The Haunting of Harriet (39 page)

James was taking up the slack on the rope. He had been told not to venture in the water and was not sorry, since it was indeed as his father described it. He was enjoying being one of the men. The swearing made it all the more exciting.

“Why did you ask about Liz?”

“Just making sure she’s out of the way. I’ve already felt the wrath of her tongue. Not something I want to experience again, thank you very much.”

The dinghy came up quite easily, reasonably intact and ship-shape, unlike her poor predecessor. But then she had not been submerged for anything like the same length of time. The salvagers inspected their loot.

“I can’t see any signs of damage. She obviously just took in too much water and went down. God, the kids were lucky. It was a pig of a night.” Bob shuddered at the thought of the children out in such a storm. His fingers were numb already. It must have been as cold as this that night. The water was not getting any warmer; water kills amazingly quickly and cold, sweet water is the worst. “Your Jenny must be one tough kid to survive in freezing water for so long and still function mentally and physically. I’m pretty strong, but I don’t think I could have pulled a body up from the bottom of this lake, especially a lump like Jimbo here. You must have been tangled in weed, for one thing, and in the dark it’s hard to tell up from down. How the hell did she do it?”

James felt someone pass over his grave and hoped the reluctant nervous grin that had fixed itself across his face masked his fear. He didn’t want to appear a baby now that he had become one of the men. Bob was sitting on the bank with the rescued dingy upturned beside him. Edward was draining the last of the coffee from the flask. James began walking around the hull kicking it, mimicking his father checking the tyres of the car.

“James, go and get us some strong coffee, and put a splash of brandy in it.”

James responded with a thumb’s-up and a broad grin, turned and raced off up the garden to the warmth of the Aga.

Once his son was out of earshot Edward continued: “Jenny claimed… and bear in mind she has one hell of an imagination, but she swears that some woman called Harriet helped her. What a strange old biddy was doing in the garden at that time of night and in such fucking awful weather I don’t know, but Jenny swears this woman saved them. Apparently she pulled Jenny out then pushed the boat hook in to show her exactly where poor old Jamie was. Jenny then went back in and fixed him to the hook, wrapped her legs around him (and she’s got very strong legs for a girl) and inched her way back up the pole.” Edward paused. “I couldn’t have done it. To have the courage to dive back into that hell, having half-drowned already.”

“You’d dive into a damn whirlpool to save your kids, Ed, I’ve no doubt about that, mate. The real question is where did this crazy old woman come from?”

“Well, in fairness, we don’t know she was crazy,” Edward remarked.

“Who in their right mind would be out on a night like that?” Bob laughed.

“I take your point. But, mad or not, the fact remains that Jenny swears she was there. I know things must have happened slightly differently, but it’s a bloody good tale to tell the grandchildren.”

Edward’s face turned a chalky white and he sat down with a jolt. “At least we can have grandchildren now. Bloody hell, Bob, it’s only just sinking in. I nearly lost my kids.”

What might have been an embarrassing moment; a slight loss of manly bravado; was saved as James arrived with three steaming mugs of what tasted like hot brandy. Edward winked at his son and tapped the side of his nose, warning him not to let on to his mother. James glowed with pride. It was rare to be sharing secrets with his dad. He downed his mug of “coffee” in one. If this was what they called quality time, he was all for it.

Meanwhile Bob had been examining the hull. Edward’s show of emotion had touched him. The Jessop twins were the closest he and Mel got to a family of their own; he could not begin to think what losing them would feel like.

“What do you make of these?” Bob studied the scratch marks, putting his large hands against them. “They are finger marks but they’re much smaller than mine. They belong to a child. They must be Jenny’s. They’re quite new, and so is this.” He was running his artisan’s finger along the slimy length of the wooden structure. A long, wide scuff mark was visible where the framework of the hull had been scraped clean of its coat of algae and mud. Something had been dragged the entire length from stern to bow. It was as if someone had been keel-hauled.

“It makes sense. If she was on the decking as she claimed,” he pointed across the water to the boathouse, “and the boat was somewhere here,” he was thinking aloud now and pointing to where they had found it, “she would have had to swim under it to reach James and drag him ashore here.” He indicated the mud slick next to where they sat. “That is one brave kid.”

Bob sat back and took another swig from his mug then continued: “Clever girl, if she’d swum too near the island she’d have got tangled up, like poor old James. Round the boat would take too long, so she virtually keel-hauled herself to save her brother. She must have the lungs of a whale. All this in the pitch dark with a force nine blowing, it’s a bloody miracle!” He emptied his mug with one long swallow and held it out for James to refill. “Your sister’s nothing less than a heroine and if I were her father I’d be shouting it from the effing rooftops.”

James tore up the garden, his drunken legs racing away with him, his arms swinging the three empty mugs and his voice hollering the triumphant phrase,
effing heroine
over and over again. Edward’s mind was too busy to laugh at his son. It too was racing, trying to imagine the full horror of the situation. The fortitude and presence of mind shown by his daughter filled him with pride along with tremendous admiration and love for her. The enormity of it made him go cold with fear. Jenny, that wild, untameable, questioning hooligan, had grown into a fantastic strong young woman whose life was spread before her with every goal, every dream attainable, and it had nearly ended on that crazy night. He sat down next to Bob and wept. Bob wrapped his arm around his friend and they sat together in embarrassed silence.

That was how Liz found them. James was asleep at the kitchen table, drunk as a skunk. The other four were huddled together reading the Tarot as if their lives depended on them. She was bursting with news there was no one to hear it so she stood in the middle of the hall and raised her arms up to embrace the spirit of the house. Her house would listen. It always did.

