Conversations with Spirits Read online

  I recall the moment of calm that followed with absolute clarity; just lying there, beneath that vast featureless sky, watching the rain-drops twisting through the air above me.

  Billy’s shadow fell upon me; his knees issuing a pronounced crack as he squatted at my side. He had left me for a time, crossing to some distant corner of the rooftop; and returning clutching a bundle to his chest. Presently, I felt his fingers around my neck and he pushed me into an upright position. Wrapping a coarse blanket across my shoulders, he then dropped the bottle of Heerings into my lap. But when I failed to respond, Billy pulled the cork out of the bottle himself and pressed it to my mouth. The brandy jolted in, mixing with a good deal of salt from my lips. As the hot, briny liquid hit the back of my throat, I retched with such violence, that the liquid erupted in my mouth and shot through my nose. The burning pain that pulsed through my nostrils had a reviving effect. Sitting there, panting between coughing fits, my streaming eyes started to focus once more.

  “You’re all right,” Billy said, looking hard at me. “Come en.”

  Billy stood, holding out his hand towards me. Taking it, I struggled up. But, as I got to my feet, I was hit by a momentary wave of light-headedness and found myself dropping back a few steps. Billy swept impulsively forward, grabbing my shoulders and steadying me. When I had settled, he turned and moved across the rooftop, motioning to me to follow. I did so, sweeping through the puddles after him.

  On a far corner of the rooftop, a solitary wooden hut was situated. Silhouetted against the night sky, I could only make out a few details, but it appeared to be a sort of decorative cabin, perhaps being designed as a bathing box or small boat shed. The door was open and flapping wildly about in the wind. Billy grabbed it. Holding it open, he turned and instructed me to enter. I ducked through the door, but, unable to make out anything within its gloom, I stopped short a few steps from the doorway and turned round. Billy entered after me. Slamming the door closed behind him, we were plunged into complete darkness.

  The stillness inside the hut was broken by the sound of Billy scratching around, searching for something. Suddenly, a match was struck, its flame casting wavering shadows on the walls. Lighting the wick of an oil lamp, the flame settled and, under the arc of light it provided, I was able to perceive a cluttered collection of other personal trappings, including a number of sailor’s blankets, a rubber basin, a Primus stove and a polished brass kettle. Evidently, this was Billy’s home.

  Putting the lamp to rest on a small shelf, Billy crossed to the back of the hut and dropped to his knees once more. Throwing back a tarpaulin, he untied a line of cord from around a bulky roll of material and pulled back what turned out to be a large and somewhat-misshapen straw mattress. Drawing it out, he proceeded to flatten the mattress across the floor, and I was forced to move back a step in order to accommodate it. Looking down, I saw that I had left a puddle of dirty water on the wooden floor beneath my feet. I apologised to Billy, but he simply shrugged and turned towards the door. Throwing it open, he quickly stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind him.

  Left alone, I sat down onto the mattress and took my boots off. Putting them down in the corner of the hut, I snatched up one of the sailor’s blankets and shifted up the mattress. Billy returned, carrying my carpet-bag, which he put down beside my upturned boots. Then, throwing his coat open, he pulled out the brandy bottle and tossed it onto the mattress beside me.

  Clutching the bottle, my head fell back and very soon I was asleep.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Last Resort

  A METALLIC CLANG woke me with a start.

  My natural response was to hunch my shoulders and drowsily throw my head up. But, when I did, a shooting pain coursed through my forehead, returning me instantly to my back. Staring weakly up at the arched wooden ceiling, I spent a few moments unhappily contemplating my surroundings and trying to piece together some sort of continuity…

  I was aware of an intense cold; my shoulders were shaking, regardless of the fact that I was lying on a mattress, fully-clothed and smothered in blankets. Craning my head up once more, I threw a hand across my forehead to shadow my eyes. Ahead of me, through the opened doorway, the sallow sunlight of a misty winter sky washed in.

