else because he didn’t need anyone else. He has no brothers or sisters, both his parents are dead…”
… then make sure you never get married… Charlie had told me the night I first met him when I had expressed clichéd sympathy on hearing of his father’s death. Much later, Charlie had told me that his mother had been quick to follow her husband to the grave… the shock of waking up one fine morning with a still warm corpse beside her in bed had been the ultimate blow to her already weak heart.
“… we were his friends, Daryl. And you know what else?” I didn’t wait for him to answer, nor did he attempt to. I realised I was getting angry – I wasn’t quite sure why, and I didn’t care. I snatched my packet of cigarettes roughly from the table and lit up yet another. The lighter flame danced as my hand shook. I pushed on relentlessly. “When he disappeared, when I found his note on the kettle that morning, I didn’t even bother to find out why, or where. I wondered, of course… we all did, but I never tried. I just went on with life, assuming that one day he would just turn up again and explain it all. But he didn’t, and he hasn’t, and I want to know why, dammit!”
“Easy”, said Daryl softly, and I realised I had been shouting. I slowly sat down again and took a deep drag of my cigarette.
“Sorry”, I mumbled eventually.
Daryl waved his hand vaguely in the air, indicating that my apology was unnecessary.
“So”, he said cautiously, as if expecting another outburst. “What are you getting at?”
I took a deep breath and tried to rearrange my thoughts. I was still surprised by my emotional explosion. Where the hell had that come from? I don’t think I had realised how much Charlie’s disappearance had affected me until that moment.
“What I’m getting at is Amber’s phone call”, I said after a while. “I mean… they broke up seven years ago, you know? And it wasn’t a friendly break-up…”
As I spoke, my mind flashed back to the first time I had met Amber. Well, perhaps ‘met’ is too loose a term, since all I had seen of her was an angry flushed face yelling abuse at Charlie from a second storey window as she had hurled his clothes down at him into the street below while he limped around pathetically trying to retrieve his worldly possessions from the gutter, begging her to be reasonable. It definitely hadn’t been a friendly break-up – it had been a break-up right out of Hollywood, right down to the grinning bystanders standing around and enjoying the commotion. Apparently, they hadn’t had the same idea as to where the relationship was going. Amber had dreams of marriage and children, whereas Charlie just had dreams. Dreams which, sadly, didn’t include her. Amber, I’d discovered, wasn’t a girl who took rejection well.
“What I’m getting at”, I repeated, returning to the present, “is that Charlie never told Amber where he was going when they broke up. Never left a number or anything. So how could she have called me last night unless…”
“Unless…?”
“Unless she’s seen Charlie again recently”, I finished, feeling more like Scooby Doo than ever. Elementary, dear Watson. It was Miss Scarlet in the conservatory with the lead piping.
Daryl nodded thoughtfully. His eyes were staring into space, and I could tell that he was considering my conclusions from every angle, looking for a chink in my reasoning.
“Unless he called her later after they broke up. Just to smooth things over”.
Daryl and his damned logic.
“Well yeah”, I said, deflated. “But it’s worth thinking about”.
“Okay”, he said eventually, “well done, Colombo. So now what?”
“We phone Amber, and find out what she knows”.
“If she knows anything at all”.
“Well”, I said, standing up again. “It’s a start”.
By the morning, we have resigned ourselves to the fact that what has happened cannot be changed, that we just have to go ahead and deal with it. It is in sleep that this process of self-healing begins.
Besides, I was one hundred percent sure of one thing.
I knew that Charlie was still very much alive.
***
There were six messages on the answering machine when I went down for my breakfast the next morning – six messages which must have been left for me the night before while I was out with Rachael and that I had been too shattered to check for when I got home. Switching on the kettle, I hunkered down by the telephone and pressed the play button. After a few seconds of static, a very quiet female voice filtered out through the small grey speaker.
‘Charlie? Pick up if you’re there’.
There was a pause, during which I could hear an indistinct male voice droning on in the background. I made out the words ‘…stated today that if…’ and realised that the voice was coming from a television set. The news. I knew what was coming next, even before the female voice continued.
‘… I guess you’re out then. Look, I… um… I was just watching the news and there was your car… at least, it looked like your car… I’m just calling to see if you’re okay. Call me back when you get this…’ There was another pause, then… ‘It’s Amber. Bye’.
Click.
