To celebrate the birth of M.R. James who was born on this day 1862, I have made available my short story 'Aldeburgh', a sequel to his celebrated and oft-anthologised tale 'A Warning to the Curious'. It was originally published in Terror Tales of East Anglia (2012) and edited by the august Paul Finch.
When I was first approached by Paul to write a story for the anthology, my only thought was to write about James. My first idea had James meeting Bram Stoker in 1910 in Suffolk, a couple of years before the latter's death. That didn't get my juices flowing enough, so my next idea was to write a novella about James, E.G. Swain and E.F. Benson together as lovers and ghost hunters, but I had a nagging feeling that would have pissed off everyone, so I sadly parked that idea. Maybe when everyone's forgot that I exist and live in abject obscurity, I'll go back to it and let the authorial semen and ectoplasm spew forth!
The following story came to me when I was in the shower; the only place I have my really good ideas. was written in two sittings over two days. I then sent the story to Richard Dalby who proofed it for me and told me that it was 'very Jamesian', which thrilled me to no end.
The following story is free, but if you'd like to offer a couple of quid, that would be really kind of you.
Thanks!
ALDEBURGH
JOHNNY MAINS
© 2012
He had tried in vain to communicate with the Provost, but his letters remained unanswered, much to his frustration. Joseph took up lodgings in Dedworth Road and waited for the Eton “half” to end and for the Provost to be at leisure. He had the money to wait, and could, if need be, stay until the end of the decade. He spent his time either ‘loitering’ around Eton or frequenting the Five Bells on Sheet Street. He thought he had become a very effective shadow, but it was all to no avail: the Provost had either been alarmed by his correspondence or was just someone who loathed to go out of doors. Joseph thought that it might be a mixture of the two.
The day after the college broke for Long Leave he spotted him, in the school yard emerging from under the arch of Lupton’s Tower, walking perhaps towards the school library; three heavy-looking tomes under his left arm. He looked elderly but he was still a big, sprightly man and appeared to relish in taking his time.
As Joseph approached him, the Provost smiled cautiously, and seeing that the younger man at least looked like a gentleman, bade him good day.
‘Doctor Montague Rhodes James?’ said Joseph, stopping in front of him. James’ smile faded, his eyes betrayed a faint recognition, then became quizzical, almost wary.
‘Yes?’
‘My name is Joseph Payton, and I believe that you wrote about my father Percival in your story ‘A Warning to the Curious.’ I beg of you, please tell me what you know.’ He stared at James hard, the older man’s face crumpled somewhat; he looked like he needed to sit down.
‘I’m sorry, I have no idea of what you refer to. It was a fictional story,’ he mumbled, fending him away with his free arm. Joseph tried to reach out to make him stay but James pushed his shoulder with surprising power. ‘You will leave me be, unless you would like for me to call on the porter?’
‘Sir, call on the porter as much as you like. Perhaps he won’t be as dismissive of my belief that you killed my father!’
They were harsh words to say, but they had the desired effect.
The Provost’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where are you staying, young man?’
‘I have lodgings with Mrs Humphries on Dedworth, they cater for a better class of client,’ Joseph said, breathing in deeply and puffing out his chest. James appeared not to notice this display.
‘Very well. I shall call on you tomorrow. Have your landlady prepare an early breakfast.’
‘You will call?’
‘Yes.’ Dr. James walked off, his black gown billowing about him, leaving Joseph standing there, following the old man’s journey until he was out of sight.
‘I think we should start at the end,’ Joseph began, unfolding his newspaper and revealing the hardback which bore the name of the offending story. He opened the book where he had placed his marker, coughed, and started to read.
‘You don’t need to be told that he was dead. His tracks showed that he had run along the side of the battery, had turned sharp round the corner of it, and, small doubt of it, must have dashed straight into the open arms of someone who was waiting there. His mouth was full of sand and stones, and his teeth and jaws were broken into bits. I only glanced once at his face.’
Joseph had tears in his eyes. He blinked and one solitary trail of saltwater ran down the side of his face.
He shut the book carefully on his forefinger so as to not lose his place and began to speak. ‘When I was ten, my mother sat me down, patted my knee and told me quite calmly that my father had been found dead on a beach in Aldeburgh. He died a savage and lonely death, but this I didn’t find out until I was sixteen. I had asked the question of what happened to him. My mother gave me these clippings from the East Anglian Times, dated 1923.’ He passed over two small newspaper cuttings. The passage of twelve years had made the cheap paper brown and brittle.