She lifted her head and mouthed the words: “We’re going to have a baby, in the summer, a little boy and it’s our secret.”

That afternoon, after a hot shower and a change of clothes, Edward set off for a solitary turn around the garden. He could hear the distant pealing of church bells and it dawned on him what a perfect garden his wife had created. The reality of the accident had brought the miracle and fragility of life home. He had been a selfish bastard and he vowed yet again never to take life for granted. He was standing by the beck renewing his vows when he heard Bob’s voice.

“Tranquil, isn’t it? Apart from the damned bells. Well, shall we finish what we started?”

“Why not? I hoped you’d come back. Sorry about this morning.” Edward disappeared, to return armed with a miscellany of tools, and found Bob staring deep into the water.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, mate?” Bob asked. “We could be opening a whole can of worms here.”

Edward replied by donning his waders and throwing a spade to Bob. Together they climbed back into the freezing water. The current was still a force to reckon with and once or twice they had to hold on to each other to steady themselves. As they began to churn up the bottom the waters became thick with mud, forcing them to feel their way down into the thick sludge. Edward kept thinking this was what Jenny had faced, this black evil mud.

“Hang on. I’ve got something.” Bob was pulling something from the grip of the slime. Already the walkway was littered with sticks and logs, each of which in its turn had caused the men to get excited, only to have their hopes dashed. This time Edward knew it was different. His nerve endings tingled with an electric force that was invigorating and scary at the same time. He joined Bob and together they felt their way along the length of the object. The thick silt was reluctant to give it up without a struggle. Using all their strength, they wrested it clear of the cloying mud. The wooden shaft had petrified in the alluvium and the metal had rusted away leaving just enough to give it an identity. The men lifted it on to the decking and climbed out. They were sweating from hard work and excitement and water had crept in over the top of their waders but it was worth it. Lying on the decking was a boat hook.

“That has been down there one hell of a long time.” Bob wiggled the metal end and it snapped off in his hand. “Not exactly what you’d call fit for purpose, eh?” He was almost afraid to touch the frail object. “Well, this can’t be the one the loopy old bat used, that’s for sure.”

He was clearing the pole of the mud and slime, trying not to get too close. The stench of stagnant weed was overpowering. His hands stroked the length of the shaft, disturbing years of fetid debris, which transferred itself to his fingers with the same tenacity that had held it in place for so long. Shaking it free with a series of determined movements, Bob continued his examination. As his fingers neared the end of the shaft they stopped. There was something chiselled out, deep gouges that he could sink his fingers in. He rinsed the pole in the water, swishing it around to expose the wood. At first he assumed it to be the work of animals gnawing at the rotting fabric. But, no this was man-made. It looked as though someone had carved it.

“What on earth do you think these are, Ed?”

Edward did not reply. He was staring into space. He felt his knees buckle and his head getting lighter. From somewhere far away he heard his friend’s voice asking if he was all right.

“I could feel funny marks on the end of it,” Edward muttered as he came round.

“What are you talking about?” Bob was confused; it was not every day his mate fainted.

“That’s what Jenny said: ‘I could feel the funny marks.’ This is the same hook. I know it’s impossible but there is your proof!” He was running his fingers over the notches. The two men looked at each other in disbelief.

Neither spoke. It was either an unbelievable coincidence or something very odd was going on. Edward was reluctant to entertain the thought of a supernatural explanation but, for the life of him, he could come up with nothing plausible. Here was an old boat hook that had lain at the bottom of the lake for donkeys’ years, which fitted the description Jenny had given of the one used in the rescue. There was his stumbling-block. If he accepted the boat hook, and he wasn’t sure he had yet, then he had to accept the existence of some fanciful old woman who hovered about round the boathouse. It was just not the way his mind worked. He was about to admit his confusion to Bob when Liz appeared, carrying two steaming mugs of coffee.

She placed the coffee on the decking and walked over to the boat hook. Instinctively she ran her hand along the water-smoothed wood until they rested on the initials carved at the end. Vibrations from the past connected to lives she would never know travelled through her body. So this was what had haunted her for so long. This rotting length of wood had been calling to her ever since she had moved into Beckmans. Its relevance to her life was now evident but the whys and the wherefores remained unanswered. How does an artefact from another age communicate emotions? Surely an inanimate object did not possess the power to reach out across time so compellingly? There must be a catalyst, a human element to join the threads, to make the connections. Liz turned to the two men and smiled.

“So, it was a boat hook. I was right. Well, I’m going indoors. It’s freezing out here.” She turned on her heel and hurried back to the house.

The boat hook was wrapped in an old sheet before being placed in the shed, and the
Olly Ro
was left upended on the bank, to dry out before it could be rendered seaworthy once more.

M
eanwhile, in the Fourth Room a heated debate was under way. It was Jenny’s baptism into a full-blown intellectual argument, and much of the meaning was lost on her. Words soared over her head. The references and quotes sourced from works she had not heard of were tools she too wanted to use. She wanted all this knowledge at her own fingertips. The passion with which the speakers argued their points was a revelation. So much conviction, such conflicting views being discussed heatedly and vehemently yet without rancour, impressed itself on her young mind. Their vast vocabulary and dexterity of thought amazed her. They expressed themselves with an eloquence that made her long to be a part of this world. Argument and counter-argument rallied to and fro in a mixed doubles of the intellect. The conversation rose and descended in cascades, going over her head but permeating her brain by osmosis. She did not fully understand it all but she knew some essence of it would remain to nourish her mind, making it strong and flexible in the future.