The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House
PENGUIN BOOKS
Stephanie Lam was born and raised in London. She now lives in Brighton, close to the sea.
The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House
is her first novel.
For Philip Lam
The first time I ever saw Castaway House I knew it was meant to be mine.
I was only a kid then, in a dirty dress and unlaced boots. I’d gone to stand at the very end of the pier, where I could look up to the great cliff that marked the end of our town. Castaway House was the last one on the left, at the top of the terrace, bigger than the rest and painted buttermilk yellow, the colour of summer.
Of course, I knew I’d have to wait for it to be mine.
Still, anything worth having was worth waiting for, I thought. They said that the best things came that way.
I looked up at Castaway one more time, and made a promise.
Just wait
, I thought to myself.
You just wait
.
1965
A storm was breaking ten miles away along the coast, and thunder was cracking across the sky. Rainwater splashed down my neck and the back of my dress, leaking through my tatty coat. Above me, the air smelled of metal. I held on to the slippery railings and looked out over the deserted beach sixty feet below, its broken pier sinking slowly into the sea.
I’d just been on an ill-fated walk along the cliff. The rain had turned the ground into a mud slick, and I’d slipped over at the very top, nearly plunging to my death on the rocks below. Luckily, only the bungalows that lined the path had seen my undignified scramble to safety, and that was when I’d decided to give up on washing away my crimes, and come home.
I looked down; I was filthy with mud, and the rubber boots I’d borrowed were a mess. Still, like this I sort of fitted in with the general ambience of my current living accommodation. I turned, pressed my sodden back against the chilly railings and looked across the road at the building looming through the mist.
I squinted to block out the mildewing walls and peeling window frames. This way, all I could see were several storeys of grandeur, with a rooftop shaped like the turrets of a castle, pillars holding up the porch, and iron balconies on
the first and second floors. The house had an almost authoritarian air about it, perhaps because it stood at the head of the terrace, or perhaps because it was the largest on the street.
However, once I opened my eyes properly and crossed the road, there was no escaping the rust eating away the balconies; and from the pathway I could make out the cracked basement window held together with masking tape, the scrags of tinsel up on the second floor, although it was nine months after Christmas, and the badly punctuated
ROOM’S TO LET
sign pasted to the door.
So here it was, my abode since August when I’d so hurriedly left home, shortly before the start of a fresh academic year as Miss Waverley’s most promising pupil of the Upper Sixth; I’d spent the last month and a half trying to tell myself I wasn’t missing it one bit.
I climbed the five steps up to the covered doorway, my feet sloshing inside the boots. As always, I stopped to look up at the oddly beautiful stained-glass window overhead. The hallway light was on, illuminating the vines and tulips that formed in red and green the name of my new home,
Castaway House
.
I dug muddy fingers into the pockets of the raincoat to find my keys. Inside, some sort of argument was going on. Two men: I heard the rumble of voices back and forth. I pushed my key into the lock and recognized Johnny’s voice, telling someone to get out or else. I braced myself, wished there was another way in, and twisted open the door.
As soon as I stepped on to the mat, the timer light blinked off and I was left in the dark. I swallowed, punched
the switch back on, and the hallway jumped into a dull yellow glare.
I was standing between the two doorways. The second one was always open, revealing a great expanse of hall, the dirty flagstones covered with a constant carpet of grit, sand, sweet wrappers and cigarette ends. Johnny was wearing his good suit, and his neck was red with irritation. Facing him was an old tramp, swaying against the snail-shell end of the banister. He turned to me as I came in, and said in a voice as rich as plum brandy, ‘Please help me.’
‘Oh!’ I dripped across the hallway. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Stay out of this,’ said Johnny, and then took me in properly. ‘Bloody hell, Rosie, you look terrible.’
‘I fell over in the mud, that’s all.’ I frowned at the tramp. ‘Sorry, do I know you?’
The man shook his head. ‘Indeed you do not. This is why I need your help.’
He was as pitiful a specimen as I’d yet seen grace the hallway of Castaway House. He had a tangled grey beard, a nose mapped with veins, and an overcoat that was giving off a hideous reek of stale alcohol and body odour.
Johnny growled. ‘Look, pal, you don’t live here and you’re pissed, so do us a favour and get lost, all right?’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘At least let’s hear what he’s got to say.’