“Nine hours and eight minutes”, came the robotic monotone of the recorded time-check function.
The second caller was Daryl. His voice sounded urgent.
‘Joey? Give me a call when you get in, will you? Doesn’t matter what time. It’s important. About Charlie’. Pause, then ‘bye’.
The kettle clicked off at the same time as the message. I straightened up and crossed into the kitchen as the machine said “Ten hours and twelve minutes” in the same flat and indifferent tones. I poured hot water into my mug and watched it turn black as the third message started.
Someone breathing – deep, slow breaths, as if waiting, anticipating. Tinny music in the background. It was a tune I recognised but couldn’t place.
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… one minutes”, came the recording.
I hated it when people didn’t speak. Why bother waiting for the beep if you weren’t going to leave a message? I stirred my coffee and waited for the next…
The same sound of someone breathing. The same tinny music. The same song. I stopped stirring and stood like a statue, listening, trying to make out the words. Whoever it was hadn’t waited long between one phone call and the next.
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… two minutes”.
I put my coffee down on the kitchen top and crossed back over to the telephone. I watched suspiciously as the neon yellow display switched from four to five.
‘… the way the camera follows us in slo-mo…’
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… four minutes”.
It was a Paul Simon song – I couldn’t remember the name but I had it on CD somewhere. Something about days of miracle and wonder.
The machine reached the last message. I was not entirely surprised to hear the last strains of the same song coming through the speaker.
There was a clicking sound, as of a door opening. Then came a voice, a male voice, muffled and far away. It said one word. It didn’t belong to the caller – it sounded as if it was coming from across the room. A sharp intake of breath. Then…
Click.
“Ten hours and thirty… five minutes”.
I pressed play again, and skipped forward to the last message.
Paul Simon humming as the song faded.
The click of the door.
I closed my eyes and held my breath.
‘Calling?’
The intake of breath, as if the caller had been surprised, as if whoever it was hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t been expecting anyone to walk in… I pressed the repeat button.
‘The Boy in the Bubble’. That was the name of the Paul Simon track.
Click went the door.
That one word.
The startled breath – not, I realised, because the caller had been surprised, but because he had inadvertently left his name on my machine.
I opened my eyes and frowned.
Not ‘Calling?’
Colin.
***
I was just about to leave the house – had, in fact, already started reaching for the front door – when, on the other side, somebody rang the doorbell, startling twelve kinds of shit out of me. I blinked, my heart thudding in my chest as if an insane drummer had taken up residence there, then lowered my arm slowly. It would be Colin, I was sure, looking more like an angry bear than ever, a dark frown creasing his forehead and thunderbolts blazing in his eyes as he reached out and grabbed me by the neck, lifting me off my feet, pulling me forward until I was inches from those eyes, eyes that had the fires of hell burning in them, and bellowing ‘Rachael’s mine, Rachael’s mine, mine, d’you hear me, mine…’ And all the time, with every syllable, he would be slamming me from doorpost to doorpost, my teeth rattling in my head like bingo chips. And then Colin would draw back his mighty fist and ram it down my throat…
The bell rang again.
‘You sad, sad bastard’ said the alien in my head. ‘You know it’s not Colin’.
I reached out and opened the door.
‘Probably’, added the alien.
It wasn’t. It was Daryl.
“Thought you’d already left for work”, he said, stepping past me and into the house. He turned to look at me, and his eyes rested on my face.
“You saw it too then?”
“Huh?”
“The news? Charlie’s car?”
“Oh”. I realised that Daryl had misinterpreted the dazed look on my face. “Yeah. Last night while I was out with Rachael. At Da Quiri’s”.
I followed Daryl into the kitchen and dumped my rucksack on the floor – I knew I wouldn’t be going to work today. Daryl pulled out a chair and dumped himself unceremoniously at the dining-room table.
“Coffee?”
“Sure. Strong. I’m knackered. Didn’t get much sleep last night”.
It showed. There were dark rings under his eyes and his hair was sticking up all over the place. I was about to toss in a wisecrack about him looking like shit when he added,
“Again. Bed seems too big”.
I handed him the coffee in silence. He cupped his hands around it as if they were cold and blew gently into the mug. A thin cloud of steam puffed out lazily and disappeared.
“Where’s Amy?” I asked as I poured myself a second cup in half an hour. What the hell – hyperactivity was the least of my problems.
