Under a Watchful Eye(2)
Goodrington and distant Brixham might have served as architectural models of coastal towns when sighted at such a remove. Built up the slopes of the hillsides, the white houses with their red roofs were arrayed like Lego structures. Tiny brushes of treetops sprouted from within the settlements and even a toy railway cut behind the seafront. Torbay, and the only place where he’d found peace with himself. But had the place and his comfortable lifestyle made him too content? Was penetrating the surface of the world to recreate its meanings, in unusual and interesting ways, dependent upon times of adversity? He did wonder.
He worried that a flabby self-indulgence had replaced his purpose. Maybe wishful thinking about his books had usurped his critical candour. He’d seen it happen to other writers. Perhaps naivety had swapped places with wisdom and imitation had overrun his trademark strangeness. He also feared that an indifference to the reader had taken hold during the good years. Writing this book had been homework and a chore from the start. But worst of all, he had become incurious.
The palms and the pink and red flowers in the heather sighed, ruffled by a cooling breeze. He inhaled the sweet fragrance of the gardens, placed the computer on his thighs and fired it up.
Long forgotten now, but the first sentence of a new chapter had come to him that morning while he showered. Perhaps the sentence would have invoked the restless urgency that had once driven his writing, near panting alongside him, a mad dog with foamy lips. This opening line might have been the beginning of a scene that would drill through the grey weight of a dull mind to produce a fracture. From a crack would burst the flood.
But Seb never tapped a single key. Way down below, the same solitary figure that he’d seen four days before made a second unwelcome appearance. No features were visible within that spot of bone-white flesh, capped in black, but he was closer.
Once more, Seb suffered the impression he’d caught the figure’s eye and that they were staring at each other across the cliffs and sea. Again, the man wasn’t standing on the dry sand, but seemed to be in the water. Or on it?
Small shapes of children frolicked on the sands of a low tide, a group of people walked dogs, others just meandered behind this sentinel of the shoreline, but none regarded him.
Shielding his eyes, Seb rose and walked to the railing.
The watcher raised his chin as if this distant vigilance had become confrontation.
The effects of another mute communication with the same stranger, and in less than a week, was far worse the second time. Quicker and deeper was Seb’s absorption into that scrutiny. As if struck by a cold updraught of air, he shivered and wanted to shrink to make himself smaller and harder to see. Braced by his own dread, Seb clenched his fists upon the metal fence until his palms hurt.
The swish of the surf, a murmur of faraway traffic, and the oddly clear voice of a boy on the beach faded, until all that he could hear was water running in the distance.
That was not the sea inside his ears, either. This time he was sure about that.
Seb slipped behind the hedgerow, a cover reinforced by a pine growing at a lower level in the gardens. Relief from that distant assiduity was immediate, then cut short by the mention of his name.
Sebastian.
His thoughts slid sideways, queasily. He then feared that his head was dropping to the pavement, or that the ground was rushing towards his face. Where were his feet?
His name had been called from an inner distance and one that took form inside his imagination as a grey and misted space at the edge of his mind. He sensed the drab emptiness was entirely without borders and reached much further than he was glimpsing.
Tasting hormones of terror in a dry mouth, he emerged from behind the shrubbery. Moving his legs was too conscious a manoeuvre.
The stranglehold of the moment abruptly passed and the figure was nowhere to be seen. Not on the water, the sands, the promenade, or in the park behind the beach.
Seb gathered up his things and jammed them inside his rucksack, managing to lose his hat in the process, which slipped down the back of the bench. He was too tense to regroup his wits but restrained himself from breaking into a run. Instead, he followed the serpentine path into Round-ham Gardens, the beauty spot on the headland.
And that was the first time that he didn’t linger to admire the blue expanse of the bay. Distant Torquay was ever a mosaic of white buildings, built over the hills and cliffs, an instant dreamy transport into the Mediterranean. But to hell with the view. Hurrying through a row of pines, their long trunks curved and harrowed for years by the wind, Seb made haste towards Paignton harbour.
Even if the man had been intent on engaging with him, scaling the cliff-side paths behind Seb would have been an impossible feat in the time it had taken Seb to get this far, but he still repeatedly glanced over his shoulder to make sure that he wasn’t being followed.
Hatless and harried, as he moved out of the cliff-side gardens, his mind cast about for an explanation for the irrational sensation. He feared an early onset of dementia, and the worst kind of end that he had imagined for himself. Secondary terrors skimmed over schizophrenia and other hallucination-prone disorders of the mind.
Or had he actually seen a man standing in the water? The same man twice?
He was shaken enough to consider that there was something unnatural about the figure. Perhaps the impossible had been achieved during that strange possession of his mind upon the cliffs; he was even close to believing in the presence of the supernormal. The very subject that had made his name as a writer for so many years. The paranormal had allowed him to become that rarest of writers too: one with a good living. But, regarding the numinous, though he had curiosity and fascination in abundance, he had no faith. Uncharacteristically eager to immerse himself into a crowd, he ran from Paignton harbour to a place he rarely went: the Esplanade.