  Lying there, restlessly pondering the blanks in my memory, I spent some minutes wondering what exceptional set of circumstances might conceivably have led to my awaking within a small wooden hut—but nothing presented itself.

  I was still ruminating on this point, when my thoughts were interrupted by the rapturous cackling of a herring gull—and I found myself suddenly recoiling with deep feelings of resentment and shame. Within that moment, the events of the previous evening had been returned to me.

  “You’re awake?”

  Looking up, I saw Billy’s frame silhouetted in the doorway.

  “It would seem so,” I replied cagily. Pushing myself upwards, I upset the bottle of brandy, which rolled from my lap onto the wooden floor.

  “’Ere,” said Billy, handing me a steaming metal can. “Take this down.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tea.”

  I lifted it to my lips and tasted it. There can scarcely have been any tea in it, for it tasted faintly of rust and hot water. But, considering the man had saved my life the previous evening and put me up for the night, I felt it would be in poor taste to pass critical judgement on the drink.

  “Very nice,” I told him, a throaty cough ripping through the lie.

  “It ain’t,” Billy replied mildly. “I’ve all but run out of tea—but last night’s rain ’as filled up my canisters nice.”

  “Think I’ll jig it up a bit,” I said, leaning forward and grabbing the brandy bottle. Pulling the cork out, I added a healthy dash to the hot water. “Care to join me?”

  “No, thanks,” said Billy. “Don’t let strong drink touch my lips—not ’til the sun’s across the yardarm.”

  “Fair enough,” I responded. “When is that this time of the year?”

  Billy’s head swerved towards me.

  “I dunno,’” he said faintly. “Later though, I’d say.”

  I pulled back the layer of blankets and looked down at myself. My suit, though a robust heather-tweed, was so creased, sodden and polluted by sea-salt that even the most hard-up rag man would have thought twice about accepting it. I also perceived that the left knee of my trousers had gone.

  My coat was in a worse state. Mud had dried onto the fur, resulting in a tangled confusion of clogged strands, which would not have looked out of place on the back-end of a sheep.

  A cursory search of the hut revealed that my hat was absent. No doubt, it had blown off my head when I had been clinging to the rooftop the previous evening.

  I got up and shuffled a few steps forward, my legs aching from over-exertion. Crossing to the other side of the cabin, I sank to the edge of the mattress and picked up my boots. They were twice their normal size and utterly cocooned in mud. As I slipped my foot inside the cold, wet leather, I realised that we would have to do something about the way we looked; for there is no way that any self-respecting hotelier would allow us board looking as we did.

  “I say,” I called to Billy, who had left the cabin to allow me to dress. “I can’t go about with no hat and a hole in my knee, do you know if there’s a gentleman’s outfitter or tailor anywhere around here?”

  “I dunno,” Billy replied flatly. “I don’t ’ave much call for ’em.”

  “Well, currently, Billy, you are the better dressed of the two of us—which doesn’t say a lot. If we’re going to check into this hotel, we’re going to need to look a dashed sight better than this.”

  “There’s a store in Ramsgate what sells duds, I think. Could try en there.”

  Stepping out of the hut, I stretched and crossed to the edge of The Moonlighter
s’ roof. Coming within sight of the sea, I looked out across the waves. The water danced below the sun rising on the horizon; its vaporous colours of orange and pink bleeding through the edges of the pale clouds that had, a minute before, totally obscured it.

  “Billy,” I said softly, still squinting at the sky, “thank you for last night. I believe you may have saved my life.”

  There was a sudden pause as Billy stopped whatever he was doing to consider my words.

  “Thas all right,” he replied.

  I turned about and saw that Billy was outside his hut stooped over a line of metal canisters, to which he was fastening small circular pieces of oil-skin with cord.

  “Do you need a hand?” I asked, crossing back across the roof.

  “No, thanks.”

  There was a pause.

  “Do people know you sleep up here?”