“Round at Catherine’s. She’s taking her kids to the beach this afternoon, and Amy’s going with them”.
I dragged out a chair and sat opposite Daryl, carefully placing my coffee on the table in front of me.
“So… what d’you think?” I said, reaching for my cigarettes. With anyone else I would have had to clarify the question, but Daryl and I had known each other long enough to share the same frequency.
“I’m not sure. I know what I don’t think though. I don’t think he was in the car when it went under”.
“Neither do I”. I lit the cigarette and took a long drag. Daryl reached out and took the packet. I raised an inquiring eyebrow at him – Daryl had quit smoking the day he had found out that Claire was pregnant. He caught my look and shrugged awkwardly.
“What difference does it make?” he said gruffly. “We’re here today and gone tomorrow anyway”.
I found myself wishing that he would stop referring to Claire all the time – however indirectly. It made me feel uncomfortable and useless, not knowing what to say. I felt like shouting out ‘okay already! She’s dead! I know she’s dead. You don’t have to keep on reminding me, dammit!’ but I felt ashamed of the thought even as it entered my head. Instead, I took a deep breath, and started,
“Daryl. I’m not very good at this comforting of the bereaved stuff, but…”
I stopped there because Daryl was waving his hand at me as if swatting an invisible fly. My voice faltered as he spoke,
“You don’t need to give me a speech, Joey. Over the past two weeks I’ve had speeches up to here…” He touched the edge of his hand to his forehead to indicate exactly how many speeches he’d had to sit through, then went on, “You’ve always been there when I needed you, when Claire needed you, and when Amy needed you, and all I’m hoping is that you’ll be there still…”
“Of course I will”, I said. “You know that”. My voice shook a little as, unbidden, Rachael’s voice came back to haunt me from the night before… ‘you weren’t around… and I needed you, Joey… I needed you…’
Daryl smiled at me, a smile which encompassed a lifetime of friendship, ups and downs, happiness and sorrow, fiddles and violins.
“Then that’s all you need to say”, he said.
He plucked the cigarette lighter out of my unresisting hand and lit his cigarette. He took a deep drag and exhaled with a sigh of obvious satisfaction.
“Ten years of abstinence down the drain”, he said, studying the tip of the cigarette with a smile playing on his lips, “…and it feels gooooood”.
His eyes locked onto mine.
“Remember that time we went diving together last year?” he asked.
We were on the same frequency again.
I nodded.
“The blue van”, I said.
He grinned.
“Lachrymose Bay”, he said.
***
Lachrymose Bay was so called because of its shape. From a bird-eye view, it looked as if God, perhaps as a creative afterthought while creating the island, had taken a colossal teardrop-shaped pastry cutter and pressed down firmly, carving out an enormous chunk of rock to allow the sea water to flood in via the relatively narrow gap at the tapered end of the tear.
Lachrymose Bay was the official name for the inlet – the name found on maps of the island. The local fishermen, whose colourful fishing boats dotted the shoreline in a plethora of reds, yellows, blues and greens and whose prows were all adorned with the Eye of Osiris in order to keep away evil sea spirits, simply called it Martha’s Harbour. There was a story behind the name, as there is a story behind the namesake of every fishing village everywhere in the world.
Daryl and I had first heard the story from an old fisherman – who looked as if he had come straight out of a storybook, white beard, battered cap, pipe and all – one evening last summer. A born story-teller, his voice rising and falling as naturally as the sea he made a living from, he had effortlessly transported us back to the time of a 'young local lass' called Martha...
'... who was as beautiful as the rising sun, as innocent as a newborn and as pure as pure could be. Her eyes were the shape of almonds and the colour of the most luxurious dark chocolate, her hair was a silky cascade of ebony curls, her lips as red as cherries. Many a young suitor would lurk anxiously beneath her window, waiting for the day when a plant pot of fresh basil would appear on the sill, put proudly there by Martha’s mother, indicating, as was the custom in those days, that her daughter had come of age and was ready for marriage.
When the long-awaited plant finally appeared, the number of hopeful young swains vying for Martha’s attention under that window, declaring their wealth and crooning home-made ballads of love, was a sight to be seen. Yet it was a certain young man, David Allgood by name, who stole Martha’s heart and made it his own. A fisherman by trade, as had been his father and his father’s father before him, David often set out in conditions where no sane fisherman would venture, with waves towering fifty feet high and winds raging strong enough to bring the rain slashing down like lead pellets. He took no heed of his colleagues’ somber warnings, shrugging off their forebodings like a snake shrugging off its skin. There were those in the village who considered him a fearless young hero who laughed in the face of danger; others who thought he was a fool who would one day tempt the Fates too far and get his comeuppance, which was far overdue.