TREASURE-HUNTER FOUND DEAD IN ALDEBURGH
The body of Percival Payton, from Hunstanton, was found Thursday,
April 25th...
James handed back the first and glanced at the headline of the second. It was dated June 1923.
VERDICT OF WILFUL MURDER BY PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN IN STRANGE CASE OF TREASURE-SEEKER
Joseph continued, ‘As you well know, your book containing the story was published in 1925. I would never have become suspicious of you, sir, had I not been given a copy of your book as a gift last year. The shock I received on reading the story was horrific. There, laid bare, the ‘facts’. You were staying in the area during April, when a man was found dead on the beach. ‘And... th... though it’s a slight description,’ he started to stammer as he became more agitated, ‘when you say...’ Joseph opened up the book again, and skipped back through the story erratically until he came to the correct page. ‘He was rather a rabbity anæmic subject—light hair and light eyes—but not unpleasing,’ you describe him to a tee. He was a “treasure-hunter” as the papers put it, and from what my mother told me, a pretty poor one—a few shards of Roman pottery and maybe the odd coin were the entire fruit of his labours. But he was enthusiastic about his pastime and a true lover of the countryside.’ He was rambling now. ‘He took many photographs—the camera and eight or nine plates were returned along with his body.’
The old man’s eyes never left Joseph’s. Joseph seemed to notice for the first time and breathed deeply. Then more quietly, ‘I have the photographs of a church and of a coat of arms that contains the three crowns of East Anglia. It was indeed in the porch of the church.’ From the back of the book he removed a heavy grain, cream envelope and opening it up slowly, took out several photographs, some of which he laid out on the table in front of James. Indeed, there was the church, also a picture of two kindly-looking old men, one of them was the Rector, the other, presumably, the sexton.
‘So,’ continued Joseph, much quieter now ‘the evidence is as follows: you were in the area at the same time as my father, you have ably described his looks and his occupation and you have also written that he had taken photographs of a church and had seen a coat of arms with three crowns on it. My father’s name and the name you use in the book is only a single letter removed! You said yesterday that it was a work of fiction, but I must ask again sir, what do you know of my father?’
Joseph had kept hold of two more photographs and he placed them gently and deliberately on top of the others. Dr. James looked at them for a long while. He saw himself, from a distance, in which he appeared to be studying the newspaper intently in the reading room at the White Lion Hotel, the other, talking at the front of the hotel to two ladies one of whom appeared to be handing him something. James thought it might have been a book, one of his own that he had been asked to sign.
‘My father took these photographs, they are clearly of you. Tell me, what do you know?’
The silence was broken by Mrs. Humphries who entered the parlour with a fresh tray of tea. James nodded tiredly at her: his rest the night before had been non-existent. Joseph nodded his thanks after she poured, and as she left, reached inside his jacket and pulled out one final photograph. It was his father, Percival Payton, a candid shot, taken several years before his death, sitting in the garden, a young Joseph on his knee.
Dr. James reached down to his leather satchel, placed it on his knees and opened it deliberately, the metal buckles clinking as he undid the straps and folded the top back. He rummaged around and pulled out a rather substantial sheaf of papers, covered with his almost unintelligible handwriting.
‘These are the notes I made when writing “A Warning to the Curious”,’ he glanced at Joseph over the rim of his glasses. His tone was sincere, but weary. ‘It was written on my return to Eton of course, but the sad death of your father was the catalyst for the tale and I am sorry that I used his passing in this way. It is unforgivable and I am truly contrite, this you must believe.’
The old man knew that this was not enough. He glanced at the notes in his hands. The morning light made the pages glow. He continued:
‘I was staying at the White Lion hotel with a good friend and his acquaintance; they would spend most of their time on the golf course and I, invariably, would spend my time walking long distances or sitting on the shorefront reading, according to my wont, detective fiction or ‘thrillers’, as I believe they are now called. In the evening we would meet for supper then retire to the reading room for brandy and a little conversation. It was here that I first met your father, and the tale is entirely correct at this point; he came in looking rather distracted, asked if he could make company with us, and after a while I engaged him with some small talk. He told me that he was an antiquarian and a collector of curios and naturally I asked him what it was in the area he was looking for. It was then he told me the story of his meeting the reverend and the three crowns of Anglia, about which, I hasten to add, I already knew of. He also mentioned a family as the protectors of the site of the last remaining crown. They had done so for many, many years and the last in their line had passed away not long before, maybe only thirty years or so. It was your father’s intention to find this crown, dig it up and make his name, because from his appearance it did not seem, if I may be vulgar, that he was a man of means.
