The Coming of The Strangers Page 5

  But it would be better if Laura went …

  2

  He gave me such a turn, he did, coming up to the window li.ke that, with a horrible mask, on, too. I nearly swallered me

  heart, you know how it chokes you sometimes when you get a fright. Of course, boys will be boys, won’t they? Funny he

  never came down here before …”

  Laura stood at the kitchen door listening to the rattle of

  Mrs. Curvey’s talk. At the table a small boy, with big round eyes, was obscuring the lower half of his face with a large slice

  of bread and meat paste.

  “I should let him play in the pond, Mrs. Curvey,” Laura said. “I’ve got to go away—for a little while.”

  “Oh, really?” Mrs. Curvey said, her voice slowly rising in pitch. “Nobody ill, I hope.”

  “No it’s just something—business—I didn’t expect,” Laura said, looking into her handbag. “When you’ve finished this morning, I should lock up and go home, and don’t bother with the place. I’ll let you know when—when I’m coming back.”

  “You feel all right, Mrs. Benson?” she said, concerned.

  ‘Here, Billy, run off. There’s a pond in the garden. Right out the back there, see?”

  With his bread and paste still stuck in his face, Billy ran off into the garden.

  “I mean,” said Mrs. Curvey, wiping her hands on her overall, “it’s not bad news, is it? I can see you’re a bit upset, like, and if

  there’s anything you’d like me to do–-”

  “You’re very kind,” Laura said, and smiled. “Sudden news is always disturbing.”

  “Really, I think it’d be best if I looked in every day and kept the dust off,” said Mrs. Curvey. “You know how things get.

  When is Miss Joan coming back?”

  “Not for three months.”

  “Oh, long as that?” said Mrs. Curvey. “Oh, I tell you one thing. When you was out just now the front gate opened and

  shut of itself, and I reckon the catch is going. Shall I tell the builder?”

  Laura caught her breath.

  “Yes,” she said. “Tell the builder. And get ready to go, Mrs. Curvey. I think I’d better lock up. Just in case there’s a burglary and the police kick up a fuss.”

  “You didn’t have a burglary—or attempted like?” said Mrs. Curvey. “I mean, with the Inspector here and that.”

  “No. We had a bit of a ghost scare, that’s all,” said Laura. “Somebody playing a joke. That’s all it was.”

  She went and packed the things she wanted while Mrs. Curvey finished her clearing up. Her imminent departure was heralded by screams of protest from Billy at being dragged away from the pond. She hauled him into the house and while she bade Laura farewell, Billy stood with his face buried in the back of his mother’s skirts.

  As they went, Billy hissed.

  “I’m going to come back and take that pond with me.!”

  “We’ll come again when Mrs. Benson is home again, Mrs. Curvey promised.

  “It’s got gol’fish,” he said. “I bet there’s frogs, too. Jimmy— my friend Jimmy, you know—he ate a frog on Tuesday, it made him sick ” .

  “Come along, dear,” said Mrs. Curvey anxiously.

  “Mrs. Curvey,” Laura said, holding out some notes. Don’t forget this! ”

  “Oh, thank you, I would have done. You know I get such a head when he starts to talk I can’t hardly hear meself think.

  Billy was coming out of his shyness and stared up at Laura with a mixture of curiosity and admiration.

  “When we went on the steamer, everybody was sick, he said, nodding gravely. “You could see the tomato—”

  “Here! ” cried Mrs. Curvey and dragged him off, still bellowing about the scientific details of the voyage.

  It was the first time for many hours Laura felt like laughing. Then the door shut, and Billy’s voice was cut off abruptly. She was suddenly alone, and her heart shrank and felt cold within her.

  The emptiness became quickly unbearable. She went through the kitchen into the garage, where the Bentley gleamed in the darkness of a cave. She pressed the switch and the doors rolled up and along the ceiling, letting in the brilliant sun. She threw a soft bag into the back seat. The big convertible seemed friendly, almost a personality now that her loneliness was so complete.