The day came towards the end of summer, a week before the wedding was to take place. The sky was dark and brooding as David made his way down to the water’s edge where his tiny boat was moored. Laden with fishing nets and lobster pots, and in a hurry to be off, David ignored, as he had done many a time before, the dire warnings of the other fisherfolk.
“Only a madman would venture out this evening”, they cried as he boarded his boat. “Open your eyes and see, the sea-bed is waiting hungrily for a fool to join it tonight! Are you sure that you want to be that fool?”
David threw back his head and laughed merrily.
“This madman will return”, he claimed, “and with a boat fair bursting with fish, I’ll wager”.
The fisherfolk shook their heads ominously, and muttered to themselves as they headed back to the safety of the local tavern.
“The sea loves a tragedy”, they told each other in doom-laden voices. “A week before the wedding too… he tempts the Fates too far”.
That night, all hell broke loose. The winds bellowed through the village with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding on its tail, tearing the roofs off houses and uprooting trees with malignant indifference. Lightning forked down from the heavens like the tongues of serpents as needle-sharp rain battered down and thunder roared. Waves rolled, crashed and broke on the shore – white foam spraying hundreds of feet into the air like the dying howl of some huge rabid beast. It was the cruelest, most vindictive storm in living memory, and young David Allgood was never seen again.
Martha – poor, beautiful, bereaved Martha – never fell in love again. Every day for the rest of her long life, she would go down to the shore and weep in sorrow for what could have been and never was. And, it is said, all the salty, bitter tears that rolled down her lovely cheeks and fell to the ground wore away at the rock little by little, eventually forming what today is known as Lachrymose Bay, a safe harbour for all fishermen caught in a storm.
So goes the legend of Martha’s Harbour.'
***
Lachrymose Bay, Daryl had been told by one of the waiters where he worked, was a veritable diver’s paradise, where the fish practically ‘throw themselves onto your harpoon and the octopi are the size of submarines’. Apparently, the fish followed the boats into the bay, feeding on a trail of guts and other scraps thrown overboard, and then were too fat, lazy and stupid to find their way out through the narrow inlet again. Our usual diving spot, along the coastline of Serenity, had been temporarily ruined by the construction of yet another waterside hotel, polluting the water with cement dust and other debris of human indifference, so we had decided to give it a try.
We got to the bay at quarter to eight, when the sun was disappearing over the horizon and the sky was as colourful as a handful of melted Smarties clasped in a child’s fist – faded reds, yellows, purples and blues. The moon was already visible, a pale spotlight which would grow brighter as the day got darker. It was still too light to dive – the fish would still be alert and any octopi that might reside in the bay would not yet have slid cautiously out of their hidey-holes to feed – so we stopped for a coffee in a small bar called ‘The Blue Grotto’. It was here that we met the fisherman, whose name we never found out (but would always refer to as Popeye), who told us the legend of Martha’s Harbour for the price of a beer. He had the air of one who had told the story a thousand times, and a sparkle in his weathered old eyes that revealed that he wouldn’t mind telling it a thousand times more.
The sea was as calm as a Sunday morning in spring as Daryl and I struggled into our wetsuits – mine purple and black, Daryl’s a neon yellow and black, both of them of the short armed, short legged variety known as ‘shorties’. The water was a warm twenty-four degrees Celsius, but after an hour or so the sea had a tendency to reach out with chilly fingers and grab hold of your heart, freezing you from the inside out.
We sat by the water’s edge and, pulling back the thick rubber of our harpoons, loaded them and tossed them into the water – twin splashes which turned into ripples and then back to a halcyon calm. Having put on our facemasks and flippers, we finally flicked on our torches and slid silently into the water like wraiths.
I flicked my torch off again as the water seeped through the neoprene of my suit, gently caressing me all over like a refreshing liquid massage. The moonlight glimmered and shimmered off the rocky seabed as I floated, enjoying the calm weightless feeling. This was how I imagined Neil Armstrong had felt when he stepped out onto the moon’s surface – alone in a magical, hypnotic world, millions of miles away from anything that mattered. I was nudged back into reality by Daryl, who had retrieved my harpoon from below. My thumb swiveled the dial which turned my torch on again, and the dancing moonlight vanished.
