The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 18
We very rapidly gave up any attempt to explain that we’d been suckered into trying to travel along the causeway at the most lethal time of day. However, we did try to get in touch with the people who operated the tide table website we’d consulted, which had displayed the false information and had then gone down. They seemed to almost deliberately misunderstand what we were trying to tell them. Instead of allowing any possibility of looking into what had happened, they responded instead with some boilerplate legal language about how they were in no way responsible for anyone who misunderstood or ignored the warnings they posted about the tides. Their email also included a brief personal message about the dangers of messing with Mother Nature.
Anyway, our phones were history and so was Tinkler’s poor little car. But, in fact, the most annoying loss was our shoes.
16. RELIANT ROBIN
Nevada and I were walking along one of the side streets that ran uphill from the seafront, having just visited the secondhand bookshop we’d discovered for fresh reading supplies, when a car came bouncing over the cobbles. It was a strange-looking pale green vehicle—simultaneously old-fashioned and futuristic in appearance—and it only had three wheels. I mean that it was designed to have three, not that it was missing one.
It clattered along at considerable speed and narrowly missed us as it screeched by. When I say ‘narrowly missed’, I actually mean we had to jump out of its path, up out of the narrow roadway and onto the still narrower footpath.
“Jesus wept,” snarled Nevada.
As if as a direct result of this blasphemy, the little car came to a sudden halt just ahead of us, on a rising section of road where the cobbled surface climbed up the hill. The vehicle seemed to have died in the attempt to scale this puny rise.
We looked at each other. “I didn’t know my own strength,” said Nevada, immediately cheering up. But then there was a clashing sound of clumsily engaged gears—Clean Head would not have been impressed—and the car began to come back down the hill towards us, at first impelled by gravity and then, apparently thanks to the relevant gear finally being located, with its engine running in reverse.
We got the hell back out of the road and flattened ourselves against a shopfront—Island Textiles, the Fairest of Fair Isle Pullovers—but the car slowed down to a sedate pace and then braked to a rocking halt immediately opposite us.
The window on our side wound down, a surprisingly elaborate procedure, and a woman’s face peered out. It was a rather elderly face, but bright-eyed and alert.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Valentyna.”
It took me a moment to place the name, perhaps because I was still expecting a disappointed homicidal driver, and Nevada got there first.
“Valentyna with a ‘y’,” she said.
The woman nodded impatiently, as if to say catch up. “That’s right.”
It was Valentyna Lynch, wife of Jimmy the fiddler. She opened the door of the car, evidently to get a better look at us. She was wearing a baggy white dress with a pattern of tiny green shapes on it. In her hair was a plastic clip of matching design. In each case the colour seemed to have been chosen to match the shade of the car. I felt like the Green Ceremony had pursued me from the mainland.
Nevada smiled at the woman, giving every appearance of being delighted to see her.
“I have been looking everywhere for you,” said Valentyna, a note of annoyance in her voice, as if we’d been deliberately giving her the runaround.
I thought this was pretty rich and, since I still wasn’t best pleased about having had to leap from her path, I said, “We weren’t even sure you were on the island.”
She looked at me with careful attention and evidently was about to offer a full and informative response to this statement. But instead she said, “What size are you?”
Nevada gave me a look. She didn’t have to say anything. I knew what she was thinking. She was wondering if this was some kind of blunt opening gambit before inviting us to join an island sexual swingers society.
I responded with the wit and acumen that such an enquiry demanded.
“What?”
Valentyna shook her head with disgusted impatience. The plastic clip waggled in her hair. It wasn’t properly fastened and looked like it was about to fly off. “What size are you?”
“Size?” I said, just to vary my obtuseness.
Valentyna lowered her head and gazed down at the old rope-soled espadrilles I had on. Ideal for brief slipper duty, they were fast becoming even more grubby and frayed with full-time use as outdoor footwear.
Valentyna spoke like the slow option on a language-learning website. “What shoe size are you?”
“Oh. Nine.”
Suddenly all irritation vanished from her face. She smiled. It was the first time we’d seen it, and it was a radiant smile. It took about forty years off her. And she looked not only young and pretty, but mischievous, too. “Wonderful,” she said. She wound up the window, fought briefly with the gears, and pulled away again at speed. The little green car slithered up the hill successfully this time and went over the crest, bashing its metal underbelly against the cobbles, and disappeared.
We watched it go and then Nevada looked at me. “When she was asking about your size—”
“You thought, depending on the answer, that she was about to invite me, and more hopefully us, to partake of some kind of hideous island sexual swingers society.”
Now Nevada was staring at me. “Yes. That is exactly what I thought. How did you know?”
“I don’t know. I just knew.”
She took my hand. “That’s one reason why I adore you. Because we’re on the same wavelength. It’s a weird wavelength. But it’s the same one.”
As we walked back towards the B&B, she said, “Did you say ‘hopefully us’?”
“Yes, because I’d never want to be separated from you. Especially if I was inducted into a hideous island sexual swingers jamboree.”
“How sweet. I’d say something about adoring you again, but we’ve had more than enough sentimental bilge for now.”