‘All in the room were curious at this point, and we talked about the legality of any discovery...’
‘Were the family who protected the crown called Ager?’ Joseph interrupted.
The Provost smiled briefly, thought for a second and continued.
‘No, they were not. Although I wrote about something based on a true event, as a writer of fiction I knew the story would never be believed as true. Legend is legend, and the crowns and their protectors are purely such. But should that stop someone from believing that they exist? And of course I was not the first to document the crown’s existence; they are a pertinent, if obscure legend. I must say though that whilst writing my tales I do not like to make things easy should a reader decide to take up the mantle and do a little...research. We talked about the legality of his discovery and we all agreed that he would receive a substantial sum from the crown if no claim was made by land owners. He believed the current land owner to be without relations, so would have seen the lion’s share of any wealth. At the end of the evening we parted company, all having agreed it the find of a lifetime should he succeed and we wished him luck. We did not ask to be involved in the hunt, although it was extremely interesting.’
‘When was the next time you saw him?’ Joseph asked, taking James’ proffered papers and slowly leafing through them.
‘The next time I saw him he was dead on the beach.’
Joseph looked up, startled, the colour drained from his face.
‘But the story says...’
‘Fool!’ Dr. James’ anger was up. His neck was beginning to mottle, the colour crept slowly up to his chin. He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes. The anger dissipated in slow receding waves, when he opened his eyes again he saw that Joseph was staring at him with fury in his eyes.
‘We were in the reading room, when one of the waiters came in to tell us that the gentleman we had been talking to a day previously was believed to be dead,’ James continued slowly. ‘We were shocked, horribly so, and we rushed to the scene which was quite some distance away. The night was beginning to draw in, and by the time we got there it was near dark. There were five or six people in attendance, carrying lamps. A doctor had been called and pronounced your father to be dead. We were not asked why we were there and in retrospect it was rather ghoulish of us to go, but with the information that we had, if it appeared that he was murdered, we could have been of some use.’
‘Did you attend the inquest?’
‘No, we did not, but I will explain why in a moment. Your father was partially covered in sand from head to toe, and his mouth was full of small pebbles. His neck was broken, but I elaborated of course in the story further injuries to attain shock, to create an impact. We waited for a policeman to attend; while there was a doctor in town, a policeman had to be raised from another village, and we were with the body for a further hour and a half.
‘Once he arrived, of course we were asked about our connection to him and we told the policeman all we knew. He was satisfied with our story, and why wouldn’t he be? The remains were removed, and two days later we ventured to Cambridge and in time there was an inquest at which neither myself, my friend or his acquaintance were called to give evidence at. I still have that letter if you wish to look at it. I remember placing a phone call that day and was told that our statements given were enough.’ Dr. James sighed, his face puffy and he removed his spectacles and wiped them with a fine cloth.
‘I don’t know if your father found the crown and had been murdered for it or if it remains the legend that it always was. I sit here in front of you and I can only state, with every fibre of my being, that I was in no way responsible for your father’s death and I am truly sorry that I used and indeed blackened his memory in the way I did. While unforgivable, these wild accusations have to stop. I am a writer of supernatural fiction, that is all.’
Tears spilled silently down Joseph’s face. James softened and reached out with his liver spotted hand and patted the younger man’s knee before squeezing it affectionately.
‘I lost him when I needed him the most,’ Joseph said quietly, looking embarrassed. ‘I was very directionless as a teenager, most troubled, and if it wasn’t for the dedication of my mother and my father’s brother, I would be in a worse-off state than I am now.’ Joseph didn’t elaborate further.
James reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a slightly battered pocket watch. He flipped it open, and satisfied that not too much of the morning had been eaten up, snapped it closed. He got up, retrieved his papers, and put them into his bag.
‘While I don’t deny that you’ve been through a very trying time, I have stated the facts to the best of my knowledge. It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, even though you made a very serious charge against me—but we all make mistakes and say things we don’t mean when emotional.’
Joseph looked shocked. ‘You mean that’s it? That’s all you have to say on the matter?’
