I
Having paid the taxi driver, I stood on the cracked and pot-holed pavement of a narrow seaside road. In my hand, I held a five pound note and some small change, the driver’s card with his telephone number and, scribbled on the back, the number of a younger colleague who worked past eleven p.m., as well as the name of the Bed and Breakfast his son-in-law ran, and where I’d receive a discount if I mentioned his name. I was ill-accustomed to small town cheer and the desperation of its inhabitants to keep it on life support.
I closed my hand around the few items lest the cool and salty breeze blew them away and watched the taxi reverse all the way out of the street, until it turned at the next junction. Slipping the money and the card into the pocket of my coat, I ran my hand through my hair in a vain attempt to keep it from flying into my face. I finally allowed myself to take in the house. It was small, ducking against the ground like the tiny, gnarly seaside trees, weathering the constant wind. Crooked and knotted driftwood was arranged in the small yard and under the windows, and a long line of heavy old rope was fixed around the doorframe and running along the wall. I pulled the cheap digital camera from a side pocket of my bag and snapped a quick picture—just in case I wanted to describe it in my article later.
I didn’t know what I’d expected, something a little grander maybe. I paused, then checked the weathered iron house number against the address I’d memorized. No mistake possible. Maybe I overestimated his income—in the writing trade myself, I knew how badly it paid, but Paul Archer was a screenwriter of some note, especially in the independent cinema market. Maybe that should have been my first clue.
I wished then that I had checked into a Bed and Breakfast first and could have stood there feeling less stranded. The train had been late and I was only just in time, looking very much the young, eager journalist in a pencil skirt, blouse and cardigan under my coat. I had a laptop in a heavy messenger bag, but also a notepad and an old tape recorder that once belonged to my mother when she was the first of her family to go to university at the age of thirty.
I was nervous, of course I was, and I took a deep breath before I opened the grayed and battered gate. My heels clicked all too loudly on the flat stepping stones lining the short path to Paul Archer’s door. There was no bell, just an old-fashioned knocker and I stared at it for a moment, before I lifted it and rapped it against its base in three sharp knocks. It sounded hollow and dull and I exhaled a breath through puckered lips trying to calm the dizzying onset of nerves.
At first, I couldn’t hear a thing from inside. I looked around but just as I’d turned my back on the door, it opened with a loud creak. I spun around. In the entrance, I saw a tall man in his early forties, chin-length hair graying around the temples much like his gate had, but showing no sign of receding. He looked like a giant in the small door, made for fishermen from a different century, and he had to slump a little, fingers hanging off the frame, elbows sticking out in front of him.
“Yeah?” he asked and I had to smile. It took just a single word to betray his American accent, hardly ground down by the years. I felt out of place in my suit and uncomfortable high heels. Paul Archer was wearing slippers and battered, washed-out corduroys under a simple knit sweater: the picture of his recluse reputation.
“Hi, hello,” I greeted, licked my lips and put on my best smile. “I’m Iris Ellis, um, we spoke on the phone?”
“Of course, Miss Ellis, come on in.” He had a disarming kind of smile, a manner of resetting his glasses and tilting his head to the side, and he stepped out of the way while he continued speaking. “I hope you didn’t have too long a journey. I know it’s a pain to get out here.”
And so we met. He led me through the hallway, made narrow by dusty bookcases on both sides, clearly self-made and built to fit from smooth driftwood. We exchanged pleasantries about how little trouble I had on the way, and how much I enjoyed train rides that cleared the head. He put the kettle on in the small kitchen as he extolled the virtue of his old car and expressed his amazement at Europeans like me who could live without one.
Not one piece of his furniture looked bought from any store I’d ever seen, maybe because the dimensions were so unusual, but it gave the place a strange charm as he pottered between the different shelves. There were few straight edges, following the grain and curve of the wood instead, ground to a soft sheen. Books had found their way between stacked cups and plates, piled on the windowsill and at the back of the table.
He smiled a lot and proved to be far more pleasant than his reputation. He served tea, a weakness he admitted he hadn’t picked up until years in the country, and while I took milk and sugar, he just squeezed some lemon into his mug. The fruit groaned under his touch, yielding its juice drop by drop and it smacked suggestively when he loosened his hold. I was transfixed and hid my face behind my cup.