Johnny snorted a laugh. ‘Please yourself.’ He waved me vaguely towards the tramp. ‘And you can get rid of him after.’
I smiled encouragingly at the man. ‘Go on. What is it?’
He staggered slightly and cleared his throat. ‘I have
made a journey,’ he boomed. ‘Across sea, across land, and this, mark you, this was my destination. And now I am here, I demand that you listen to my story.’
‘Okay,’ I said, a little uncertainly. Johnny winked at me.
The man smiled, revealing a row of rotting teeth. He patted the pockets of his overcoat. ‘I have something here. Something to show you.’ He glanced up at me fiercely. ‘It is of the utmost importance!’
I watched the man transfer items from one pocket to another, peering at each of them in turn. This took some time, so while I was waiting I said, ‘Listen, Johnny, I was just wondering if I could ask a favour …’
‘No.’ He readjusted his shirt cuffs below his jacket sleeves, and smoothed down his brushed-forward hair. ‘Six quid on Tuesday, or nothing. If you ain’t got the rent, ask your flatmates for a loan.’
I pulled a face, but he wasn’t looking. ‘Please. I’m just a bit short.’
He cackled. ‘I know that.’
‘Johnny …’
‘Ain’t my problem. Landlord’s orders. I just hold this sodding place together, that’s all.’ His face softened slightly at my worried frown. ‘How’re you settling in, then?’
‘All right.’ I shrugged.
‘Good.’ Johnny glanced at the tramp, who was pulling from one pocket a heap of what looked like debris from the beach: an old shell, a bit of twig, a pile of sand-scattered bus tickets. ‘You coming up to see Star later?’
I tried out a bitter laugh. ‘Hardly. She was supposed to knock for me last night. We were going to go dancing at the One-Two, only she didn’t bother to turn up.’
Johnny sniffed. ‘You should’ve come up to ours. She probably forgot.’
‘I did come up.’ I shrugged away the wriggle of excitement at the thought of Johnny and Star in their love-pad; not even anywhere close to getting married, but with a double bed and everything. ‘There was no answer.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Johnny nodded. ‘I think we went out for a drink. I dunno, Rosie, what can I say? My bird can’t keep away from my side. One-Two’s a dive anyway. You don’t wanna go there.’
The light turned off again, and he leaned past me to turn it on. As the beam glowed, I saw that the man was peeling apart the innards of a tube of mints. ‘Items from a newspaper,’ he muttered. ‘Five or ten items. Or seven. You will understand. You will see.’
‘Well,’ I said grumpily to Johnny. ‘You can tell her from me that she can just … I don’t know, find a new friend.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Johnny wearily, as the tramp roared, ‘Where have they gone?’
‘Oh, they’ll turn up,’ I said, wanting to be gone now, with a hot bath already run and waiting for me.
‘They contain the most dreadful news.’ His brows beetled. ‘As soon as I read them … I admit I cannot quite remember now what they contained, but as soon as I read them, I knew I had to return. I had to come back to Castaway House.’
‘Back?’ Johnny clicked his neck. ‘What d’you mean, back?’
‘I had to come back.’ The man stared at the painted-over wallpaper. ‘Had to come back.’
‘Well, look,’ said Johnny. ‘If you been here before, you can rent a room again. I got one going in the basement.
Flat Four. It’s got a lovely garden view. All mod cons. Then I won’t have to kick you out, see?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘That’s a good idea. And then he can have a proper look for his newspaper cuttings.’
‘A room.’ The tramp pulled out a much-torn manila envelope containing a huge bundle of dirty pound notes. ‘Yes. A room. What are your rates, my good man?’
Johnny eyed the notes greedily. ‘Um … we’ll have a little chat about that downstairs.’ He jerked his head as he sauntered towards the passageway that led down into the basement. ‘This way, Grandad.’
‘Wait.’ The tramp eyeballed me. ‘You have been kind to me, my dear. I would like you to be the first to know the truth.’
‘Okay,’ I said cheerfully. ‘You just let me know as soon as you remember it.’
‘First floor,’ supplied Johnny from the dim end of the corridor. ‘Visit any time. Rosie’ll make you a cup of tea. Rosie Lee, ha ha.’
‘How about I pop down instead?’ I said, thinking hurriedly, glaring at Johnny. ‘Er … tomorrow. You can show me those things from the newspaper.’
‘Very good.’ The man held out a filthy, calloused hand. ‘My name is Dockie.’
