*
‘What the hell was that about?’ George said, staring after Eryn. ‘Didn’t she realise it was us?’
Seb shrugged and carried on singing Kelly’s Song, then said, ‘You’ve seen how she’s been since last month… right up her own miff. She gets weirder every day, hardly talks to anyone now.’
‘Hmm. Baron don’t say what’s up, either. Says it’s something to do with Boen…’ He nodded over to the Waeshenbach household as they neared it.
‘You don’t reckon the two of them was rutting, do you?’
George laughed. ‘What? Are you joking? Of course not.’ He looked after her, though she had already gone. What had she been doing with him that had got her into so much trouble?
‘What then?’ Seb prodded. ‘Come to think of it I ain’t seen him much either. When did you last see him?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sure I’ve seen him around.’
They both looked up at the residence as they passed by. It seemed cold and uninhabited, though they thought little of it.
‘I’ve got to head down to the Hotel.’ George said. ‘The stuff in the sack on the left is for them.’
‘No problem. I’ll come with you.’
‘George looked at him sardonically. ‘Right. And they’re going to let you in because?’
Seb smirked and said it was worth a try, then waved him adieu and said they would speak later in the Smuggler’s.
George followed a left fork in the road that lead to the overgrown and crumbling Esplanade. The hotel had been built on a low plateau, and from his vantage he could only see the skeletonised slate rooftop, worn away by a century of exposure to the northerly winter storms.
The exterior of the Edwardian hotel still looked grand, even for the erosion that had started to pick at the sandy walls long before The Great Pathogen. The mouldy rendering had fallen away in large clumps over the years, revealing waterlogged brickwork beneath. Nearly all the windows had been blown out in one storm or another, and as he walked past the side of the three-storey building he saw the empty indoor pool, replete with cracked tiles and thick trailers of ivy. There was something about that pool that always sent a shiver up his spine, it was supposed to be a place for people to frolic and play, and yet there was nothing he knew of that looked more melancholy.
He looked down to Woolacombe Beach and saw the dead bodies of the Tangaroa that hadn’t been drawn back out to sea. Silt covered them as though they had been dragged into the sand and turned to stone. George looked away, the combination of the deserted hotel and the bodies almost overwhelming.
He negotiated the wheelbarrow around a pile of fallen brickwork, and unlocked a rusting gate before unloading the barrow on the floor and heading inside, one of the sacks dragging through the debris at his feet. The building had been made to look uninhabited; the windows were grey with water-spray and dust, birds nested in the furnishings and coated everything in droppings and feathers. The walls had long lost whatever colour they had last been painted, and the parts that were wallpapered bulged and split while the plaster beneath crumbled.
All around the hotel fell into disrepair, until George stepped into what had once been a kitchen and opened a door leading to the cellar.
‘It’s just me,’ he shouted down the stairs before him.
Ruben Halifax’s old and unhappy face appeared at the foot of the stairs. ‘It’s just George.’ He muttered before disappearing.
George heaved the sack of tools on to his back and struggled down the stairs.
‘The Cadens asked if they can have these back by the end of next week.’ He groaned as he offloaded the sack on to the floor at Ruben’s feet. The cellars were completely different to the upstairs rooms. A lot of the Dekeyrel’s money had been spent on equipment to carry out the renovations needed to house a laboratory beneath the hotel. A network of passages had been carved into the stone below ground, where now three separate, hermetically sealed laboratories stood with their own filtered air and tissue culture facilities. George had seen it all, though only once, and had been stunned by what he had seen. It had been like stepping into one of the science fantasies of the future that they had read in school.
White walls, conditioned air, thick-glass panels, biohazard suits, it felt as though future-men had come to live in their poor community to observe them. Yet he knew it wasn’t the villagers who were under observation, but the cultures of virus that nestled in petri dishes within incubators.
Ruben looked across the room to three other people, who regarded each other with an air of superiority. Two of them were descendants of the Dekeyrel’s, Phillip and Helena, they were both straight backed and serious-looking, and held a certain respected celebrity amongst those of the village. It had, after all, been their descendent who had fled to Mortehoe with the specific objective to cut it off from the rest of the world. They rarely ventured out into the village, preferring rather to stay in the rooms above ground that had been specially enclosed to withstand the dilapidation of the rest of the hotel.
