No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories (33 page)

And he hadn’t…

I sit here by our swimming pool with one eye on my son in the water and the other on the seagulls lazily drifting, circling on high. Actually they’re not just drifting; they’re climbing on thermals off the nearby fields, spiralling up to a certain height from which they know they can set off south across the bay on their long evening glide to Brixham, to meet the fishing boats coming in to harbour. And never once having beaten a wing across all those miles, just gliding, they’ll be there in plenty of time to beg for sprats as the fish are unloaded.

It’s instinct with those birds; they’ve been doing it for so long that now they don’t even think about it, they just do it. It’s like at ant-flying time, or flying-ant time, if you prefer: those two or three of the hottest days of summer when all of a sudden the ant queens make up their minds to fly and establish new hives or whatever ant nesting sites are called. Yes, for the gulls know all about that, too.

The crying of gulls: plaintive, sometimes painful, often annoying, especially when they’re flight-training their young. But this time of year, well you can always tell when it’s ant-flying time. Because that’s just about the
only
time when the seagulls are silent. And you won’t see a one in the sky until the queen ants stream up in their thousands from all the Devon gardens, all at the same time—like spawning corals under the full moon—as if some telepathic message had gone out into an ant aether, telling them, “It’s time! It’s time!”

Time for the seagulls, too. For suddenly, out of nowhere, the sky is full of them. And their silence is because they’re eating. Eating ants, yes. And I amuse myself by imagining that the gulls have learned how to interpret ant telepathy, when in all probability it’s only a matter of timing and temperature: Ma Nature as opposed to insect (or avian) ESP.

And yet…there are stranger things in heaven and earth—and between the two—and I no longer rule out anything…

My son cries out, gasps, gurgles, and shrieks…but only with joy, thank God, as I spring from my deck chair! Only with joy—the sheer enjoyment of the shallow end of the pool. Not that it’s shallow enough, (it’s well out of his depth in fact, for he’s only two and a half) but he’s wearing his water-wings and his splashing and chortling alone should have told me that all was well.

Except I wasn’t doing my duty as I should have been; I was paying too much attention to the seagulls. And well—

—Well, call it paranoia if you like. But I watch little Jimmy like a hawk when he is in the water, and I’ve considered having the pool filled in. But his mother says no, that’s just silly, and whatever it was that I
think
happened to me out on the moors that time, I shouldn’t let it interfere with living our lives to the full. And anyway she loves our pool, and so does little Jimmy, and so would I, except…

Only three weeks ago a small child drowned in just such a pool right here in Torquay, less than a mile away. And to me—especially to me—that was a lot more than a tragic if simple accident. It was a beginning, not an end. The beginning of something that can
never
end, not until there are no more swimming pools. And even then it won’t be the end for some poor, unfortunate little mite.

But you don’t understand, right? And you never will until you know the full story. So first let me get little Jimmy out of the pool, dried and into the house, into his mother’s care, and then I’ll tell you all about it…

Have you ever wondered about haunted houses? Usually very old houses, perhaps victorian or older still? Well, probably not, because in this modern technological society of ours we’re not much given to considering such unscientific things. And first, of course, you would have to believe in ghosts: the departed, or not quite departed, revenants of folks dead and long since buried. But if so, if you have wondered, then you might also have begun to wonder why it’s these
old
houses which are most haunted, and only very rarely new ones.

And, on the same subject, how many so-called “old wives’ tales” have you heard, ghost stories, literally, about misted country crossroads where spectral figures are suddenly caught in a vehicle’s headlights, lurching from the hedgerows at midnight, screaming their silent screams with their ragged hands held out before them? Well, let me tell you: such stories are legion! And now I know why.

But me, I didn’t believe in ghosts. Not then, anyway…

My mother died in hospital here in Torbay some four and a half years ago. And incidentally, I’m glad about that; not about her dying, no of course not, but that she did it in hospital. These days lots of people die in hospital, which is natural enough.

Anyway, it hit me really badly, moreso because I had only recently lost someone else: my wife, when we’d divorced simply because we no longer belonged together. It had taken us eleven years to find that out: the fact that right from the start, we hadn’t really belonged together. But while our parting was mutually acceptable and even expedient, still it was painful. And I would like to think it hurt both of us, for I certainly felt it: a wrenching inside, like some small but improbably necessary organ was no longer in there, that it was missing, torn or fallen out. And at the time I’d thought that was the end of it; what was missing was gone forever; I wouldn’t find anyone else and there would be no family, no son to look up to me as I had looked up to my father. A feeling of…I don’t know, discontinuity?

But I had still had my mother—for a little while, anyway. My poor dear Ma.