When we got back to Miss Bebbington’s we found Clean Head and Tinkler sprawled peacefully in the deckchairs in the back garden, the long grass rising around them, both engrossed in books—Clean Head was deep in The Flight From the Enchanter by Iris Murdoch, but she looked up as I described Valentyna’s car to her. And before I’d said more than about three words, she said, “Reliant Robin. Fibreglass body. Made in Staffordshire somewhere. Tamworth. That’s it. Tamworth. Widely regarded as one of the worst cars ever invented.”
“I thought it looked kind of cool,” I said. “In a mid-century design sort of way. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I saw them around when I was a kid.”
“Probably. Top speed of 85 mph.”
“I bet you could make one go faster,” said Tinkler from the depths of his own deckchair, where he was reading a William Gibson novel. Or, rather, was holding it open on his stomach.
“Of course I could,” said Clean Head.
“He’s just buttering you up,” said Nevada.
“Of course he is. Speaking of design, the complete lack of drip rails is kind of interesting.”
“On Tinkler?”
“On the Reliant. They got rid of them ten years before Fiat did. Those Reliants were more a motorcycle than a car. You didn’t even need a licence to drive one.”
“You’re kidding.” That made sense in the context of Valentyna’s near murder of us in the thoroughfare, not to mention her epic battle with the gears.
“Nope. Interesting vehicle in all sorts of ways. Nasty tendency to flip over if you go downhill at speed and execute a sharp left turn, though.”
“This one was going uphill. And it had Valentyna Lynch at the wheel.”
“Jimmy’s wife?” said Tinkler.
“Yes.”
“Was Jimmy with her?”
“No.”
“Well, he could have been,” said Clean Head. “It has a surprisingly capacious interior, the Reliant Robin. There would have been plenty of room for him.”
Our discussion came to an abrupt end at this point because Miss Bebbington came out through the French windows and said, “A friend here to see you.” Any mystery about the friend in question was instantly banished as our landlady withdrew back inside after this announcement, to be replaced by Valentyna.
Valentyna was about to say something to—or at least in the general direction of—Nevada and myself. But then she saw Tinkler lying there with his bare feet propped up. And instead she turned to him and said, “What size are you?”
Normally Tinkler can be relied upon to furnish even the most innocent of remarks with an obscene connotation. But now, to my astonishment, he glanced at his feet and then back at Valentyna Lynch, and simply said, “Nine.”
“The same as your friend.”
“I was size nine first. He just copied me.”
But Valentyna wasn’t listening. She was smiling that lovely smile again and shaking her head in happy wonderment. “That’s so perfect.” She clapped her hands and looked at us. “You must come with me, immediately.”
Tinkler sprung up from his chair, or at least sprung half up, and fought the rest of the way out of the canvas embrace. I looked at Nevada. “Go ahead,” she said, “but I’m coming, too.”
We glanced back at Clean Head as we headed for the French windows. Valentyna had already vanished inside. Clean Head had made no move to rise from her chair and had opened her book again.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” said Tinkler.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Only four seats in the Reliant Robin,” she said, and resumed reading Iris Murdoch.
* * *
We squeezed into the little car, Tinkler sitting up front and Nevada and me in the back, partly because that was our habitual seating plan when Clean Head was driving the late lamented Kind of Blue. But also because, it’s shameful to admit, in case there was some kind of head-on crash, Nevada and I would be spared the brunt of it.
On the other hand, what would happen if we flipped over after going downhill at speed and executing a sharp left turn was anybody’s guess.
All that talk of not needing a licence to drive this thing had inflamed my apprehension at being a passenger in Valentyna’s car—already at a fair level based on what we’d witnessed of her driving in the high street earlier.
But in fact, after the traditional battle with the gear lever had been surmounted, she proved to be not that bad. We wound upwards out of the village and through a fringe of woodland, up the sloping cone of the island. It was pleasant and leafy up here, the car bursting out of tunnels of green foliage and through sun-dappled openings, then back into cool green shade. The trees opened out on one side and the view of the sea thus presented would have been ravishing to anyone who hadn’t recently been confronted with the likelihood of being underneath all that goddamned water.
At first I thought we’d left the residential part of the island behind at the seafront, but glimpses of houses set back from the woods, surrounded by trees and stone walls, and often protected by elaborate gate systems, made me realise we’d merely left the low-rent housing behind.
This was clearly where the rich folk lived.
The road took a baffling series of curves and blind turns and then we were running along what was virtually a tunnel with high hedges on either side. I began to feel a little claustrophobic just as we burst out into the open again and sped past a handsome white-walled pub with a sign reading THE SEA VIEW. I remembered Max Shearwater mentioning the name, and felt doubly grateful that Valentyna had managed to get us this far intact in her wacky car.
The Sea View’s sign featured the image of a rather retro-futuristic-looking science-fiction submarine painted on it. A drinking hole for the Jules Verne fan, I thought, just as another literary allusion loomed into view.
An enamelled metal sign in black and white pointed a slender arm ahead, reading TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, with a redundant arrow painted on it.
“A Virginia Woolf reference,” said Nevada.
