F. Cottam - Dark Echo

The mirror went dark. It was reflecting the present again, the dank gloom of what lay behind Suzanne. She lowered her eyes and shivered. She heard the wet stab of a needle into a cylinder of corrupt wax and the silence groaned into sound. There was the crump of artillery fire and the screams and imploring of men. There was a snatch of marching song. There was the hard stride of a jazz piano and low conversation and wind thrumming against canvas and some sonorous recitation of verse and more screams, female this time. There was the judder of a springboard and the spinning ball of a roulette wheel and a pistol hammer being cocked and high, bitter laughter. She heard more moans, anguished, infant. Water lapped idly as though against tiled sides of a pool in sunlight. Cloth tore raggedly and beads unravelled from their string and danced on a floor of stone, and there was the saw of a knife though something yielding and wet. Ice tinkled in a glass and matches struck and flared and there was the low murmur of seductive conversation. She was hearing the soundtrack of Spalding’s long and destructive life and bleak music it made, she thought, but it played with a churning glee.

‘What a time I’ve had,’ his voice whispered to her. ‘What a time, Jane!’

And now it’s over, she thought, clutching her bag under her arm, fingering the copper talisman of her lucky penny deep in her pocket. You’re human again. You don’t know it yet, but you are. And you can die like anyone else. And by God, you will.

She walked out, towards the door of Martin’s cabin. His door was unlocked. She tested the handle and it moved freely. She opened the door a chink. Everything inside was darkness and silence. There was a smell of decomposition that was sour and sweet at the same time. She did not think it was human decomposition, though. It was not the smell of a rotting corpse. It smelled like food, as though rations had been hoarded here and then allowed to go bad. She entered the room and felt her way about it in darkness. She became aware of the shape of a sleeping figure in a chair. There was another in the bunk. She could tell from the silvery outline of his head that this was Magnus. The figure in the chair stirred. And Martin awoke and saw her with eyes that must have grown entirely accustomed in there to the prevailing absence of light.

‘Suzanne?’ His voice was a whisper, hoarse, incredulous and fearful.

She rushed to him and gathered him in her arms.

‘How did you get aboard?’

‘We’re aground.’

‘You’ve got to get away. Spalding is coming. You have to get away, Suzanne. You should not have come aboard. He’s real and alive and he’s coming.’ Martin had stood. He was half pulling and half dragging her out of the cabin towards the companionway. She stopped and shook off his grip. She slapped him as hard as she could, realising as the heel of her palm hit his jaw that he was bearded. Something slithered against her leg.

‘What was that?’

‘A rat,’ Martin said, dully.

‘Nice.’

‘Rats aren’t the half of it. He’s coming, Suzanne.’

‘I got the log you sent Delaunay, Martin. I read it. I found you. I came here deliberately and I won’t leave without you.’

‘He can’t get you, too. Oh, God, he can’t.’

She slapped him again. She was very frightened and she loved him very much, but there were times when he was too noble for his own good. She was not running away. Not by herself, she wasn’t. They were all getting out of this. ‘What’s wrong with your father?’

Magnus Stannard was a light sleeper, she knew. He had not stirred.

‘Has he had a stroke?’

‘I don’t think so. I think it’s shock. He has stirred, sort of, once. But he lapsed back again, deeper, afterwards. I’ve been feeding him, chewing his food. He throws a lot of it up.’ He looked with concern and tenderness at his unconscious father.

‘Can we get any light in here?’

He gripped her shoulders. ‘There’s no time. Spalding is coming.’

‘Matches, candles – think, Martin. I want him to come. I want him to see the light burning all over the boat and come here in a rush. His haste will be our advantage.’

Martin smiled. She thought that he looked beaten. She hoped for all their sakes he wasn’t. ‘Not much of an advantage,’ he said. He found candles and lit one. Suzanne’s eyes, too, had by now become accustomed to the cabin gloom. The candlelight seemed very bright, dispelling it. She looked at Magnus, who looked grey-complexioned under his grey hair. But his breathing did not sound laboured in his sleeping retreat from the world. She saw a framed picture on the wall. She took in its detail. She knew it from Martin’s description, a black and white picture of the two of them taken at some garden party. Magnus had had it done as a surprise. Except that now it showed Jane Boyte sharing a picnic on what Suzanne thought looked like College Green in Dublin with Michael Collins.

Martin had his head in his hands.

‘Marty?’

‘Yes?’

She thought he looked very handsome in his beard. ‘Do you remember what I said to you? When I was leaving for my trip to Dublin that wasn’t to Dublin at all?’

‘Yes. You said there is no room in your life for ghosts.’

‘It wasn’t true when I said it. It was more in the way of a wish than a fact. I’d like, more than anything, to make it true.’

‘Then wish it harder.’

But Suzanne knew that wishing would never be enough.

‘He’s coming,’ Martin said.

‘Can you carry your father?’

‘He’s my dad. Of course I can.’

‘Then put him over your shoulder and follow me. We’re leaving.’

Martin had to knot a rope around his father’s chest and lower him down from the deck to the sand where Suzanne waited. As he tied the knot and looped the rope through a block and tackle in the rigging, she looked to see if there was any thinning of the fog around the boat. But there was not. It was dense, enveloping.

Their feet were wet, sloshing around the hull. The tide was coming in to bear the Dark Echo away. Spalding would be here soon, on his way to board her. Her master would want to set her course and take her helm when she floated off the sand. Martin’s tread was heavy under the burden of his father. He was strong, but his ordeal had weakened him. She hoped with all her heart he had some fight still left to offer.

Suzanne heard something large slither or scuttle, crablike, through the folds of mist. Martin must have heard it, too, because he stopped.

‘Jane!’ a voice said.

Martin put his father down carefully on a dry bar of sand amid the swelling rivulets of incoming tide. The scuttling sound clattered through the mist again.

‘Oh, it’s good to see you, Jane! You’ve no idea of the fun we’re going to have.’ Spalding’s voice rattled and brayed through the foggy air. Martin Stannard took off his shirt and dropped it on the sand and raised his fists. Suzanne saw with a sinking heart that the old knife wound on his arm had opened up again. It was deep and suppurating. The flesh was raw and the bruising around it a livid yellow. A blow exploded from the fog and caught him flush on the jaw. Martin staggered, but he did not go down. His adversary scuttled, on the edge of sight, poised for another assault.

‘We’ll conclude that tender business begun at the Shelbourne, Jane. I can promise you I’ve matured since then. We’ll linger over our embraces. You’ll enjoy me. I’ll enjoy you. I know now how to take my time. I know how to pleasure a woman.’

A kick, no more than a vicious blur of a blow, followed the punch, doubling Martin up with its force. He groaned and gathered himself and resumed his guard.

‘Necessary chastisement,’ the voice said. ‘You’ve been intolerably insubordinate.’