I shook it gingerly, noticing that my own hand was likewise caked in mud. I had no intention of popping down tomorrow; I had a feeling that by then he’d have forgotten my very existence. ‘Rosie Churchill.’
‘After the great man.’ Dockie nodded. ‘I watched the funeral on Mrs O’Shea’s television set. Most moving. And now, to rest.’
They disappeared into the darkness downstairs. I shook my head, relieved they had gone, and was about to go up to the flat when something about the telephone beside me caught my eye.
At first I wasn’t sure what it was. The phone was an old-fashioned black Bakelite one, sticking out from the wall on a small plinth, and below it hung the money box with its A and B buttons and its slot open-mouthed for sixpences. Above the phone, somebody – probably Johnny – had erected a blackboard for messages. It had never been properly cleaned and was now a thick swab of grey chalk dust, although somebody had recently scrawled on it in pink. I looked at it for several seconds before I realized that the message was for me.
Rosy – yr mother called. Said shell call agane at 5
.
I looked at my wristwatch; it was ten to. I rubbed off the message with the clammy duster that had been wedged behind one of the copper pipes that trailed floor to ceiling. As I was putting it back, I heard the whistling again.
It was a grating, tuneless sound that belonged to someone who was tone-deaf and had no sense of rhythm. I’d often heard it when I was out on the staircase, either rising or falling from one of the floors above or below me, but I now realized exactly where it was coming from, and that I should have guessed whom it had been all along.
Nobody had ever met the inhabitant of the ground-floor flat; at least, Susan, Val and I hadn’t. The flat was certainly being lived in, because the girls had told me that sometimes the curtains at the front were closed at night. Whoever was there had access to the huge back garden,
which we could see from our kitchen window, but none of us had ever seen anyone in it.
I realized that of course Johnny would know who was renting the place; he’d have the name marked up in his little black book, which he kept in a drawer in his and Star’s flat on the top floor, but there was no point asking him anything. Johnny took great delight in denying all knowledge of anything we might want to know, and he loved to tease. I could have asked Star, but I wasn’t speaking to her now. Anyhow, anyone who whistled like that was surely some sort of psychopath, perhaps with bodies in the larder like John Christie, so maybe it was better not to know.
I walked up the threadbare runner lining the stairs to the half-landing. The bathroom was empty, and the meter still had some go on it, so I thought I’d risk not feeding it one of my precious coins. I scrubbed the tidemarks out of the bath and turned on the hot water, the geyser whumping into shuddering life.
While I was waiting for it to fill, I climbed the stairs up to our flat on the first floor. I stepped out of Val’s boots by the door; there was still a good quarter-inch of water in them, but I decided to drain and clean them later. At least the girls were out; Val and Susan were at the pictures watching
Help!
for the fifteenth time with Susan’s boyfriend and one of the lads from their work. I slung my raincoat on the peg above, and walked in stockinged feet towards my bed.
There was a strict hierarchy of beds in the flat. Val’s, which was the middling one, faced the door and was stacked with her soft toys like a first line of defence.
Susan’s, the best, had a frilly pink coverlet and was behind the partition where we hung our coats, against the wall dividing this room from the kitchen. It was the warmest spot in the flat, and she’d positioned the bed so that whenever she got out of it, in a Jean Shrimpton stretch she had perfected in front of the mirror, her bare feet would land on the rug.
My bed was, naturally, the worst. Although its head was a few feet from the gas fire, this seemed hardly relevant as it was pushed up against the outside wall, and bubbles of damp oozed out of the discoloured wallpaper beside me as I slept. The bed lay alongside the furthest of the three floor-to-ceiling windows, which meant that the wind coursed in on chilly days, and on sunny ones it was like being roasted alive.
I stood beside the bed as I peeled off my sodden clothes and looked out of the window. Rain was still lashing down outside, forming puddles on the broken balcony. I pulled my padded dressing gown from the bed, where it lived as part of the covers, and wrapped myself in it. From the window, I saw Mrs Hale emerge from the gateway of the Bella Vista guest house next door and battle with her car door. She managed to wrench it open, although, as she climbed in, it swung away from her and she had to lean out and pull it closed. I heard the distant slam as she succeeded, and the iffy rattle of the car’s engine starting up. She shuddered out and headed uncertainly down the cliff, wavering from side to side in the wind.