Under a Watchful Eye(59)
The first three numbers he’d called – ‘J’, ‘Dizzy’, ‘Ace’ – were disconnected. The fourth number for a ‘Baz’ rang out twice before the call was answered. A rough male voice exploded inside Seb’s ear the moment the call was accepted, the words frantic and near breathless with anger. ‘Ewan! That you? Ewan, you cunt! I’ll fuckin’ do you! Where are—’
Seb had hung up and found himself shaking for a few seconds. The lingering effect of Baz’s threat flooded his imagination with the sensations and notions of sleeping rough in damp, filthy rooms, crashing on couches that stank of cigarette smoke, owing money, being cold, hungry, hungover, strung-out, skint, depressed, unwell, tired . . . His appetite to delve any further into Ewan’s past faded. Seb deactivated the handset in case Baz called back.
He went out to the balcony afterwards. The grey clouds had blown over. Sunlight had transformed the water from the earlier colour of ash to a near-luminous blue and produced a glare from the tiered rows of white buildings bordering the harbour. For a few moments Seb felt delirious with gratitude for what he had, for who he was, and for where he lived. And he experienced a tremendous relief that Ewan was no longer alive. He was convinced that the man would have destroyed him.
15
Discarnate Inhabitants of Hades
Seb sat alone on a bench on King Street, in Brixham, embedded inside one of the alcoves that overlooked the old harbour. The tide was high and the water bristled with masts.
Gentle and soothing was the sun’s warmth upon his face. Drowsy and coddled with two pints of Cornish bitter, his thoughts became adrift from the last month, and he recognized the first sign of contentment in weeks. Another comforting, familiar glow spread outwards from a belly full of fresh crab sandwiches, the satiation softening tension. Once again, the sea air seemed capable of nourishing his soul.
Rising up across the harbour and behind his bench, the old stone town teetered upon the edge of the narrow roads that bisected it. Successive levels of ice cream and candy-coloured houses, pink, yellow, white, and sky blue were cut into the cliffs and remained exotic to him after two years a resident. A great shelf of cloud, like a movable ceiling on a sports stadium, inched over the bay from Torquay, but still had some way to travel.
Closer to the shore the sun transformed the sea a green that closed on becoming turquoise. Out past the slipway and lighthouse the water sparkled white gold and heralded the coming of summer. Life could be good again.
Eight days without a nightmare. A week and a half since Ewan had died.
One road in and out of the town and open sea ahead. Natural defences. A town not cut off, but annexed, the architecture and topography remaining unique in the bay. Still a working port with its own fishing fleet and ferry services. An old and established community and he’d been able to live on its edge, like a tourist or retiree, with no shared history. He’d never felt isolated, he’d felt safe. The infinite horizon of the bay made anything seem possible. An insidious, encroaching misgiving that the place had become a trap, he suppressed. And until Mark Fry made contact and Theophanic Mutations arrived in the post, he intended to divert his thoughts away from Ewan’s legacy.
At the edge of his vision a figure joined him on the bench, a rustle of a yellow waterproof coat announcing someone’s arrival.
Unusual for someone to join him there, because he rarely saw anyone use the bench, and the enclosed nature of the walled terrace also suggested the existing occupant’s desire for seclusion.
Shielded by sunglasses, Seb’s eyes remained fixed upon the sky. Pulling heavily on his electronic cigarette, he released a cloud of blueberry vapour to engulf his head like a smokescreen.
A blob of yellow Gore-Tex and a pale head intruded into his view of the glittering horizon. ‘You must get inspired here.’
The voice startled him. A female voice, one slightly juvenile from a touch of excitation, as if altered by a trace of helium. Cartoon voice, he thought unkindly.
When Seb turned his head, the woman was looking out towards the quay and appeared distracted. He didn’t consider himself famous and, despite appearing on television a few times, he’d never been recognized in public. His likeness was only familiar to those in the genre-fiction world. He wondered if the woman was even addressing him as an author.
‘It would be a dull mind that this view failed to move,’ he said, trying to sound good natured, though what he said was stiffer with a challenge than he’d intended. He kept the stranger in his peripheral vision.
‘Still special to you.’
He found her familiarity irksome. The tone wasn’t so much rude as subtly challenging, slightly arch, and perhaps judgemental.
‘Of course.’ Seb frowned, hoping to compel the woman to explain her comment about inspiration, which now suggested both a general statement about the view, and something uncomfortably intimate that might threaten the bounds of small talk with a stranger.
The profile of her round face broke into a smile. ‘I suppose that it might be dull to someone who looks at brighter light.’
An unpleasant sentiment, considering recent events. Now she had his full attention.
Her plump face was made unusually smooth by a lack of colour and conjured infantile associations. It also made her age hard to gauge. Maybe she had one of those faces that never relinquished a younger self, permanently trapped in surprise by the ageing process around the core expressions.