  She looked back into the house, then went forward to the car instead. Somehow she could not bear to go back into the empty place, not even to lock it up. Instead she got into the car, started it and backed it out on to the concrete way to the road. The trees of the garden that slid by had the stillness of critical watchers, deploring the going. She swung out into the broad road to a little squeal of protest from the baker’s van, the driver of which seemed delighted nearly to have hit her, and saluted. As he drifted by to pull up farther on, she made a wash out gesture with her hand. He nodded and gathered speed again, going up to Beach End.

  She could not look that way anymore.

  3

  Archibald Denk was a grocer in the town, small, keen, greedy and intense, and always running into difficulties through bad judgement. That morning, he undid his long white overall and said to Jill Denning in the cashbox,

  “Council meeting. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Which meant that he would be back sometime in the afternoon, partially drunk. At the start of each month, when the scrabble for money to meet the wholesalers began, he would stay in the store room, ringing up debtors and drinking from his stock of gin. He had already spent the morning in there, so that his expected downfall was well under way when he left for the Council Chamber.

  The subject to be discussed was, what was to be done about the End of the Beach. The Council had been hoping to develop the site by pushing the promenade further on and putting up a fun fair at the end.

  Fred Baxter, the Mayor, voice thick and testy with overliving, was even more testy that day. A company in which he was interested had managed to interest the Council in the project, which had now come to an inexplicable halt.

  “Look,” Baxter said, wagging a cigar at the Engineer, “how the hell does this cliff suddenly start falling down now?”

  “I’ve had a look,” the Engineer said. “It seems some kind of erosion. Of course, the cliffs are sandstone, you know, and that’s always likely to start shifting unless it’s cut right back.” “But cutting it right back will cost a fortune,” said Denk, brightly.

  “I suppose there’s nobody blowing it up?” said the Mayor, who did not believe in the opposition by Act of God.

  “I must admit its queer, coming right now, Fred,” the Engineer said. “It seemed fairly sound when I looked at it a couple of months ago, but it’s difficult to know how many caves there are. It’s like—well, woodworm. You know, one minute a table looks all right. Then you notice little red sawdust. Then everything collapses, hollow with rot.”

  ‘You’re not suggesting the cliffs have got woodworm, are you?’ Baxter said heavily. “What’s the danger, as it stands?” Well, we should keep that part clear of people,” the Engineer said. “Honestly, the rot’s come on much quicker than anybody could have expected. We can’t have visitors buried alive. It would ruin the place.”

  “Keep people out of it?” said Denk quickly. “Once that gets around it won’t do the place much good, either. Granted not many people go down that end till late in the season, all the same ”

  “All the same, what?” said Fred Baxter heavily.

  Denk looked from one to the other of the Committee.

  “I forgot what I was going to say,” he said, and swallowed. Ah, ’ sighed Baxter and nodded. Everyone knew about Denk’s weakness at the beginning of the month, and Baxter being aggressively successful, could play on things like that. “Too much gin and not enough capital/’ Baxter always said, behind Denk’s back.

  “I would suggest,” said the Engineer, reddening slightly, “that we call in a firm of experts to survey and give an opinion�
��

  “Experts?” said Baxter heavily. “What are you, then?”

  “I’m King of the Dustcarts, and roads and sewers and a few hundred sidelines, but I’m not a geological expert,” said the Engineer, hotly.

  “Experts cost money,” said Baxter, frowning. “Any other suggestions?”

  He sat thinking darkly of the falling cliffs, a feeling rising in him that they were becoming personal enemies.

  4

  In a coffee bar at noon, Joe was with a party of three of his friends, the mystery of the beach the previous night gone to the shades of his grasshopper mind. Joe was older than his companions, three boys in their teens, who regarded Joe as something of a big, bullying hero, though his attitude when with the girls he set after was quite different, almost gentleman-aping. As if he had a face for each sex, or preferred to catch a better class in females than he did in males. That might have been because the males knew he wasn’t what he pretended he was to the girls.

  “How’s the new popsie?” one boy said. “Jill, in the grocer’s? Any luck last night?”