‘Yes,’ snapped James, as if his comforting actions of only a few moments ago had never happened. ‘I have helped as much as I am able. If you need further assistance, please leave a message with the porter who will pass it on.’
With that, he left the room, and bade Mrs. Humphries a good day on his way out. Joseph picked up the two newspaper clippings and slid them into the envelope along with the photographs of James at Aldeburgh. Then it came to him, the simplest of plans and he smiled, albeit a little sadly. Montague Rhodes James was going to help him find out what happened to his father whether he liked it or not.
The car pulled up outside the hotel he frequented on every visit to Aldeburgh, The White Lion. Getting out, M. R. James breathed in deeply, the salt in the air making his nostrils tingle, and not unpleasantly. He waited as the driver retrieved his luggage from the boot of the car and then proceeded to walk into the hotel, Dr. James following behind leisurely.
He had been in two minds whether to come to Aldeburgh; of course he had returned every year since the death on the beach, but it was Joseph’s appearance that had rattled him so. He was aware of the letters that he’d initially been sent by the younger man and had read them, hoping that if he simply ignored them the nuisance would go away. It was extremely foolish of him to dress a real life story with supernatural overtones, never thinking for a second that anyone would put two and two together and definitely not the son of the deceased. What he had desperately wanted to say, but daren’t, as Joseph would have been mortified, was that the stories he wrote, in the main, were merely whimsies, written while slightly drunk on good brandy and primarily for his colleagues, or, more recently, a select gathering of Eton whom he enjoyed transfixing with what he liked to call “a pleasing terror”. He was pleased with the external interest in his work and his collections were very fine, but the fact of the matter was that it wouldn’t bother him in the slightest if the public stopped buying his books.
In the end Aldeburgh’s charms were too great to resist, they always had been. He thought back to the first time he visited and little had changed in the village since then. Ironically enough he had struggled with the notion of writing about Aldeburgh in a short story in the first place, thinking that if he revealed its locations the magic would be lost. So he changed the name and mixed up the ingredients slightly, but for the discerning armchair detective it wouldn’t take a lot to figure out what little seaside village on the Suffolk coast he was talking about.
As James was taken to his room, the receptionist told him that his friend, who would be joining him on this trip, was delayed by several days due to an aunt dying suddenly. Thinking that he would do well to whittle away a few hours after he unpacked, he went back downstairs and looked through the various books that were on offer in the reading room. The only thing that held any interest was a copy of New Tales of Horror By Eminent Authors—a book that James had in his library, but was yet to read. He looked through the contents and his nose wrinkled when he saw Arthur Machen’s name, but Richard Middleton and M. P. Shiel would soon make up for Machen’s inclusion.
He took the book outside with him, the wind had picked up ever so slightly, making him glad that he had put on his jacket. It wasn’t too oppressive weather to read though, so James ambled across the road to the beach and hired a deckchair. Once he had found a suitably level spot, he began to read.
Several of the stories were utter tripe and obviously written by hacks who had no understanding of the finer points of the English language, but James gruffly conceded that the anthology did have a vague synchronicity to it, the stories ebbed and flowed evenly. Loath as he was to admit it, several of the stories had him completely enthralled, so much so that he didn’t notice the presence standing next to him.
‘Good day to you,’ the presence said.
He looked up, dismayed, recognising the voice instantly. It was Joseph.
‘What are you doing here?’ James barked. ‘Trying to ruin my holiday?’
‘No sir,’ Joseph almost sneered, ‘trying to find the person who killed my father.’ He was holding a deck chair and proceeded to open it up. Dr. James made no move to get up and leave.
‘The truth, sir, is that I didn’t know that you were going to be here, but I made an educated guess and hoped that you would be. It’s fine, I’m not staying at the hotel, I would never be that impudent, I’ll room at another place in town.’ Joseph sat down and made himself comfortable, putting his hands deep into the pockets of his long trench coat. He looked at the Provost steadily. James sighed, closed the book and placed it on his knee.
‘So what do you plan to do whilst here? Apart from the obvious, of course. And where’s your luggage?’ James said, and was surprised at the acidity in his voice.
‘I travel light. Clothes can be washed and dried before bed and before I rise. But if you really want to know what I’ll do here is that I’m going to make enquiries to try and discover where the ‘Ager’ homestead was, then go there and look for signs of disturbance in the earth and then take it from there. I’ll try and get under the skin of whoever killed my father, my presence will hopefully shock his killer to try and come after me...’