  “I s’pose so,” Billy replied, not looking up from his work. “John, the landlord, put the box up ’ere. ’E ain’t such a bad sort, I fink ’e finks it’s ’is Christian duty to look after the poor—so ’e’s nice to me. Any road, I’m only in up ’ere en the wintertime. I find another kip en the good weather. But no one never comes up ’ere in this time of year.”

  “I had a bit of trouble myself.”

  At this, Billy paused and glanced in my direction, with a subdued smile. “Well, I dunno what you was doin’—but most people tend to use the steps.”

  He gestured to a far wall and I walked over and looked down. Sure enough, just behind the door through which we had exited the pub, there were a number of stone steps leading up to the roof.

  “Ah…” I murmured, “that’s annoying.

  “Tell me, Billy, has a world-famous writer ever bought you breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “Well, nor I—but that’s about to change,” I said, crossing to the top of the steps. “Come on, you can show me the unseasonable delights of Ramsgate.”

  “Hold on,” said Billy. Tying up a piece of string to the last of his cans, he ducked back into the hut and emerged carrying the carpet-bag. “Don’t forget this.”

  “Oh, good,” I said, with a sigh. “This I still have.”

  It seemed to take a long time to get from Pegwell Bay back to Ramsgate. I suppose this was partway due to the fact that I was more sober than I had been the previous evening, but also because my companion moved very slowly, with a waddling gait that belied some obvious discomfort.

  As we walked, he told me that even in his worst days he had not given in and become a full-blown tramp. Partly, he told me, this was because he thought it unreasonable that people ‘down on their luck’ should be forced to spend their days walking from town to town, with empty bellies, just in order to appease a government who somehow imagined that they chose poverty as a way of life. But, mainly, it was because his feet weren’t up to the job.

  The journey was lengthened still further by Billy’s habit of stopping periodically to collect discarded dog-ends from the pavement. At these moments, I would turn and stare out at the bleak winter seascape, breathe in the fresh salty air, and think how odd it was to be a part of the real world once again…

  When Katherine, my wife, passed away, I lost a good deal of interest in the usual processes of life. Indeed, in the months following her death, I found myself scarcely able to leave my bed-chamber. Instead, I would spend my days lying curled up on the mattress, wallowing pitifully in the last remnants of her scent upon the pillow-case. During this period, the only human contact I had was with Knowles, my houseman, and with Sibella. For as much as the rest of the world cared, I may as well have joined my wife.

  Sibella, for her part—foregoing the customary rules of society—would routinely burst through the doors of my bedroom to pour scorn upon me. Persisting, even in the face of much skilfully-crafted rant and diatribe, she finally camped out in my room and vowed not to leave until I had rejoined the social order. Naturally, I spurned these efforts, but, after enduring four days of feminine criticism, I finally yielded. Within the same hour, I was installed in the reading-room of her club, determined to eke out an existence of similarly abject pointlessness there.

  Though, to this day, not an hour passes when I do not come to think of my late wife in some way, it is true to say that I did find some solace within the dark, empty rooms of the club. It seemed like a neutral sort of place—quite apart from the rest of the world. I suppose, being exclusively for men—with one single exception—it contained no reminders of my loss…

  We came to a small square, across which a number of ugly shop-fronts heralded our arrival within Ramsgate town. Drawing closer, it was with small surprise that I saw ahead of me the distinctive gold lettering of a Lyons Corner House Tea Room.

  In London, such establishments employ men to pad about outside their doors, ready to throw them open given the slightest provocation. Clearly, however, this was not the policy in the provinces. As we approached the entrance, I caught sight of our reflections in the glass front of a neighbouring fish-seller, and realised this was good fortune. The way we looked, any respectable place of business would be far more likely to show us the door than open it for us.

  The bell trilled as I swung open the door and swept through. It was a large room; deceptively deep from how it appeared from the roadside.

  I went straight in and sat down at one of the immaculately laid tables by the door. Billy trudged in after me with a pained expression upon his face.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked him.

