The Lamorna Wink

“Ah, dear, I hope she’s not sick, sweetheart,” said Brenda, over the phone. “Shall I call the Hall? Could she have-?”

Johnny had already done it. And the pubs; he’d called them too.

“How about the newsagent’s?” said Brenda.

“Compton’s? It’s half-ten, Brenda. Anyway, why would she go there at this hour?”

“For cigarettes?”

“No. She stopped smoking.”

Brenda sighed. “Sweetheart, I know for a fact she’s sneaked round there a couple of times.”

Johnny had to laugh. Chris’s vanishing had not settled on him fully yet. It hadn’t reached the point of hardening into fact. It was still fiction, a vaguely alarming story that would of course resolve itself into just that: a story. “Come on, Brenda. Can you really see Chris sneaking round?”

“Well… no, I expect not. But I know you think she’s always fine. I mean that she’s got no problems. But she does. Same as us.” She said this without a trace of sarcasm, said it with a kind of sadness.

“You’re not helping, Brenda.”

“I’m not, am I? What about your Uncle Charlie? Maybe he got tossed in the nick again and she went to rescue him.”

“Without telling me? She wouldn’t do that.”

Brenda sighed. “I just can’t think of anything. Would you like me to come round, sweetheart? Keep you company? We could worry together that way.”

He would like it, actually. But saying that made him feel impossibly childish. What he liked about Brenda was that she didn’t dismiss other people’s sadness, anxiety, or fear with banal sentiments like, “You’ll see; it’s nothing to worry about.” So he told Brenda no, he’d be all right by himself. Which he wouldn’t.

“Well, you needn’t come in in the morning if you don’t want to, sweetheart.”

“It’s okay, Brenda. I’ll be okay. Thanks.”

In the way of the suddenly awakened, he thought, Things must have changed; they can’t be the way they were when I went to sleep. But the conviction that they were, were exactly the same, stole over him as he lay stiffly in bed, still in last night’s clothes. He lay there not so much seeing as feeling the morning light, feeling the sea fret pressing against his window.

He rose and padded shoeless to Chris’s room.

Nothing had changed, as he knew it wouldn’t. He went downstairs, careful on the treacherous steps, and into the kitchen to put on the kettle. Meringues and scones still gave the impression that the person who had put them there would be back at any minute. He filled the kettle, plugged it in. A cup of tea, a cup of tea, a cup of tea. As if it were a mantra (and it very nearly was), he repeated the words over and over under his breath.

There was a phone on the wall over the kitchen table, so he sat down and unhooked the receiver to call Charlie. It really was the last thing he could think of.

“John-o! How are you?”

Even if it was only Charlie, his obvious delight in hearing from him made Johnny feel a little better. “Fine. Listen, Chris doesn’t happen to be there?”

Yes, yes she is. Right here; I’ll just put her on. Johnny didn’t realize how intense was his wish to hear these words until he heard the others.

“No, I haven’t seen Chris since that last time she bailed me out.” Charlie’s tone changed then, became more urgent. “Why? What’s going on, Johnny?”

“She isn’t here. She’s cleared off and forgot to tell me where to.” Johnny tried to laugh, but it was more of a choke.

“That’s bloody awful. Did you try that place she does volunteer work? I seem to remember once the old dame she was carting back home having some kind of fit and Chris staying overnight. You remember that?”

Johnny did, now. “I did ring them up, but they hadn’t seen her.”

Charlie seemed to hesitate. “What about police?”

It was something Johnny had hoped no one would suggest.

“Here, that’s PC Evans. Not someone you’d want to have to bet your last dollar on, Charlie. Thanks, though.”

“Sure. And let me know, okay? Seriously. I can be there in an hour and a half if you want me.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks again.”

He hung up. As far back as he could remember, he’d never heard Charlie talk seriously and sober.

6

The following morning, Melrose sat in the Woodbine Tearoom at ten-thirty, sans Agatha, who didn’t show. She and Esther must have been on the razzle last night.

He drank his tea and watched John Wells move from table to table. The boy’s face, which was by nature pale- handsomely, Byronically pale-seemed to be whiter this morning. His manner was certainly subdued. Melrose watched him move between and around tables-all of which were occupied-with none of yesterday’s ebullience, move in a lurching, almost drunken fashion as if he were a little boat pitching in choppy waters. When he stopped, he seemed to be staring at nothing, but then at what (Melrose realized) was something: the door. He looked as if he was waiting for someone to walk through it.

Melrose motioned him over to his table. “When do you finish up here, Johnny?”

“Soon. ’Bout an hour.”

“Could I talk to you? Could you come across to the Drowned Man?” The pub was directly across the street.

Johnny scraped the hair back from his forehead. “Sure.” He sighed.

Melrose thought it was almost a sigh of relief.

“Morning, Mr. Pfinn,” said Melrose cheerily, as he walked into the saloon bar sometime later. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Easy for you to say,” retorted Mr. Pfinn, as he continued wiping the pint glass in his hand.

Easy for him? It was as if Melrose the tourist, the just-passing-through person, could revel in this fine day and then leave, leaving Mr. Pfinn to be plagued by the rest of September. Mr. Pfinn did not ask Melrose what he wanted but merely looked at him from under his hedgerow of eyebrow.

Melrose sat down on a bar stool. “Half-pint of Old Peculiar if you have it.”

“Bottled.”

“Fine.”

Mr. Pfinn slapped the bar towel over his shoulder and plucked out the bottle from a shelf beneath the beer pulls. Morosely opened it, morosely poured.

“I expect there’s a big change in custom, summer to winter, isn’t there?”

“Depends.”

Most things do, thought Melrose. “On what?”

“Why, on the weather, man.”

Melrose thought that was what he’d just said.

Mr. Pfinn saw fit for once to elaborate. “Too many tourists.”

Melrose always marveled at the ability of inn- and shopkeepers to bite the hand that fed them. He excused himself and took his half-pint to a corner table, darker even than the bar. Wavering lights pooled on surfaces; slowly turning shadows gathered in corners. Nothing moved but the publican’s hand wiping the glassware. They could all be under water.

Half an hour passed in this way, during which time a few regulars entered and sat at the bar, all of them