But as his visitors trooped indoors, the ex-Doctor quickly took up his binoculars to scan the beach again. In this off-the-beaten-track sort of place, one wouldn’t really expect to see a great many people on the shore; none, at this time of year. The beachcomber was still there, however; hunched over and with his head down, he shambled slowly along. And it appeared that Anne, Jilly’s bookish, reserved if not exactly retiring daughter, had finally noticed him. What’s more, she had stood up and was making her way down the beach toward him.
Jamieson gave a start as Jilly touched his arm. And: “It’s all right,” she said quietly, (perhaps even confidentially, the doctor thought). “It’s nothing you should feel concerned about. Young Geoff and Anne, they’re just friends. They went to school together…well, for a while anyway. The infants, you know?”
“Oh dear!” Jamieson blinked his slightly rheumy old eyes at her. “I do hope you don’t think I was spying on them—I mean, on your daughter. And as for this, er, Geoff?”
“It’s all right,” she said again, tugging him inside. “It’s quite all right. You’ve probably bumped into him in the village and he may well have sparked some professional interest in you. That’s only natural, after all. But he’s really quite harmless, I assure you…”
• • •
Eating slowly, perhaps to avoid conversation, Jilly wasn’t done with her food when the Tremains were ready to go. “Anyway,” she said, “I’ll have to wait for Anne. She won’t be long…knows better than to be out when the light starts failing.”
“You don’t mind her walking with the village idiot?” John’s words sounded much too harsh; he was probably biting his lip as he turned his face away and Doreen helped him on with his coat.
“Ignore my husband,” Doreen twisted her face into something that didn’t quite equal a smile. “According to him all children are idiots. It seems that’s what being a teacher does to you.”
Jilly said, “Personally, I prefer to think of the boy as an unfortunate. And of course in a small seaside village he stands out like a sore thumb. I’m glad he has a…a friend in Anne.”
And John half relented. “You’re right, of course. And maybe I’m in the wrong profession. But it’s much like Doreen says. If you work all day with kids, especially bolshy teenagers, and in this day and age when you daren’t even frown at the little sods let alone slap their backsides—”
At the door, Doreen lifted her chin. “I don’t recall saying anything like that. Nothing as rude as that, anyway.”
“Oh, you know what I mean!” John said testily, trailing her outside, and colliding with her where she’d paused on the front doorstep. Then—in unison but almost as an afterthought—they stuck their heads back inside to thank Jamieson for his hospitality.
“Not at all,” their host answered. “And I’ll be dropping in on you soon, to have a look at those carvings.”
“Please do,” John told him.
And Doreen added, “Evenings or weekends, you’ll be welcome. We’re so glad that you’ve settled in here, Doctor.”
“Oh, call me James, for goodness sake!” Jamieson waved them goodbye, closed the door, turned to Jilly and raised an enquiring, bushy grey eyebrow.
She shrugged. “A bit pompous maybe, but they’re neighbours. And it does get lonely out here.”
They went to the bay window in the end wall and watched the Tremains drive off down the road to their home less than a mile away. Jilly lived half a mile beyond that, and the tiny village—a huddle of old fishermen’s houses, really—stood some four or five hundred yards farther yet, just out of sight behind the rising, rocky promontory called South Point. On the far side of the village, a twin promontory, North Point, formed a bay, with the harbour lying sheltered in the bight.
For a moment more Jamieson watched the Tremains’s car speed into the distance, then turned a glance of covert admiration on Jilly. She noticed it, however, cocked her head on one side and said, “Oh? Is there something…?”
Caught out and feeling just a little uncomfortable now, the old man said, “My dear, I hope you won’t mind me saying so, but you’re a very attractive woman. And even though I’m a comparative stranger here, a newcomer, I can’t say I’ve come across too many eligible bachelors in the village.”
Now Jilly frowned. Her lips began to frame a question—or perhaps a sharp retort, an angry outburst—but he beat her to it.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” He held up his hands. “It’s none of my business, I know. And I keep forgetting that your husband…that he—”
“—Died less than eighteen months ago, yes,” Jilly said.
The old man sighed. “My bedside manner hasn’t improved any with age,” he said. “I retired here for what I thought would be solitude—an absence of everything that’s gone before—only to find that I can’t seem to leave my practice behind me! To my patients I was a healer, a father confessor, a friend, a champion. I didn’t realize it would be so hard not to continue being those things.”
She shook her pretty head, smiled wanly and said, “James, I don’t mind your compliments, your concern, or your curiosity. I find it refreshing that there are still people who…who care about anyone. Or anything for that matter!”
“But you frowned.”
“Not at what you said,” she answered, “but the way you said it. Your accent, really.”
“My accent?”
“Very similar to my husband’s. He was an American, too, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. And he had a similar accent? A New England accent, you say?” Suddenly there was a new, a different note of concern in Jamieson’s voice, unlike the fatherly interest he’d taken in Jilly earlier. “And may I ask where he hailed from, your husband? His home town?”
“George was from Massachusetts, a town on or near the coast—pretty much like this place, I suppose—called, er, Ipswich? Or maybe Arkham or Innsmouth. He would talk about all three, so I can’t be certain. And I admit to being a dunce where American geography is concerned. But I’m sure I have his birth certificate somewhere in the house, if you’re that interested?”
Sitting down, the old man bade Jilly do the same. “Interested?” he said. “Well, perhaps not. Let sleeping dogs lie, eh?”
“Sleeping dogs?” Now she was frowning again.
And he sighed before answering. “Well, I did practice for a few months—just a few months—in Innsmouth. A very strange place, Jilly, even for this day and age. But no, you don’t want to know about that.”
“But now you’ve got me interested,” she said. “I mean, what was so strange about the place?”
“Well, if you must know, it was mainly the people—degenerate, inbred, often retarded—in fact much like young Geoff. I have bumped into him, yes, and there’s that about the boy…there’s a certain look to him…” But there the old man paused, probably because he’d seen how Jilly’s hands fluttered, trembling on the arms of her chair. Seeing where he was looking, she put her hands in her lap, clasping them until her fingers went white. It was obvious that something he had said had disturbed her considerably. And so:
“Let’s change the subject,” he said, sitting up straighter. “And let me apologise again for being so personal. But a woman like you—still young and attractive, in a place like this—surely you should be looking to the future now, realizing that it’s time to go, time to get out of here. Because while you’re here there are always going to be memories. But there’s an old saying that goes ‘out of sight—’”