We paddled lazily along the coastline, our eyes following the torches’ beams as they swooped across the seabed, catching a movement here and there – the gentle waving of seaweed, the darting glow of small fish as they scooted forward to eat something, and then flitted away to avoid being eaten in turn. Crabs scuttled across algae-covered rocks. A moray stopped and glared at me with yellow-eyed malevolence, mouth agape, before winding off gracefully to some hidden nook. A small octopus, caught in the beam of my torch, faded slowly to the colour of the rock it was resting on, and gave me a nervous stare.
I dove down and prodded it playfully with my finger. In a tangle of tentacles, it glided a short distance and stopped again, the pigment in its skin turning it white, its mantle expanding as it tried to make itself look bigger. Without going up for breath, I followed it and poked it again. This time, the octopus opened out umbrella-like, let off a cloud of ink, and then, in one fluid, boneless movement, jetted away like a tiny, bullet-headed rocket. I followed its passage with my torch, fascinated, and that’s when I saw…
… it.
It stood on the seabed like a fossilized monster, a vivid blue, and my first confused thought was ‘shark!’ because, although it was too still, too angular, and so obviously not a shark, it was also so out of place and so big that I couldn’t see what else it could possibly be. It also seemed to be breathing, slowly, like a sleeping ogre, an effect which I realised, after a split-second of heart-pounding shock, was caused by the undulating seaweed belly-dancing around it.
It was the blue van.
***
“Must be an insurance scam”, said Daryl as we were packing up later that night. “Dump the van in the sea, claim it was stolen and giggle all the way to the bank, carrying large moneybags with dollar-signs printed on them”.
“You read way too many comics”, I told him, hopping on one leg as I peeled off my wetsuit, cigarette clamped between my lips.
Daryl grinned and poured us both a cup of coffee from the thermos we carried with us every time we went diving. At his feet, our neon yellow net squirmed and bulged as our catch inside tried to make a bid for freedom. The occasional tentacle popped out, feebly waving goodbye to the world.
“It scared the hell out of me when I saw it”, I told him, finally getting out of the wetsuit and stuffing it into a black garbage bag before tossing it into the back of the car. Wrapping a towel round my waist, I gratefully took the coffee from him and took a large gulp, burning my tongue and throat in the process. “It looked like it had been neatly parked there by a desperate valet who’d run out of options”.
Which, of course, was the whole point.
It looked as if it had been neatly parked there…
***
… whereas Charlie’s car looked as if it had taken the long route through Hell and back. The tyres had been slashed, the bonnet had been ripped off, the engine smashed to smithereens. Every inch of the car’s body had been dented, scratched and bludgeoned as if a gang of hoodlums with baseball bats and an incredible hatred for Porsches had been let loose on it. There was no way that being driven into the reservoir could have damaged the car that badly. Even David Allgood’s most violent storm in living memory wouldn’t have caused that much destruction.
Which meant that the car had been annihilated before it ever touched the water.
Which meant that it had been pushed into the reservoir, not driven.
Which meant that Charlie hadn’t been in the driver’s seat, and was not currently lying bloated underwater on a muddy bed amidst rusty tin cans and discarded refrigerators.
Even the legend of Martha’s Harbour was easier to believe than that.
***
“So what d’you think happened?” I asked Daryl, “another insurance scam, like the blue van?”
“What, Charlie?” Daryl shook his head. “Nah. Why bother destroying the car? Why not just dump it?”
A funny feeling came over me then, a feeling of unreality, as if we were two kids playing at cops and robbers, solving crime while the authorities stood around scratching their heads and muttering, “Those pesky kids…” under their breaths, the way they did in all the best Scooby Doo cartoons. I half expected some guy in a gorilla costume to come bursting in through the door and start chasing us around the house with outstretched arms and yelling ‘Gaarrgh!’ Then later, when he was booby-trapped and wrapped head to toe in rope, we would pull off the mask (it was always a mask) and Charlie would grin at us, that familiar sparkle in his piercing blue eyes and a roll-up clenched in his teeth, and he would say “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!”
Jinkies.
“Joyriders then?” I said. “Stole the car, killed it for kicks, then scuttled it?”