The third was a young woman by the name of Christina Camberwell. Of the three she was the most pleasing to George, who couldn’t help but give her an elusive wink and smirk as he entered the room. She smiled back, though turned and left almost immediately, having work to do with her brother in one of the laboratories.
‘The Cadens can have them back when we’re good and ready.’ Ruben said, scratching the roots of his long, ginger ponytail.
‘Well, you’re not the only people who need this equipment.’ George said casually, trying not to get into an argument with Ruben. He liked coming to the hotel, but it was nearly impossible not to leave frustrated by their pomposity.
‘We’re not the only ones who keep the old-world at bay, you mean?’
‘I mean you’re not the only ones who need this equipment. And you’re not the only ones this equipment serves. If no-one else needed it then it would be kept here and I wouldn’t have to haul it three miles in a wheelbarrow when anybody asked.’
‘Fair enough,’ Philip said, stepping between them and heaving the sack up to his shoulder. ‘We’ll be finished with it by Friday, no later.’
‘What’s up with Christina?’ George gestured to the door she had left through. ‘She’s normally a bit more chatty than that.’
‘She’s just a bit worried about her pa. We’ve not had any communication with him for a long time, and neither has Semilion.’
‘What do you reckon’s happened?’
‘Most likely something to do with his equipment.’
‘What do you need this lot for?’ George asked, nodding at the bag of tools. ‘Need any help with anything?’
‘Nothing really, one of the conditioners needs looking at. We’ve been thinking about repairing one of the old units for a time and thought it was as good a time as any to do it.’
Ruben looked down his bulbous nose at George. ‘So, what’s happening out there?’
‘Nothing much,’ George shrugged. ‘The new girls have been given jobs in the mill and the crèche. Semilion had Baron and me go on a patrol in the south which was a complete waste of time. Oh, and Semilion finally gave up any hope of restoring the pool table and chopped it up for firewood. Eryn and Boen have both been shut-ins for a while, they did something together but no-one knows what.
‘But the two new girls aren’t being suspicious?’ Ruben asked. ‘When we doled out the vaccinations I didn’t much like the look of that blonde one.’
‘Priya?’ George said incredulously. ‘You didn’t like the look of Priya? She’s beautiful.’
‘It’s the beautiful ones you’ve got to look out for.’ Ruben sneered. ‘Blind you with their looks so you don’t see what they’re really up to.’
‘Blimey, who stung you in the past?’ George laughed uncertainly.
Ruben muttered under his breath, snatched the bag from Phillip and left the room. The door closed slowly, and when it clicked shut he looked expectantly at Phillip and Helena.
r /> ‘He was stung, by Morag.’ Helena said, making sure Ruben wasn’t coming back.
‘Morag? As in Morag Cornish? The miller?’
‘Aye. She might not look it after a life in the darkness of that mill but she used to be a lovely young woman. Wasn’t she, Phil?’
Philip sighed wistfully. ‘She was. I was quite young when she was in her, what? Thirties? I could have only been ten years old but I do remember she caught all the men’s eyes.’
‘What happened then? With old Ruben?’
‘She wasn’t interested.’ Helena said. ‘She only had eyes for one other and it wasn’t Ruben.’
‘Who was it?’ George asked. He had never heard of her being with anyone in the village. Maybe it was someone he didn’t know so well in Woolacombe.
‘Hannah.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Hannah.’
‘What about her?’
‘It was Hannah.’
‘What was Hannah?’
‘George, will you please understand before one of us dies? Morag was in love,’ she lowered her voice, ‘with Hannah.’
‘Hannah? Hannah from the mill? Hannah and Morag are…’
‘Alright, keep it to yourself, will you?’ Phillip said, checking the small window of the door to make sure Ruben hadn't decided to return.
‘How the hell do you know about this when you spend your lives down here? How come I didn’t know anything about it when I spend my days either talking to people in the community or actually working with Hannah and Morag!’
‘I suppose you’re just a bit dense, George.’ Helena said, brusquely. ‘Now promise you’re not going to say anything. Those two women went through enough hardship when the villagers found out. They don’t deserve it to happen again just for the sake of your loose tongue.’
‘I won’t say anything, I promise.’ He wondered who he would tell first. Selina, he thought, he had to tell Selina. She would definitely want to spend time with him if she thought he were a harbinger of juicy gossip.
Chapter Twenty-Four.
South-easterly wind.
Six knots.