‘And what will you do if he or she does?’
‘I’ll shoot them where they stand.’ From his right pocket, the one furthest away from James, Joseph pulled out a Webley revolver. He didn’t appear to be concerned by the look of shock that appeared on James’ face.
‘And what happens if you make a mistake and you shoot the wrong person? You’ll swing, mark my words. And I wouldn’t lift a finger, not if you gunned somebody down in cold blood.’ James let the book drop from his knee onto the sand.
‘And if I shot you? There would be circumstantial evidence in my favour.’
‘Are you insane, man?’ Dr. James leapt up out of his chair and for the first time in a long time, a searing bolt of pain ran down his leg, the result of an accident many years before. He gasped, clutching at it, sitting back down, looking at Joseph furiously.
‘If I haven’t persuaded you of my innocence, then I am clearly talking to someone who has taken leave of his senses.’
‘He could have found the crown, and you being such an antiquarian could have killed him and stolen it from him. You’re elderly and jaded now, granted, but go back to then, I think you could have overpowered him. He was after all a ‘rabbity anæmic subject.’ Joseph spat the sentence out, such was the bitterness in it.
Dr. James guffawed.
‘Oh, my dear boy.’ He lifted his glasses up slightly and wiped a solitary laughter tear away from his wrinkled skin. ‘After your father died, I made one or two inquiries myself and discovered approximately what I believe to be the location of the “Ager” place. If you want, we can walk there and you can go forage to your heart’s content. If you find something and it’s the mythical crown then you can show that I am nothing but a foolish scholar whose love of fantastical stories has clearly gone to his head. But I will say this for the last time. I am an author of ghost and supernatural fiction who was inspired by the story your father told me and then inspired by his death, as uncaring as that sounds, to write a work of fiction which was part-based on true events. I cannot apologise enough. But after I show you the “Ager” place, I expect you to leave me alone. No more threats or posturing from you, please. Stay in the village if you wish or go back to your own home but you will no longer intrude on my privacy. I will summon the police and you can tell them all the stories under the sun.’ Dr. James got up again, this time more slowly. He favoured his leg and his face relaxed when there was no pain.
‘We can walk along the beach for a while before we walk out of the village and go in-country for a few miles. It’s a long walk, made longer by the way that we’ll go, but I thought you might like to stop for a moment where they found your father.’ The words hung on the air, waiting for Joseph to snatch at them. He was up in an instant, the gun back in his pocket.
‘Come on then Provost, we’ve walking to do.’
The wind had eased somewhat and half a mile further down the beach, James realised that he had left the thriller book behind. He hoped that it wouldn’t get taken by the tide; he hated doing disservices to books, no matter their content. His leg was fine, it wasn’t giving him any trouble as yet, even though they were walking on small pebbles, but he thought that by the time he reached the “Ager” site, it might cause him considerable discomfort.
Twenty minutes later and James stopped abruptly, looking intently at the Martello tower and where the cut in the middle of the dunes were.
‘It was here. This is where he was found. I’ll leave you with your thoughts for a while.’
Joseph’s answer surprised him.
‘No.’
They continued to walk in silence, the wind became stronger, one sudden gust nearly caught Joseph unawares who was slender and had almost no meat to his bones.
They left the beach and soon walked down a high-hedged lane, the wind here was dampened somewhat. Twisting and turning their way through the countryside, Dr. James pointed in the direction of a small copse on the top of a slight mound about half a mile away.
‘It’s just beyond those trees. You’ll be able to see why when we get there, there’s a gap in them that lets you see the beach and sea beyond for miles in either direction,’ Dr. James explained.
And then they arrived; a three-quarters ruined cottage, the roof of which had collapsed, taking most of the house with it. Thick brambles grew everywhere and seemed to protect the cottage from would-be intruders. The trees surrounding them swayed in the strong breeze. James sat on a wind-blown tree trunk about ten metres away as Joseph reached into his pocket and pulled out his envelope and from it, two photographs. He stared at them, then held them out at arm’s length, and moved around in a circle till he thought he had come to the place the first photograph depicted. The wind tried its best to whip the photographs from the young man’s hand, but he quickly put them back in the envelope and into an inside pocket of his trench coat.
‘This is the place,’ Joseph said, with a grin on his face. ‘You can go now, Provost.’
James looked up at the younger man. The grin had vanished, and was replaced by a cold certainty. James had expected him to be holding the gun.
