Alison Moore - Death and the Seaside

After finishing her cigarette, she went back inside, locked the door and went up to her room, where there was an air of mouldering, as if something was damp. She touched her hand to the carpet, and to the wallpaper, pressing down, but she could not find the source of the swampy smell.

She climbed into her bed, and went to sleep.

It was the longest day of the year, and Bonnie had spent it in the backyard, working on her story. Her laptop was plugged into a socket in the kitchen, the lead stretching out to the deckchair in which she was sitting. She had been working with the laptop balanced on her knees, and it had seemed inside out, to be sitting in the garden, typing; she had felt like she was in that short story of Raymond Carver’s, ‘Why Don’t You Dance?’, in which all the furniture is out in the yard, and a boy turns on the television set and sits down on the sofa to watch.

Now she had finished for the day. She had closed her laptop and propped it against the side of the deckchair. She climbed into her bed, and went to sleep. Bonnie wondered if that was a reasonable place to stop. She felt as if half the scenes in her story ended with Susan going back to sleep, as if there were some force in the narrative relentlessly drawing Susan to her bed; as if, in daylight, Susan was only ever marking time until she could go back to her bed and sleep; as if day was only ever leading to night, although of course it was.

In Bonnie’s own backyard, afternoon had become evening. She was just wondering what to do with herself when Sylvia came through the passageway. ‘Oh, Bonnie!’ said Sylvia, when she saw Bonnie sitting there. ‘Don’t you normally have a shift now? Why aren’t you at work?’

‘I didn’t feel like going in,’ said Bonnie, glancing at her watch. She ought to have been at the Lab an hour ago.

Sylvia noticed the laptop leaning against Bonnie’s deckchair. ‘Have you written more of your story?’ she asked.

‘A little bit more,’ said Bonnie. ‘It’s still not finished.’

‘When can I read it?’ asked Sylvia.

‘When it’s finished,’ said Bonnie. This was what she had said after writing the previous instalment, and Sylvia had responded by badgering Bonnie until she handed the pages over to her after all. Bonnie half-expected a rerun of the episode now.

Sylvia gave her a smile. ‘All right,’ she said. She turned to look at the planters. The clematis and the wisteria were not doing well. ‘What have you done to the climbers?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Bonnie.

‘I’ll give them some water,’ said Sylvia, moving towards the back door. ‘May I use the kitchen?’

‘Of course,’ said Bonnie.

Sylvia went inside and turned on the tap. After the water had been running for a little while, it occurred to Bonnie that if Sylvia was looking around for a jug, there wasn’t one. She was about to get up and go inside when the tap was turned off and Sylvia came out carrying the kettle. She watered the climbers, and said to Bonnie, ‘Have you remembered to print out your story?’

‘I can’t at the moment,’ said Bonnie. ‘My printer’s not working. Or at least it isn’t recognising my laptop.’

‘Ah,’ said Sylvia, emptying the kettle into the last of the planters.

‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ asked Bonnie, preparing to move.

‘I can’t stop,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ She returned the kettle to the kitchen. ‘I’ve sorted out the accommodation for our holiday. I was going to leave you a note. I’ve got us rooms above the Hook and Parrot.’

‘Have you?’ said Bonnie. ‘I didn’t think they did rooms.’

‘They do now,’ said Sylvia.

‘I really need a ground-floor room,’ said Bonnie.

‘You need to be in a room above the Hook and Parrot,’ said Sylvia, ‘because that’s where Susan stays.’

‘I don’t actually say it’s the Hook and Parrot,’ said Bonnie, ‘or that it’s Seaton.’

‘But it is,’ said Sylvia, ‘really.’ She gave her climbers one last disappointed look. ‘We’ll get that story of yours finished,’ she added, and she disappeared down the passageway again.

The sinking sun shone through the bare trellis, leaving the backyard crosshatched with bars of shadow, behind which Bonnie sat for a little while longer, before going inside.

She ate some leftovers, then got into bed and began reading Rebecca again, much of which she had forgotten. She remembered the stark ending, but not how it came about.

From her bed, through the gap in the curtains, Bonnie could see the sky, in which, at eleven o’clock, there was still some light. It was not quite like daylight — it was not a sun-in-the-sky kind of light, or it was at least as if a raincloud were covering the sun — but the sky was still a kind of blue. The street lamps were on, though, as well. Even an hour later, there was still a dusky light in the sky, as if someone had forgotten to bring the dimmer switch all the way down.

While she was reading, she drifted off, and when she opened her eyes again she did not know how much time had passed. The starlit sky was cornflower blue. At three-something a.m., when the night still did not seem really to have got started, the birds began singing. It was as if whoever was in charge of the lighting desk and the sound desk in the control booth had made a mistake, had fallen asleep on the job. Bonnie dozed again, and when she woke, the sun was shining in between the drawn curtains. It was the morning after the longest day — it was downhill now, her grandmother would have said, all the way to winter.

Over the next few weeks, Bonnie saw very little of Sylvia, so little that she started to think that something might be up, that perhaps she had completely misread Sylvia. ‘I’m getting paranoid!’ Bonnie said to Fiona. ‘She hardly ever comes round now, and when I do see her she’s dashing off somewhere. If she’s gone off the idea of us going away together, maybe you and I could do something instead.’

‘’Fraid not,’ said Fiona. ‘I’ve already made plans.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked Bonnie.

‘I’m not sure yet,’ said Fiona. ‘But I am going.’

The Lab was not a place where anyone stayed for long. Bonnie was well aware that Fiona hated the place, and Mr Carr. She asked Fiona how long she was going to stay there for, but Fiona would not say just when she would leave or what plans she had made.

‘How about you?’ asked Fiona.

‘I’ll probably stay,’ said Bonnie, although she disliked it too.

On a Friday in July, a few days before Bonnie was due to go on holiday with Sylvia, Bonnie watched a matinee showing of a science fiction film before heading for her evening job. As she passed the ‘CUNT’ bench, on which two women were sitting, talking, one of them said, ‘Just quit.’

Bonnie bought a chocolate bar and ate it while she walked to the Lab. Halfway down a quiet side street, she became aware of two or more men, wearing dark clothes, baseball caps and shades, following some distance behind her. They were like something escaped from the film she had just seen, and she walked a little faster. When she looked back over her shoulder, the men had gone.

Fiona was already in the staff room. She was sitting down while Mr Carr stood over her, with his shirt open, showing off the tattoo on his chest. When Bonnie came into the room, Mr Carr rebuttoned his shirt, although Bonnie caught sight of the legend, or part of it, tattooed across his broad chest: I am the master. It reminded Bonnie of her student housemate’s recitation: ‘I am the master of my fate.’ It was from an old poem. That was probably what Mr Carr’s tattoo said as well: I am the master of my fate . Perhaps they were, she thought; or perhaps they were like Number Six in The Prisoner , trapped in the Village and insisting, ‘I am a free man!’