MR INBETWEEN

MR INBETWEEN


By Tom Johnstone



"One minute there you are, young, healthy, as happy as Larry, your
whole life stretched out before you. The next, well? It's not that I'm
complaining. There's nothing to complain about. It's just something's
not? quite right. Maybe I should have paid more attention at school.
But then again if I'd learned to read and write, you wouldn't be
sitting here now, I could write my own story instead of paying you! And
anyway, it hasn't done me any harm. I mean, look at you. You've got a
college education, letters after your name, but it's me that holds the
purse strings, eh?"


Mr Neptune was rambling again. One minute verging on the
maudlin, the next waving his undeniable material advantage over me in
my face. Should I pause the dictaphone, to save space on the
tape?
Such a move might give offence, and Mr Neptune was something of a
despot. But he did need me. It wasn't as easy to find someone to ghost
write your autobiography as he liked to give out.
Admittedly I hadn't been the only person to answer his advert in the
classifieds:


"Ghost writer wanted. Pays per hour."


On the contrary, many other aspiring writers had contacted Mr
Neptune. I didn't know why he'd picked me out of all the other
hopefuls. Perhaps for once my diffident telephone manner had been a
point in my favour when I'd rung him, against other more assertive and
loquacious candidates. It was of little importance to me. The main
thing was that I was getting paid for writing - and by the hour rather
than the word, a method of payment that suggested a man whose means
were far from slender.


As far as I was concerned, he could ramble as much as he
liked.


It hadn't started out that way.


Harry Neptune's early life had been nothing if not eventful:
he had vividly described his childhood in the East End, a meagre
existence by his own reckoning, followed by a spell in the merchant
navy in early manhood. This form of escape had given Mr Neptune an
intense love of the sea, and he had settled in this coastal resort,
using his considerable business acumen in the setting up of a chain of
seaside piers and amusement arcades. On these subjects, he'd waxed
lyrical:


"I loved my business, because it brought light and colour to
people's lives. My old mother, God rest her soul, said I was living off
immoral earnings when I started up Neptune amusements, by encouraging
'games of chance', as she put it. I said to her, 'mum, I'm no more
living off immoral earnings than I was as a sailor.' You see, my
experience had taught me that you put yourself at the mercy of chance
every time you put out to sea. So I took a gamble, and bought my first
arcade.


" Postview Pier was a wreck when I bought her, I can tell
you, not so much as a gang plank to join her to dry land. She'd been
left to rot. By the time I'd finished with her, she was an ocean cruise
liner with a great ballroom in her middle. You could walk along her,
and see and hear and smell the waves under your feet. I used to do that
a lot of an evening?"


He'd continued in this vein for a while, and then he'd paused
to gaze out of the lattice window of his spacious mock tudor house. I
was on the point of asking him to comment about Neptune Amusements'
rumoured connections with Postview's shady underworld, and the
controversy that had surrounded his departure form the firm's helm, but
then thought better of it.


So I moved on to other subjects. But when pressed about what
happened after he sold Neptune Amusements in the late Eighties, he was
less than forthcoming.


"I don't know why it is. Maybe it's? When you get to my age,
some things, you know, from when you were young, you can remember them
like it was yesterday. But what happened days, even hours ago, it's
like a distant memory. I can remember walking on the promenade, on the
wooden boards of the pier, then that's it, the rest is silence. It
scares me sometimes, I don't mind admitting it. But I don't dwell on it
either. Stick to the positive, forget the negative, that's always been
my motto, as the old song goes, 'don't mess with Mr In Between'? So why
can't I remember? Well, you tell me.


" Come on, you're the writer. You're supposed to know what
makes people tick, how to get under people's skin."


I looked at my dictaphone, considering whether this latest
silence warranted pausing the machine.


"I hope you can find the answer. That's what I'm paying you
for. It's up to you to right this wrong."


Apparently my job description had been unilaterally
amended.



I returned to my room, and began to write:


"I strode along the deck, swinging my brolly as I did so. I
could see and hear the waves beneath my feet. The great Christmas tree
helter skelter flashed before my eyes. The ocean swallowed the lights
like a vast whale. The punters breezed past me, like I wasn't there.
Didn't they know who I was? I was the man who'd put those lights there!
I wandered towards the rail to look at the sea. I could feel a strong
breeze at my back, pressing against my shoulders. It was busy on the
pier, despite the bitter weather, a testament to my success in building
the business up out of nothing. I gazed down into the blackness, the
underworld. The rain began to thin to a fine but drenching mist.
Glancing towards the entrance to the pier, I noticed that the walkway
joining the pier to the land seemed to be fading in the fog. It was as
though I was at sea again."



I decided to do some research into my employer, to help flesh out the
portrait and perhaps to fill in the gaps in my employer's memory.
Reasoning that such a high profile figure would have left his unique
mark on his place of residence, I began ploughing through the public
records and newspaper archives.


And that was when I discovered the news story, dated 14th
December 1988:


"The body discovered washed up on Postview beach yesterday
has been identified as that of Harold Neptune, the owner of Postview
Pier and several other local amusement arcades."


My initial response was that it had to be a mistake. Perhaps
the journalist had been an inexperienced hack, premature in his
pronouncement of death. Perhaps the rumours of Mr Neptune's decease had
been somewhat exaggerated. After all, he was nothing if not a
survivor.


However, my perusal of subsequent entries in the newspaper
archive gave no obvious indication of his continued existence, although
follow up stories confirming his decease (obituary, coroners' reports,
etc.) were curiously lacking too. Given some of the alleged activities
of Neptune Amusements, it was possible that he had faked his own death,
but then why live so openly here? And why advertise his presence with
the autobiography he had commissioned me to write?