“Clean Head would feel right at home,” I said.
“Only if it was a Penguin Modern Classic edition,” said Nevada.
“It isn’t a real lighthouse,” said Valentyna from the front seat, raising her voice to make herself heard over the assorted car noises, and causing Tinkler to jump a little, snapping out of the daze he’d been in since we’d set off.
“What isn’t?” he said.
“That,” said our driver, giving a redundant turning signal to the empty road behind us as we veered left onto a gravelled lane that ran through an open gate set into a wooden fence painted dark green and largely overgrown with ivy. She cut the engine, applied the brakes, and we coasted to a stop in front of a very odd building indeed.
It did look like a lighthouse. For a start, it was cylindrical. And it was white, in the traditional livery of a lighthouse. And it had the same sort of conical roof you’d associate with that kind of structure. But there was no light at the top, just windows. And also it was—
“Only four stories tall,” said Valentyna, getting out of the door. She stood holding the door open while Nevada clambered out of the small car. Tinkler did the same as I got out on my side. “It’s a faux lighthouse.” Basically, it was a turret.
“But it’s absolutely lovely,” said Nevada, in full charm-offensive mode.
“It is until you try and hang a sodding picture on the sodding wall,” said Valentyna, shaking the ring of keys in her hand as she looked for the one to the front door. The door was painted green and, set in the white stucco wall of the house, it replicated the colour scheme of her dress. Standing close behind her as she unlocked the door I could see that the little green shapes on her dress were stylised cartoon cats.
Ah, a kindred spirit.
“Come on in,” said Valentyna, pushing the door open and kicking aside an assortment of muddy boots and empty wine bottles that blocked the immediate entrance. One of the wine bottles rolled off into a corner and I saw Nevada trying to read the label on it as it spun across the floor.
I could see what Valentyna meant about the pictures now. There was no shortage of them on the walls—mostly rather well-executed watercolours of sea scenes. But they were all hung on some kind of custom-made black iron brackets, which held them out some distance from the curve of the wall in the middle and allowed them to touch it on either side.
To the right of the front door was a tall coat rack, which at the moment seemed to be hung exclusively with long silk scarves. I recognised them as being the sort that Jimmy Lynch liked to wear, whatever the weather. Beside the coat rack was an inner door leading to a narrow staircase, which ran upwards in a curve which followed the wall. “They’re up here,” said our hostess, and led the way.
Windows set at regular intervals along that wall—also custom made, clearly: curved glass—provided plenty of daylight on the staircase. We trooped up after Valentyna. Tinkler was making an extraordinary amount of commotion, slopping up the stairs in the bright orange flip-flops he was wearing. In fairness, they were the only things he’d been able to find to buy in the island shops, it not being a place overburdened with shoe stores.
Which was kind of why we were here. We came to the next floor. The staircase continued upwards but we exited through a door at this point.
We found ourselves in a snug, comfortable lounge, but not for long. I just had time to glimpse a large shelf densely packed with LPs before Valentyna led us into the next room. Tinkler pressed close to me and whispered, “Records!”
I said, “I know, I saw.”
The room we’d now entered was so dim that I couldn’t make anything out until Valentyna flicked a switch. Cold white electric lights in recessed ceiling sconces came on and revealed extensive custom-made shelves fashioned from dark, polished wood, following the curves of the wall, lining, and mostly concealing, its white surface.
And on the shelves… shoes.
Shoes and boots of every description.
They gleamed with the same dusty dark glow as the wood of the shelves.
“I heard about your dilemma,” said Valentyna, looking at Tinkler and myself. “Losing your shoes like that. You should really be more careful and read the tide tables. You could have lost a lot more than that.”
“Good lord,” said Nevada softly. She was too busy inspecting the array of shoes to be annoyed by the safety lecture.
“He had a mighty collection all right,” said Valentyna. I noticed the use of the past tense.
So, apparently, did Nevada. “These all belonged—belong—to your husband?”
Valentyna nodded and shrugged. “He just won’t get rid of them. But what use are they to him now?” she said. It seemed a cruel statement, though true enough. Then I thought of something.
“What about his prosthetics?” I said.
“What about them?”
“I mean, doesn’t he have to wear shoes on those?” I remembered those artificial legs of his we’d seen at his house on the mainland—I’d actually begun to think of it as ‘the mainland’ now—with their shoes attached.
Valentyna gestured at the shelves and shelves of footwear. “Most of these won’t even fit on the prosthetic. Certainly none of the boot-cut ones. And anything with leather soles would be just lethal for him to shuffle around in… just lethal. Like walking on a skating rink. Especially on a marble floor. Take a couple of steps and whoops. Smash down he goes.” She paused thoughtfully for a moment to consider this, as though perhaps it wasn’t such a terrible notion after all.
Then, emerging from her reverie she said, “Anyway, he’s had the same bloody shoes fitted on those prosthetics for the past fifteen years. He probably couldn’t get them off if he wanted to. No. He doesn’t want any of these. Not really.” She locked her eyes on mine as if daring me to contradict her. “So, just help yourself.”
