Mathew West was born in Kent and grew up in a small town in Aberdeenshire. In 2002 he left to study history and sociology at the University of Edinburgh where he now lives and works as a civil servant. His first novel, The House of Footsteps, is a gothic mystery-thriller set in the 1920s in a foreboding house on the English-Scottish border, and was published in February 2022 by HarperNorth. His second novel The Water Child will be published in May 2023.
His writing is influenced by - in no particular order - Daphne du Maurier, the Bronte sisters, David Lynch, Cormac McCarthy, John Darnielle, Tom Waits, Kate Bush and low-budget horror films.
You can follow Mathew on Instagram at @mathewwestauthor or Twitter at @mathewoneT.
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She is determined that her route should not bring her directly to the harbour and the surging waves, like it usually does. But in this town there is no escaping the sea; it rises from the deep bay and permeates the streets with its presence. It swirls through the hot air, its scent always in your nostrils and its taste damp upon your tongue. It is in every naval uniform she sees, every mysterious foreign word she hears. It is in the clink of the coins that change hands among the market traders: shillings and peça, livres and doubloons. Coins of copper and nickel and silver and gold, metals mined all over the world and carried here for jangling commerce.
What is called the town’s market is nothing that she would have recognized as such back in England. Traders set up their stalls pressed on either side of the streets wherever there is space, while shoppers jostle and browse, elbowing through the bazaars, packed tight like cattle. Here, too, among the goods and wares available for purchase, the sea is everywhere. There are sailors’ things, practical tools and minor luxuries for their next voyage: quadrants and compasses, new hats and gloves, sewing kits, sticks of cheap tobacco, and hard, durable cheeses. And there are the ocean’s treasures brought to land, scrubbed and scoured clean of the salt and rot and offered up for sale. Pretty shells and coral are offered as ornaments or jewellery, while fish with shocked, gaping expressions are on sale for the cooking pan. The narrow streets resemble nothing less than an Ali Baba’s cave of foreign and exotic treasures: silks and spices and precious gems; silverware and china plates; and curious animals locked in cages. Lacquered furniture that would make her the envy of any of her friends back home lies piled in heaps like firewood.
Set just back from the main thoroughfares, in the shadows all around, lurking in doorways and down side-alleys, there are sleepless-looking women dressed up like silken butterflies. It had taken Cecilia some weeks before she had realized that they are prostitutes, pretending disinterest but keeping careful watch for any likely customer among the passing sailors and civil servants, all hours of the day. Also watching, also lurking, are young men dressed as sharp as stilettos in tight breeches and embroidered coats, and loitering in poses of affected, languorous boredom. These young men observe everything and everyone that passes through the markets through the tails of their heavy-lidded eyes. One of them catches Cecilia’s gaze as she walks by, and his thin lips curl back into a smile. She almost expects to see pointed teeth revealed there.
Sometimes she thinks she should feel more unsafe than she does roaming the lanes and alleys alone. She must stand out: a young woman walking unaccompanied, and marked by her features and her hair and her dress as a foreigner – though that is hardly uncommon here. Over time she has practised and perfected a way of fixing her gaze at some point in the distance, some indistinct spot just beyond her immediate surroundings, while she walks. By this method she hopes to always appear to be heading somewhere with a purpose. She sets her expression as though she were looking out for someone in the crowd – a beau she is planning to meet, perhaps, and who she wonders if she has just glimpsed – as if she is right upon the cusp of breaking into a smile and a wave.
She is exploring the market streets this way – led by an imaginary acquaintance that she is always, in her mind’s eye, heading towards – when she turns a corner on a whim. Immediately the soft hairs upon her neck rise, and a sharp twist of foreboding stabs into her gut; the feeling rotates into her, like a skewer through a piece of meat. She pauses mid-step and screws her eyes. There is nothing untoward visible in the street ahead, not yet, but she knows – she knows – that something is coming. To her side a mother walking hand in hand with a young child brushes past, but Cecilia snatches out impulsively and catches the mother’s arm, pulling her back. The mother turns to look at her full of shock and indignation, but Cecilia shakes her head in mute warning.
One second later and it comes. Raised voices audible from the far end of the street – yelps of alarm, and then a full-blooded scream. The crowd seems to part like water, and then something small and dark and misshapen lurches into view. An ugly little troglodyte creature in the approximate shape of a man, naked save for some sort of primitive hair shirt, comes careening around the corner, scampering on stubby legs and waving its long arms in the air, its gruesome face twisted into a wild grin of riotous energy. Cecilia recognizes then that it is no type of man at all, but a largish ape, running loose through the market streets. Men come running behind it, shouting and carrying ropes and sticks – but when the ape halts its rampage in the middle of the street and reels around to peer at them, they freeze in place, too, apparently afraid to get too close.
The ape stops, and sits, and rocks on its haunches and looks around. The street has fallen so silent that Cecilia can hear the creature burbling to itself, like a baby. Then, with a sudden shriek, it reaches out a long, hairy limb and lifts a nearby market stall from the ground with a single, mighty jerk of its arm, flipping it and sending an array of fine china crockery flying and shattering all around. The vendor cries out in dismay but remains pressed as tightly as he can against the building behind; the ape shrieks with a savage, childish delight at its destruction.
A sailor steps forward from the crowd then, with a pistol drawn. He holds it at arm’s length and brings it to aim upon the oblivious beast. Time seems to freeze, just for a second; Cecilia’s heart skips a beat in anticipation of the roar of the shot and the vision of senseless bloodshed. But, mercifully, the sailor’s decisive action seems to spur life into the men chasing the ape. One of them immediately steps in front of the sailor, blocking his aim and crying out in protest. Three others move swiftly to surround the primate, which has not moved; now it spins about, looking from one man to the next and shrieking, its powerful arms flailing around threateningly.
In an instant all four men have fallen upon it, and there is a great tumult of cries and screams – man or beast, she cannot tell – and then, finally, they have it tied up, arms lashed to its sides and a rope around its neck. The ape lies on its side, writhing and screeching pitifully. One of the men staggers back from the melee with his hands upon his face, ruby blood streaming from between his fingers. Both the injured man and the bound ape are led away with no further word of explanation nor apology, hobbling and limping hurriedly back to wherever it was they all came from. The entire spectacle lasts for barely a minute, and then the street is quiet again.
At length, the involuntary audience to this bizarre scene seems to exhale a collective sigh of relief. The breath that they had all – man, woman, and child – been holding on to is released. Voices resume, laughing nervously and exclaiming in various tongues: What a curious sight that was to behold! The young mother beside Cecilia turns to her, one hand upon her heart and the other still protectively clutched around her little boy as if the villainous ape might yet return to snatch him away with a shriek. The mother expresses her thanks in breathless French. If Cecilia had not stopped them, then mother and child would surely have walked directly into the wild beast’s path. With the little of the language she can remember, Cecilia modestly dismisses her role as nothing but fortunate timing.
‘But, how did you know that anything was coming?’ the mother asks, wide-eyed.
‘I just did.’ Cecilia smiles and lifts her shoulders in a shrug, and she continues down the street.
(C) Mathew West 2023