  “They won’t give us nothin’ en ’ere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I noticed Billy’s eyes flitting nervously towards the back of the room. Turning my head, I saw three waitresses in black dresses and white pinafores discreetly observing us.

  “They’ll not ’ave it,” Billy intoned in a low, miserable voice; his fingers tapping out a nervous tattoo upon the table-top. “They’ll throw us out.”

  “Nonsense,” I replied. “My money’s as good as anyone else’s.”

  Presently, a waitress drew up to our table. She had long blonde hair pulled back tightly upon her head, with a small lace tiara pinned to it. A rather meek, ovine-looking thing with very pale skin, I watched her eyes drift uncomfortably to the floor.

  “Good morning,” she said carefully, “I’m afraid I’ve been asked—–”

  “—–Ah, there you are,” I replied tersely, cutting her off. “We have been waiting for some time. Didn’t you see us come in?”

  The girl’s eyes bulged with alarm. Her mouth opened and closed but nothing emerged.

  I persisted: “Well, no matter. But be certain that the wait will be reflected in any gratuity.” Plucking up a leather-bound menu from the centre of the table, I ran a cursory eye across it. “I’ll have a black coffee,” I said dismissively. “What do you want, William?”

  The girl hesitated and looked anxiously back across at the room.

  “What are you looking over there for, girl?” I snapped. “Did you write down my order? One black coffee.”

  I watched, with some satisfaction, as the girl’s hand slid into her pinafore and she pulled out her note-book and promptly scribbled down my order.

  “And you, sir?”

  Billy looked decidedly out of his depth.

  “Hurry up, old chap,” I urged. “We haven’t got all day.”

  “Erm…tea and two slices?”

  “Coming up, sir.”

  The waitress arrived back with our order with almost indecent haste. When I thanked her, she nodded and mumbled something inaudible in response. I got the impression that she had probably been horribly berated by someone in authority for allowing us to remain in the building. After sipping at my coffee for a few minutes—and watching Billy make short work of his bread and margarine—I left a
decent tip in the hope that the poor girl would actually see some of it and we left the building.

  On the pavement outside, I turned to Billy:

  “Well, that just about settles it. We’re going to need to get some new clothes. Where’s this shop you mentioned?”

  “Et’s up ’ere.”

  Following Billy, we struggled up a road with a sharp camber, arriving outside a large Harris’s department store—one of those new-fangled establishments which substitute convenience for style and make it possible to buy a bedpan and a neck-tie without tasting fresh air in between.

  A prim-looking middle-aged man, with a graceful air and a face with a great deal of strength in it, was positioned outside the absurdly grand-looking façade, dressed in a green tail coat. As we made our approach, I noticed him cock his head to one side and appraise us with a look of amused curiosity.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” he asked, raising his top hat in greeting.

  “I certainly hope so,” I replied, “as you can no doubt tell I’ve had a bit of an accident and, well—to cut a long story short—I ended up in the sea last night. This man…” I said, gesturing to Billy, “was brave enough to come in after me.”

  The doorman’s eyes shifted from me to Billy and back again.

  “Oh?”

  “Well, my friend has suggested that I might be able to buy some new rig in here.”

  The doorman said nothing, forcing me to qualify our position.

  “I have money to spend. I need to buy a new hat and get out of these wet things.”

  After a moment’s consideration, the doorman raised his eyebrows and seemed to acquiesce. Turning, he pushed open the door.

  “If you’d like to go in,” he said blandly, “I’ll take you through to Mr. Davidson in the Menswear Department. He’ll be able to attend to your needs, I’m sure.”

  Stepping past the doorman, we entered into the thrum of a brilliant, electrically-lighted room.

  Despite the shop being busy, it was so vast that it gave the impression of being only sparsely populated. The doorman led us down a long, polished aisle, weaving past occasional counter-jumpers, through areas selling Cosmetics, Toiletries, Haberdashery and Ladies’ Wear; before arriving, finally, at Menswear.