Most of the houses in Moby Dick Terrace were bed and breakfasts, catering to the needs of the many tourists who poured in throughout the seasons to visit Britain’s best-loved borough. There was always a holiday feel to the terrace, no matter the time of the year.
But at night time there was something more. A strangely nautical feel. Many might have put this down simply to the name. After all, this was the terrace where the legendary Captain Ahab was born. But there was more to it than that.
Certain streets have their own personalities, which they often keep very much to themselves and which you may only catch by chance. And then only in the middle of the night.
Moby Dick Terrace was one of these. A B and B’er’s paradise by day it might have been, but by night, with the rain coming down and the wind in the right direction, you could almost smell the briny deep and hear the flap of sailcloth.
It no longer seemed to be land-locked suburbia. Now it was harbour lights and fishing floats and crabbing pots and whalebone uplift bras.
As Jim marched along through the wind and the rain he fancied that he heard the sirens singing. Seeking to lure him to his doom in front garden ponds. Or onto rockeries, where the ghosts of drowned sailors searched in vain for their hats.
Beat beat beat went the rain on Jim’s head.
And Jim beat a path to the Penist’s door.
It was a bright-blue door, as it happened. Blue as the deep blue sea. The house was called Ocean View, as were many of the others, but the number was right. It was twenty-three.
Jim ducked into the shelter of the porch.
“Any old porch in a storm,” said Jim.
And gave the house a good looking-over.
It was your standard two up, three down Victorian masterpiece. With a No Vacancies sign in the front window. It was as nice or as nasty a house as suits your personal taste. In his present mood, Jim was in no fit state to judge.
He stood on the doorstep and dithered, damned by doubt and direly desirous of deep deliberation. He didn’t want to go through with this. He really, truly didn’t.
The more he thought about seeing the Penist, the less he liked the idea. Jim was a sensitive soul. He wasn’t one of those blokes who whip their old chaps out at the slightest excuse. And certainly not in front of a lady.
Jim would never even have considered displaying his private parts to a lady, unless they had been properly introduced (Jim and the lady, that is. Not the private parts), shared a romantic candlelit dinner for two and both got so out of their faces on wine that they probably wouldn’t remember in the morning.
But this lark wasn’t for him. This was for the likes of John Omally. Or Small Dave. He was always pulling his tadger out and waving it all over the place.
“I’m not doing this,” said Jim.
Crash went the thunder and flash went the lightning.
And press went Jim’s finger on the bell.
There was one of those little intercom things and this gave a sudden crackle and a lady’s voice said, “Can I help you, please?”
Jim sighed a deep and heartfelt. “I’ve come to see Madame Crowley,” he said.
“In you come, then, dear.” The door buzzed and clicked and Jim pushed it open. “And please wipe your feet,” said the voice.
Jim wiped his feet upon the mat. Shook what rain he could from his shoulders and head and closed the front door behind him. He was standing in a pleasant little hall, which had all the usual guesthouse how-do-you-do. The hall stand with the raincoats and the waders and galoshes, the buckets and spades and the shrimping nets, the coloured brochures advertising the beauties of the borough and where to go to get the best tattoos. There were the house rules. No sheep in the rooms after nine p.m. and suchlike. And so forth.
And there was something more.
The left-hand wall was covered in masks. Carnival masks. Dozens of them. Masks of clowns and public figures, film stars old and new. In the very midst was a sign.
And this is what it said.
CLIENTS OF A MODEST DISPOSITION OR OTHERWISE DESIROUS OF ANONYMITY MAY CHOOSE AND DON FROM THIS COLLECTION BEFORE HAVING THEIR WINKIES READ.
Courtesy of the management.
“Very thoughtful,” said Jim, wondering what he should choose.
He passed on the Bill Clinton. It looked rather worn out and over-used. And he gave the Hugh Grant a miss too. The Dalai Lama seemed hardly appropriate and exactly what Sister Wendy was doing there—
Jim settled for a rather dashing domino, which lent him, he thought, the look of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Or Batman’s Robin, at a push.
And having posed a bit before the hall mirror and wrung what rain he could from his hair, Jim squared up his sagging shoulders and knocked on the living-room door.
“In you come, dear,” said the lady’s voice and Jim put his best foot forward.
He found himself in a room that might have been anyone’s. It might have been his Aunty Norma’s, or his Aunty May’s. It was an aunty’s room that looked just the way that aunties’ rooms always do. Jim squeezed past the stuffed gorilla and stepped over the stripped-down Harley-Davidson. His shoes made sucking noises on the latex rubber carpet.
“Hold it there, dear, if you will.”
Jim held it there and sought out the owner of the voice. His gaze fell upon an ancient white-haired lady of respectable good looks, who wore more lace than a Southern belle and sat at a table littered with all the usual tools of the duff clairvoyant’s trade. The crystal ball, the tarot cards, the magnifying glass, the KY jelly and the stirrup pump.
And the pair of surgical gloves.
“Good evening,” said Jim nervously. “Are you Madame Crowley?”
“I am she. Now just hold still for a mo, if you will, dear.”
Jim held still for a mo and Madame Crowley gazed thoughtfully towards his trouser fly.
If it’s X-ray eyes, I suppose I don’t mind, thought Jim.
“Well,” said the elderly mystic. “I can tell that you’re not a bad man.”
“You can?” said Jim. “You can?”
“I can,” and the old one nodded her head. “You ‘dress’ on the left, that’s always a good sign.”
“Is it?” asked Jim. “I mean, what?”
“The side you dress. The side your penis hangs.”
Jim shivered. Somehow the word penis always sounded ruder than any of its slang counterparts.
“The left side is the right side. Which is odd when you think about it, because the left-hand course is the wrong course, of course.”
“Of course,” said Jim. Do what? he thought.
“Never mind, my dear. Never mind. Would you care to take a seat?”
“Thank you,” said Jim. “I suppose you want me to take off my trousers first.”
“I sense that you’re not very keen.”
“I’m not very keen at all, as it happens. Do you think we could do it some other way?”
The mystic cocked her head on one side. “I am versed in many forms of divination,” she said. “I can read all parts of the body. The penis, of course, is the easiest to read. Men think with their penises, you know.”
“I’ve heard that said,” said Jim. “But only by women, if I recall.”
“Women are the more intelligent sex.”
“I’ve heard them say that too.”
“Well, as you please, dear. I can see that you’re deeply troubled. Let us take a little look at your palm and see what might be done.”
“Splendid.” Jim sought out the nearest chair. It was constructed from the bones of sheep, but the cushion looked quite soft.
He drew up the chair to the table and placed his soggy bum upon it. “Which hand would you like to see?” he asked.
“The left one, dear. The left one is the right one. Which is curious when you come to think about it, because—”
“The left one it is, then.” Jim stretched his paw across the table.
Madame Crowley took up her lens and peered at Pooley’s palm. She peered at it once and she peered at it again and then she shook her ancient head and peered at it once more.