Hedgecock's Trip Down Memory Lane
The sea thrashed dyspeptically below Hedgecock as he limped along the cliff path, supported by his cane. There had been days with weather just like this while he lived at the red house, he was sure, but he never remembered them. When his mind sifted through that part of his past, looking for a place to sit and take in the view, it always settled on placid sunny afternoons. He’d now been on his feet for five miles, further than he’d walked in years, and he knew in a moment the house would be there on the clifftop before him, stained a little darker than it once was owing to seventy years of weather, but as imposing as ever. A house that said, “My owners are important and I am where they live and nobody is going to apologise to you about that.” Some heritage organisation owned it now, its rooms redecorated almost exactly as he’d once known them. Art deco lampshades, martini vase candles, Lloyd Loom chairs. Hedgecock knew from his research that it was closed for the winter but maybe he would talk his way in, turn on his best Sentimental Old Prat voice, play the sympathy card. It was the beach, however, that he wanted to see first.
At a giant patch of bamboo with stalks as solid as steel, Hedgecock turned right and, wholly at peace with the potential imminence of his own death, made his way down a steep, rubbly path: the remnants of an old route, now rarely used and desperately unsafe, especially for a person of Hedgecock’s age and condition. Astonishingly, he did not slip until he was forty yards from the water and, though he sustained multiple injuries in the tumble that followed, he came to rest upright and still breathing. He could see the remnants of the old tidal pool and remembered the summers he and the other staff would spend here when the Duvals were away. He recalled Gwen, who he’d once kissed in the understair buttery, and the wide smile that was always such a surprise when it emerged from her narrow face. The way she would nervously massage him then, when he complained, be totally undaunted by her lack of skill and always be open to experimentation and new techniques. “Ooh, that’s nice,” he would sometimes falsely enthuse, as she ran an old brass kettle or egg whisk across his shoulder blades.
He thought about Bellamy, the unimpeachable head of the kitchen, and the time the two of them beat the younger Duvals in the annual masters versus servants tennis tournament. And who could forget Tania, the champion swimmer, who used to tease him about his unusually short toes? She probably would have been in the Olympics one day, if she’d been given the chance. All of them would come down here every day to swim that summer, and it would feel like their own special subtropical country, accessible to only them, barely like a part of the United Kingdom at all.
As the rain redoubled and the sky became barely divisible from the grey sea, Hedgecock felt still and calm and, had his leg not been broken during his fall, he would have nevertheless felt no urge to move. He could see it all, just as it was, a lifetime ago, and for the first time in all those years he began to wonder if he’d been wrong to murder all thirteen of his workmates in their sleep.
Extracted from my new short story collection, Curious Events Lately Occurring In This Neighbourhood, which will be released on September 15th. If you’d like to pre-order a copy, and contribute to printing costs in the process, you can do so here direct from Breakthrough Book Collective.
