Under a Watchful Eye(3)

Unencumbered by family and a confirmed bachelor – having thrown the towel in on all that by thirty-six, fourteen years gone now – the seafront and its attractions had never been designed for him. But the holidaymakers at the tail end of the Easter holiday did not share his reticence. It wasn’t yet May, nor ten in the morning, but due to the warm spring there was already a large gathering of retirees, young families and groups of prospecting teenagers on the front.

Seb mingled amongst the beach blankets, windbreaks and small tents on the beach and hurried across the shoreline in the direction of Preston Sands. Cutting up and onto the Esplanade by the pier, he was engulfed by the fragrant haze of fried sugar and hotdog onions, then beset by the incessant jangle of the arcade’s dark interior. As if he’d forded back across the river Styx and rejoined the living, the assault on his senses was joyous.

He picked up a polystyrene beaker of sweetened coffee to calm his nerves and moved past the shrieks and hurdy-gurdy jingles of the small fairground, pitched beside the adventure playground on the green. Feeling protected and even invigorated by the noise, the very electricity and energy that was relentlessly maintained by a giant pair of throaty speakers, Seb moved to the outskirts of the scene to where the strollers and the stream of cyclists thinned. He found a bench facing the sea and slumped upon it.

Tall white hotels lined up behind his seat. The Lodges, Houses and Palaces still clinging to their Victorian identities. Their cosy familiarity served as a strong arm placed about his shoulders.

Sipping his coffee, Seb made a call to Becky. Recent events had suddenly brought forward one of those times when his need for company, intimacy and affection exceeded his desire for solitude. He’d forgotten what it was like to be intimidated. Yet, in the cliff-side gardens, he’d felt more than merely intruded upon, he’d come away feeling threatened.

As if superimposing itself upon the new scene about Seb, the watcher on the shore’s black shape continued to stain his thoughts while he fumbled with his phone. A sense that he was still within the figure’s orbit would not abate.

Becky’s voicemail picked up. Conscious of saying more than usual in a message to her, he also cringed at the note of desperation in his voice. ‘Hi, it’s me. The weather is just fantastic . . . and it’s been a while, so I wondered if you fancied a trip to the seaside . . . Anyway, I’d love to see you again, soon . . . There’s a great new seafood place just opened in Brixham—’

Seb cut off the hesitant stream of inducements because another now called for his attention. The figure in black stood at the pier’s railing between a noodle bar and a seafood concession. And he was closer.

Getting closer.

He couldn’t have been more than a hundred metres away now, which added an even greater intensity to Seb’s discomfort at being observed, and not only from the outside.

On his phone a recorded message played inside his ear, offering a menu of playback, re-record or deletion. And he wished that at least two options were available for far more than a recorded message. He suddenly wanted to undo the beginning of his adult life, because the man standing on the pier, and staring right at him, was becoming horribly familiar.

Can’t be . . .

Seb stood up, upsetting his rucksack and coffee cup.

Two cyclists, riding abreast of each other, whirred past, their heads elongated by helmets into the shape of alien skulls.

Seb trotted across the beach road and slipped between two parked cars to reach the promenade. He clutched at the railings.

His fear was joined by a compulsive curiosity about the stalker’s identity. But more importantly, how had he moved from Goodrington’s shoreline and around the headland to reach the pier? There had been no one behind Seb as he fled the cliff-side gardens. He’d looked back often enough. Of course, it could just be coincidence, two similarly dressed men in different places fixing him with their stare. But Seb was beyond even trying to convince himself of this.

As he tried to make sense of the man’s relocation to the pier, he could not suppress a competing suspicion that the figure had known where Seb was running to. To wait for you. And again, his reason was overrun by the notion that the man had arrived at the pier by other means, and by a method and design that Seb couldn’t even guess at.

But if this was to be a reunion, his memory began to reopen some of its darkest rooms in anticipation. Rooms with doors long closed and double-locked.

On the beach below Seb a frisbee was thrown badly. A mother, with broad tattoos on her lower legs, roared at her young. An elderly lady spoke to her spouse and said, ‘But I don’t want you to feel any pressure . . .’ Gulls cried above the rinsing action of the waves upon the sand. And all of these sounds retreated to a distance found only in daydreams, or in echoes from the past.

Bewilderment and the swoop of vertigo made Seb press his body against the railings to remain upright. An atmosphere of thinner air seemed to come into existence all around his body. He even feared that gravity was disappearing.

To the pier he looked beseechingly, his face pleading for a release and for that figure to make it all stop.

The man had vanished. He’d either sidestepped behind one of the little cabins at the side of the pier or had concealed himself within the crowd, or even . . .

Seb had no idea.

From an even shorter distance than before, he heard the sound of his name. Sebastian.

Again, the word might have appeared within the confines of his mind. It may also have issued from a range somewhere behind and slightly above his head. The only amelioration of his shock was provided by Seb’s recognition of the voice. The speaker’s face even appeared to him before quickly fading.