‘Very well. I hope you find what you’re looking for. If you do, however, I have no wish to see it, so don’t come gloating.’ James got up from his seat and walked away down the gentle slope, his left foot coming down on the corpse of a small sparrow and he winced as the bones crunched under his weight.
James was adamant that nothing was going to spoil the rest of his holiday and he even hoped that the book he had left behind on the shingle wasn’t too spoiled, or had had pages torn from it. The wind was certainly picking up again, stronger than before, nearly pushing the Provost over on a few occasions.
Of course, Joseph would come back empty-handed and James wondered how long it would be before the accusations began. And then there was the gun. The Provost decided that as soon as he got into the village he would call on the policeman and say that there was a rather unstable chap who was a danger to himself and to others. Even if there were questions to be asked, James knew he could answer them, even if the situation was odd and might raise eyebrows. But in his favour was the esteem and probity his name carried; he would be believed, there would be no reason why he shouldn’t be.
Passing the Martello tower and continuing down the lonely stretch of sand, something whipped past James, carried with the strong wind. He stopped and cocked his ear. It was high pitched, disjointed and nearly vanished under the increasing roar of the wind but it was almost as if James was meant to hear it.
‘I put it back! I put it back!’
Dr. James turned around. In the distance he could see Joseph sprinting towards him and he was running very, very fast, no doubt being helped along by the severe gusts that would see several trees felled before the day was out. This far away Joseph’s face was an undistinguishable blob of white.
The wind blew into James’ face and again, that same phrase, now sounding like a scream, was as loud as if it had been shouted in his ear.
‘I put it back... OH GOD!’
The sky, which was aphotic and angry before, suddenly turned an inky black, though at eye level there was still enough light to see; James’ vision had become grainy and scratched.
Joseph was carried off his feet, along the beach, about a metre into the air. He went no further up, but it appeared as if he was levitating. James looked on in horror as suddenly the younger man’s body was folded back on itself, the heels of his shoes slamming into his head, spine snapping as easily as a dead twig. It sounded like a starting pistol.
Then the wind dropped, jarring James with its suddenness.
Joseph fell to the ground.
Dr. James began running as fast as his old body would take him, his leg screaming with pain, his heart trip-hammering in his chest, a bird fluttering its wings against its cage, trying to get out. The sky slowly reverted back to being grey and overcast.
When he reached Joseph, it was plain to see that he was quite dead. His neck was broken; head twisted around so much so his face was buried in the sand. His arms and legs were in positions unfathomable to the human eye. Bones poked out of fabric.
‘Oh Joseph,’ James croaked, sure that the violence was going to revisit any second. ‘I didn’t know that...’ He couldn’t think of the right words to say, and to dwell further on it... therein lay the madness which was only a whisper away from taking him. But whatever had been here wouldn’t return unless whatever it was that Joseph had found at the “Ager” place was disturbed again. Of which the Provost clearly had no intention of ever doing.
His hands shaking violently, Dr. James opened up the dead man’s jacket and felt for the envelope which he eased out and slipped into his own. When Joseph was found, James didn’t want anyone to look at the photographs and go foraging. It wasn’t lost on James that if he had found the crown when he had visited the “Ager” place, he would have met his end as violently as Joseph had.
He slowly limped away from the broken remains, an old man confused and shaken by the invisible line between his writing and the truly unknown. All the way back to the hotel he felt as if he was being watched by an unseen presence witnessing his every move, knowing that the executor of the carnage that had been wrought upon poor Joseph Payton was the force that was bound with the last remaining crown of East Anglia.
Knowing that he shouldn’t, but feeling as if he must, he turned around to look back one last time and standing over the body was a man in what had once been a respectable suit but was now almost rags. He was thin, ‘rabbity looking’, as Dr. James might have said, and his dark, broken mouth was hanging open in an almost soundless scream of hopeless grief. James turned from this and, despite his leg, now excruciatingly painful, began to run desperately over the shingle.
Arriving back at the hotel, James immediately retired to bed, and when his friend arrived, several days later, Dr. James simply spent most of his time in the empty reading room, drinking brandy and waiting for the holiday to be over, truly expecting that at any moment Joseph would be found and the link between James, the boy and the boy’s father would be unearthed.
Once back at Eton, Montague Rhodes James decided that the trip to Aldeburgh was to be his last. Joseph’s broken body and his father standing next to him haunted Dr. James until he died, a year later.