Daryl shrugged. “Could be. I don’t know. Only Charlie knows, and he isn’t around to tell us”.
We sat in gloomy silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the kitchen clock as it chopped minutes up into seconds.
A sudden thought occurred to me. The hand holding my cigarette froze halfway to my lips, and I frowned.
“What is it?” asked Daryl.
“You know something?” I asked him. I stubbed the remaining half of the cigarette out in the ashtray and stood up. “Hundreds of people watch the news every night, but only you and Amber phoned”. And good old Colin dot com, I added silently, but I’m too hyped up to worry about that right now. That’s something I can freak out over later.
“Amber?” Daryl asked, puzzled.
“Amber. Charlie’s ex. From seven years ago”.
“Meaning what? That Charlie didn’t have any friends?”
“Yes…” I paused, then corrected myself, “well… no. Meaning that we were Charlie’s friends. You, me, Claire, Rachael, Amy… we were the people… I mean… we are the people that Charlie cared… cares about. He didn’t have anyone else because he didn’t need anyone else. He has no brothers or sisters, both his parents are dead…”
… then make sure you never get married… Charlie had told me the night I first met him when I had expressed clichéd sympathy on hearing of his father’s death. Much later, Charlie had told me that his mother had been quick to follow her husband to the grave… the shock of waking up one fine morning with a still warm corpse beside her in bed had been the ultimate blow to her already weak heart.
“… we were his friends, Daryl. And you know what else?” I didn’t wait for him to answer, nor did he attempt to. I realised I was getting angry – I wasn’t quite sure why, and I didn’t care. I snatched my packet of cigarettes roughly from the table and lit up yet another. The lighter flame danced as my hand shook. I pushed on relentlessly. “When he disappeared, when I found his note on the kettle that morning, I didn’t even bother to find out why, or where. I wondered, of course… we all did, but I never tried. I just went on with life, assuming that one day he would just turn up again and explain it all. But he didn’t, and he hasn’t, and I want to know why, dammit!”
“Easy”, said Daryl softly, and I realised I had been shouting. I slowly sat down again and took a deep drag of my cigarette.
“Sorry”, I mumbled eventually.
Daryl waved his hand vaguely in the air, indicating that my apology was unnecessary.
“So”, he said cautiously, as if expecting another outburst. “What are you getting at?”
I took a deep breath and tried to rearrange my thoughts. I was still surprised by my emotional explosion. Where the hell had that come from? I don’t think I had realised how much Charlie’s disappearance had affected me until that moment.
“What I’m getting at is Amber’s phone call”, I said after a while. “I mean… they broke up seven years ago, you know? And it wasn’t a friendly break-up…”
As I spoke, my mind flashed back to the first time I had met Amber. Well, perhaps ‘met’ is too loose a term, since all I had seen of her was an angry flushed face yelling abuse at Charlie from a second storey window as she had hurled his clothes down at him into the street below while he limped around pathetically trying to retrieve his worldly possessions from the gutter, begging her to be reasonable. It definitely hadn’t been a friendly break-up – it had been a break-up right out of Hollywood, right down to the grinning bystanders standing around and enjoying the commotion. Apparently, they hadn’t had the same idea as to where the relationship was going. Amber had dreams of marriage and children, whereas Charlie just had dreams. Dreams which, sadly, didn’t include her. Amber, I’d discovered, wasn’t a girl who took rejection well.
“What I’m getting at”, I repeated, returning to the present, “is that Charlie never told Amber where he was going when they broke up. Never left a number or anything. So how could she have called me last night unless…”
“Unless…?”
“Unless she’s seen Charlie again recently”, I finished, feeling more like Scooby Doo than ever. Elementary, dear Watson. It was Miss Scarlet in the conservatory with the lead piping.
Daryl nodded thoughtfully. His eyes were staring into space, and I could tell that he was considering my conclusions from every angle, looking for a chink in my reasoning.
“Unless he called her later after they broke up. Just to smooth things over”.
Daryl and his damned logic.
“Well yeah”, I said, deflated. “But it’s worth thinking about”.
“Okay”, he said eventually, “well done, Colombo. So now what?”
“We phone Amber, and find out what she knows”.
“If she knows anything at all”.
“Well”, I said, standing up again. “It’s a start”.
***
Forward to Chapter Four | Part Two
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