It was too cold to be a mirage, too bright and early to have conjured the image up in my head and put it all together before the deadline reached.
By anyone's standards, they were an odd looking pair. Wrapped up in shiny new furs, they walked arm in arm along the beach towards me, seemingly aloof of the surroundings. White as bone china, they resembled a couple of unwanted heirlooms. Antique curios, mothballed in the back of a wardrobe with scary dolls, string puppets and old lace. The man wore a black stovepipe hat, while his female companion hid her hands inside a mink muffler that most women her age, or any age, wouldn't have been seen out dead with.
The strange, striking pair might have been mourners at a funeral. Old friends perhaps who'd come down from London by coach and horse to pay their last respects to someone buried in the village churchyard, whose name was still clearly etched on one of those old lean-to stones dating back from when the church was first built, through funds raised from cod and smoked herrings.
Even in 2010, their clothes seemed daring and provocative. They looked imperious, as if they'd come to Earth from planet Krypton to reek havoc on the North Face anorak and windbreaker brigade whom I usually passed on my way to my morning swim. These two were in their own kingdom, their own monarchy, and nothing, not even a stranger's friendly nod was going to break them apart. They were soul-mates, best friends, star-crossed lovers even wrapped in each other's arms for eternity, or so I thought.
About six months later, I was reading his obituary in The Guardian in a cafe in Deal. It was an entertaining read of a man's ill-spent life, who was something of a modern day dandy and apparently, a major influencer in the London fashion scene. His debauched lifestyle read like Kurtz's backstory in Heart of Darkness. He was Apocalypse Now, but, in truth, it wasn't his name that shone out at me from the newspaper, more the photograph of a pale faced young man in a tall black stovepipe and smart Dickensian dress, sitting behind an orderly shelf, stacked with human skulls. His name was Sebastian Horsley, artist & writer, b 1962; d 17th June 2010 '..found dead at 47.'
Six years older than I was, I soon learnt he had visited Kingsdown on numerous occasions, staying as a guest of like-minded hosts who used to keep a cottage on the beach. I knew them a little, though in truth, was never quite brave enough to go inside. His suicide seemed to follow a sad pattern set by two of his more famous contemporaries, Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen, yet in his excellent and amusing obituary, Alexander Larman wrote, 'It was typical of Sebastian that he should die at the peak of his success.'
I didn't think of him again, until one Monday night the following winter. I was walking down to the pub quiz and heard a loud rustling sound coming from within the tall, wide thicket hedge of a neighbour. At first, I thought it might be a fox, but it seemed impenetrable that anything but a small bird would get through. Suddenly, a figure dragged himself out of it and began frantically brushing off the twigs and leaves stuck to his hair and clothes, before standing upright in the road and raising a black stovepipe hat in his hand to his head. Then he was gone, dashing straight through the closed iron gate of the churchyard, without a word to me. Instinctively, I followed him in with the weak beam of my torch, but there was no sight or sound of him amongst the tombstones, and it quickly dawned on me that I'd seen a ghost. I had no fear, nor the reaction you might expect from seeing one up close. It was actually quite thrilling. It felt like a dare.
I spared the landlord the full details as he poured me a brandy in his pub and later, many hours later when I walked home the same way, I felt a pang of disappointment that the ghost wasn't waiting at the church gates. The gate was still open as I'd left it, and the graveyard filled with nothing but skeletons and skulls.
A decade has passed since Sebastian Horsley's death, but I still look for him some nights, as I weave my way home in the dark. Often wondering out loud, if and when I'll reach the peak of success.
Tim Synge is the writer of Seafront Pages, original tales from the dark corners of the Kent Riviera, and beyond..
Very wonderful story!!
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