  “Easy,” said Joe. He winked and made a ring with his thumb and forefinger. “Dead easy.”

  When, later, he met Jill for ten minutes before she went back to the shop his manner was eager and attentive.

  “Can we have a swim again ?” he said.

  “I don’t know, Joe,” she said, with a troubled frown. “I had a terrible row with Daddy again last night. I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s worth it.”

  “Don’t be like that,” he said, anxiously. “Don’t let him put you against me, Jill, sweetie. What’s he got against me, anyway?”

  She shrugged.

  “He gets things about people,” she said. “Sort of flares up against them. I don’t know why. It’s just Daddy. And Mummy gets so upset and die whole place is—Oh, I don’t know, Joe. It’s just misery.”

  He put his hand on her arm.

  “You shouldn’t have told him about me,” he said.

  “No, I shouldn’t!” she said, with conviction. “It would have saved all this trouble.”

  “Why don’t you pretend you won’t see me anymore?” he asked slyly.

  “I couldn’t do that, Joe,” she said, shaking her head, and frowning for an answer. “Keeping things hidden is—well, you feel guilty all the time.”

  “Look, you’re old enough to do what you like,” he said, intently. “You’re twenty. You’re a woman. You don’t have to worry about what your old man 3ay3. You’ve got your own sense, you don’t need to listen to his … Meet me tonight, again. Same place, eh? Same time?”

  And suddenly she felt relief at knowing she had an excuse.

  “It won’t be any good tonight, Joe,” she said, and seeing the demanding query in his face, hurried on, “It’s the first Thursday in the month, and he always wants me to stay late and go through, all the books. It’s a lot to do, and I’m tired afterwards. It won’t be any good tonight, Joe.”

  “Not after you’ve finished?”

  The excuse had given her a brief flash of what relief from a row at home would be like, and she hung on to it almost with desperation.

  “No, Joe. It’ll be too late,” she said, shaking her head. “Make it tomorrow, if you like.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know about that,” he said, and looked at his nails- “I think I’m doing something tomorrow.”

  “You think?” she said, turning to him. “Well, if you don’t know, why should I worry?”

  He stood there and watched her walk angrily away to the shop. For a moment he felt like running after her, then he shrugged and faced about. He stopped, seeing one of his youths standing there staring at him first in surprise and then with what might be the start of a snigger.

  She gave you a powder,” said the youth, in delighted amazement.

  “I told her I couldn’t see her,’ Joe said, getting hot. “They never do like that, eh? Come on, let’s go to the flicks.”

  “Aren’t you going back to work, Joe, boy?”

  “I’ve had work,” said Joe, taking his arm. “Come on. Let’s go”

  “I can’t,” said the youth, resisting. “I got to go back.”

  He broke away and hurried off amongst the people on the pavement. Joe walked on, frowning, going away from the cinemas.

  “I was a fool,” he said. “She’s a nice kid.”

  He began to think of her last night, and how they had been suddenly startled, and he saw the queer little pools again, in the odd, heavily shaded light of memory, and he stopped in his tracks. He felt the creeping sensation of fear as he had done the previous night, and turning, he went back to his job.

  It was then three o’clock, and the foreman had the early evening edition of the Echo.

  “Had a bit of an upset in the basket,” Joe said, hands on his stomach, and then his eye caught the headline of the paper lying on the sloping desk with the job drawings.

  POLTERGEISTS RAID BEACH END—EERIE HAPPENINGS AT NIGHT

  “What’s a poltergeist?” Joe asked. “Some kind of ghost, is it?”

  “It’s a ghost that kicks buckets around, like you, but invisible,” the foreman said. “That was a good job you turned in this morning. Why don’t you take it more seriously, Joe?”

  Joe was reading.

  “Well, damn, that’s funny,” Joe said, eyes widening. “Do you know what? I saw something last night down there ”

  He came to the last line:

  “… there is always the possibility of a hoax.”

  “Back to work, man,” the foreman said. “Your job’s waiting.”