Another less rational explanation struck me. I remembered a
film about a boy who could perceive the invisible spirits of the dead.
These lost souls could not or would not admit that they were dead,
rather like cartoon characters who keep going long after they have
unwittingly run over the edge of a precipice. However, Harry Neptune
was neither invisible nor a cartoon character. Despite his
protestations of feeble-minded senility, his wiry, weather-beaten
person had a solidity that was far from feeble, even less spectral.
Nevertheless, he seemed capable of the kind of terrier-like tenacity
that could prolong his earthly existence beyond the grave, if such a
thing were possible.


Harry Neptune's remarks about the blank space that had opened
up in his memory might make more sense in the light of this, but to
confront him with it point-blank could be problematic in the extreme.
What if the news story was a fabrication of some kind? I could not only
lose my lucrative commission, but expose myself to possible reprisals
of a more unpleasant nature. Even if Harry Neptune were dead, it did
not strike me as inconceivable that his underworld connections could
bridge the gulf between this world and the next.


The obvious course of action seemed to be to confront Harry
with the newspaper evidence of his demise, thus breaking the spell. But
when I reported for duty at our next dictation session, confronted with
flesh-and-blood evidence that seemed flatly to contradict what I had
read, I found it impossible to broach the subject. Given the obstinacy
that I sensed in him, it seemed unlikely that a man of Harry Neptune's
stamp would meekly submit to the dark embrace of
oblivion.


A conflict now raged within me. This was a case where jumping
to the wrong conclusion could be the act of a lemming. It was time to
check my sources, to make sure that my story was
water-tight.



As I walked to the library, I saw a woman I knew by sight. I struggled
to remember her name as she approached. I raised my hand in tentative
greeting. Although I was in her field of vision, she did not notice the
gesture, and walked on.


Similar difficulties dogged my attempts to secure the
attention of the library archivist. I had to crank my assertiveness up
several notches before she acknowledged me. Such experiences of near
social invisibility were not unfamiliar to me, but they had become more
frequent of late. I was starting to feel as though my living activity
was slipping away from me, subsumed by the needs of some dead alien
power.


The archivist frowned at my request to see the same records
again. However she did not share my dismay at the news story from 15th
December 1988:


"Larger-than-life local businessman Harold Neptune was today
recovering in hospital, after miraculously surviving a fall from the
pier he owns into the icy waters of the sea off
Postview.


" 'I am lucky to be alive', said Mr Neptune after regaining
consciousness. 'I owe my life to my naval training.'


"It's not the first time Postview Pier has been the scene of
an accident this year, although the previous victim was not as lucky as
Mr Neptune.


"A verdict of suicide was registered after the handcuffed
body of local journalist Tom Johnstone was found washed up on the
beach, his pockets full of pebbles from the shore."


I read on, and saw that my namesake had been working on a
story exposing the money-laundering activities of Neptune Amusements.



As I drifted out of the library, I felt light-headed and
detached from my surroundings. I pondered on what might have happened
had I followed up the journalism course I had enrolled on in the mid
Eighties.


In this reality, I realised, there was not room for both
Harry and me.



If I could not tell him straight, there was another way to lay this
ghost to rest.


I would write up his story, word for word, as he had narrated
it to me. That would not be difficult with the Dictaphone. I would
relate his impoverished childhood, his years sailing the seven seas,
his fabulous success in the world of business, pulling himself up by
his bootstraps from rags to riches. But I would add a little extra
something that he left out of his account, an epilogue if you like. Oh,
nothing about the allegations concerning financial impropriety at
Neptune Amusements. After all, I was writing an autobiography, not
investigative journalism. No, what I was doing was simply carrying out
Harry's command to "right this wrong".


"The wind was getting stronger. The pounding of the in-house
radio station contended with its increasing fervour. The gentle mist
had now hardened in the strong, salt-laden breeze blowing from the
other side of the deck. You could still make out the radio station
pounding over it, but only just. I leaned against the railing, staring
at the sea's thrashing peaks and troughs. Occasionally I glanced round
to check if my solitude was absolute. The odd straggler still huddled
in the long shelter attached to the line of candy floss and doughnut
bars, but most of the punters had melted away, sheltering in the
arcades, or in the Poseidon Pleasure Palace with its ballroom and bar.
I could feel the rain at my back, but felt no inclination to leave,
even though it was now dark. The boardwalk to the shore still seemed
faint and distant. As I glanced in its direction, I was startled by a
freak gust of wind that blew my umbrella from my grasp, and threatened
to pitch me overboard. A solitary figure strode quickly over, grabbed
my shoulders to steady me, or so I thought until I realised the strong
hands were pushing, not pulling."


This final paragraph was only marred by the strange paradox
that Harry Neptune's autobiography would now appear to be posthumously
written. I hoped that the mere writing of it would persuade its subject
finally to give up the ghost. However, it was sufficiently inconclusive
that in the event that my hypothesis proved ill-founded, I could easily
rebut any accusations from the named author that I had killed him off
in print, thereby protecting me from those strong hands I
mentioned.
As I prepared to take the draft round to Harry Neptune's house, I
already felt more real again, more whole. Nevertheless I was still
nervous. The bus journey to his house seemed longer than usual. As I
walked up the long, tree-lined avenue, the large houses stretched
endlessly. After all, this was no row of semis! One house stood out:
its garden was unkempt, its windows boarded up, a particularly
incongruous sight in this part of town.


It looked as though it had been empty for
years.


It was Harry Neptune's house.