Now, with all this talk of ghosts and death and what-not, don’t anyone take it that I was some kind of odd, sickly mother’s-boy sort of fellow like Norman Bates, the motel keeper in that
Hitchcock
film. No, for that couldn’t be further from the truth. But after my father had died (also in hospital, for they had both been heavy smokers) it had been my Ma who had sort of clung to me…quite the other way round, you see? Living not too far away, she had quickly come to rely on me. And no, that didn’t play a part in our divorce. In fact by then it had made no difference at all; our minds were already made up, Patsy’s and mine.

Anyway, Patsy got our house—we’d agreed on that, too—for it had made perfectly good sense that I should go and live with Ma. Then, when it was her time (oh my Good Lord, as if we had been anticipating it!) her house would come to me. And so Patsy’s and my needs both would be catered for, at least insofar as we wouldn’t suffer for a roof over our heads…

Ma painted, and I like to think I inherited something of her not inconsiderable talent. In fact, that was how I made a living: my work was on show in a studio in Exeter where I was one of a small but mainly respected coterie of local artists, with a somewhat smaller, widespread band of dedicated, affluent collectors. I thank my lucky stars for affluent collectors! And so, with the addition of the interest on monies willed to me by my father, I had always managed to eke out a living of sorts.

Ma painted, yes, and always she looked for the inspiration of drama. The more dramatic her subject, the finer the finished canvas. Seascapes on the Devon coast, landscapes on the rolling South Hams, the frowning ocean-hewn cliffs of Cornwall; and of course those great solemn tors on the moor…which is to say Dartmoor: the location for Sherlock Holmes’—or rather Arthur Conan Doyle’s—famous (or infamous)
Hound of the Baskervilles
.

Ah, that faded old film! My mother used to say, “It’s not like that, you know. Well, it
is
in some places, and misty too. But not
all
the time! Not like in that film. And I’ve certainly never seen the like of that fearsome old tramp that Basil Rathbone made of himself! Not on Dartmoor, God forbid! Yes, I know it was only Sherlock Holmes in one of his disguises, but still, I mean… Why, if the moors were really like
that
I swear I’d never want to paint there again!”

I remember that quite clearly, the way she said: “It’s not
like
that, you know,” before correcting herself. For in fact it is like that—and too much like that—in certain places…

After she’d gone I found myself revisiting the locations where we had painted together: the coastlines of Cornwall and our own Devon, the rolling, open countryside, and eventually Dartmoor’s great tors, which my dictionary somewhat inadequately describes as hills or rocky heights. But it was the Celts who called them tors or torrs, from which we’ve derived tower, and some of them do indeed “tower” on high. Or it’s possible the name comes from the Latin: the Roman
turris
. Whichever, I’ll get to the tors in a moment. But first something of Dartmoor itself:

All right, so it’s not like that faded old Basil Rathbone
Hound of the Baskervilles
film. Not entirely like that, anyway; not
all
the time. In fact in the summer it’s glorious, and that was mainly when I would go there; for I was still attempting to paint there despite that it had become a far more lonely business…often utterly lonely, on my own out there on the moors.

But glorious? Beautiful? Yes it certainly was, and for all that I don’t go there any more, I’m sure it still is. Beautiful in a fashion all its own. Or perhaps the word I’m searching for is unique. Uniquely dramatic…gloriously wild…positively neolithic, in its outcrops and standing stones, and prehistoric in the isolation and sometimes desolation of its secret, if not sacred, places.

As for outcrops, standing stones and such: well, now we’re back to the tors.

On Eastern Dartmoor my mother and I had painted that amazing jumble of rocks, one of the largest outcrops in the National Park, known as Hound Tor (no connection to Doyle’s hound, at least not to my knowledge). But along with a host of other gigantic stacks, such as the awesome Haytor Rock or Vixen Tor, the Hound hadn’t been one of Ma’s favourites. Many a lesser pile or tranquil river location had been easier to translate to canvas, board, or art paper. It wasn’t that we were idle, or lacking in skill or patience—certainly not my mother, whose true-to-life pictures were full of the most intricate detail—but that the necessities of life and the endless hours required to trap such monsters simply didn’t match up to our limited time. One single significant feature of any given rock could take Ma a whole day to satisfactorily transcribe in oils! And because I only rarely got things right at the first pass, they sometimes took me even longer. Which is why we were satisfied to paint less awesome or awkward subjects, and closer to home whenever possible.

Ah, but when I say “closer to home”…surely Dartmoor is
only
a moor? What’s a few miles between friends? Let me correct you:

Dartmoor is three hundred and fifty square miles of mists, mires, woodlands, rushing rivers, tors carved in an age of ice, small villages, lonely farmsteads and mazy paths; all of which forms the largest tract of unenclosed land in southern England. The landscape may range in just a few miles from barren, naked summits—several over five hundred metres in height—through heather-clad moorland, to marsh and sucking bog. There, in four national nature reserves and numerous protected sites, Dartmoor preserves an astonishing variety of plants and wildlife; all of this a mere twenty miles from Plymouth to the south, and a like distance from Exeter to the east.