  5

  Dickie Harris’s splash lasted only a short time. At three o’clock a cruiser grounded round the headland, ramming itself well up on a shingle bank; at three-fifteen Mrs. Willoughby went berserk at the Merryfield Jumble Show, crowned the Member’s wife with a bouquet and escaped to the lavatory where she hurled defiance and a toilet roll which hit Police Sergeant Jeaves right in the eye and caused his removal in some pain. And while the siege of Water Closet One was in progress scaffolding at the new Secondary School Extension collapsed, and three workmen were thrown to the ground. The Poltergeist story became smaller and smaller and ended as a paragraph under yesterday’s Closing Prices.

  Thus, when Joe met his friends that evening, filled with the glory of having seen “The Thing From Outer Space”, ht.- had a job to find the report, and when he did, it did not impress his listeners. Which, in many ways, was fortunate.

  “I was thinking we might organise a Ghost Party,” said Joe. “You remember that Coffin Party we had in that empty housed Well, like that?”

  Nobody was keen and somebody turned up the juke box to drown out the embarrassment. A pretty girl with long, unbrushed hair and a sweater that nearly slipped off her, so great its slop and weight, came, leaned over him and chewed sum in his face.

  “Tomorrow, sweet coz,” he said. “Tomorrow is the nicht for parties, lovely.”

  Joe looked up and wondered how the daughter of a solicitor, with her education, could slum around like this. He even felt embarrassed for her.

  “I haven’t forgotten, Judy” he said. “Not me.”

  Next night in the town hall dance room, Bum Stuka and his Jazz Tramps were to give a recital, and already arrangements , had been made to clear the floor of all chairs and other breakables and to lock up the lights in cages.

  “Judy, siddown,” Joe said, grabbing her wrist and hauling her down into the seat by him. “What do you know about poltergeists?”

  “I know we worked one up at school, in the dormitory,” said Judy airily. “Scared everybody waterless. It’s easy.”

  “You heard about this one down at Beach End?” he asked, wary now, for fear of being laughed at.

  “That’s easy, too,” she said. “All mechanical. But look, if you must have a party with the ghouls, why not make it tomorrow, after the session? Lanterns, masks, the Lot. Call up the Devil. He’ll like it. Have you ever thought what a
thrill it would be if a sort of lid opened in the floor and all the flames came up and He climbed out?”

  “Sometimes I think your father ought to know,” Joe said.

  “Beach End,” said Judy, almond-painted eyes widening. “Oh, that dreamy man down there. John Sebastian. Dig that profile, duckie, those muscles. Oh yes. Let’s have a party there tomorrow.”

  “Listen, we’re not dragging in any dead beats,” Joe said.

  “Don’t be cross, jealous beast,” said Judy and laughed.

  “Listen,” Joe said, between his teeth, and holding her wrist he to I’d her what he had seen on the beach the previous night.

  “Ghost footprints,” she said, tensely. “Beat me, Daddy-oh! Okay, then, man. It’s a party tomorrow.”

  The falseness of her attitude, a kind of pitiful strain for effect, hit him and he felt embarrassed. He looked into his coffee, stubbed his cigarette out in the saucer and wished he were with Jill Denning.

  What’s the matter with me? he thought, in a puzzled way. Am I catching it?

  He looked in surprise at Judy, funny, frail little Judy, pale and painted, overacting to be noticed. He looked at the young, nice kids, acting slummicky just to be the thing, and to his amazement a coldness came into him, as if all these familiar figures lost their colour, their meaning. All of a sudden he knew they didn’t mean anything at all. They hadn’t got anywhere. They were just drifting like loose buoys, waiting for Life to pick them up and shove them into some sort of order.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Judy said, in a sharp little voice.

  He thought of Jill, and the way she fought life and felt it, how people were real to her and made her cry and laugh and not pretend to sneer. He could feel her body again, trembling under his hand, as if his touch meant something terrific to her. He wanted suddenly to go and punch her old man on the nose and take her away from him so they could run off together somewhere, anywhere, it wouldn’t matter so long as it was just Jill and him … .