25th September 2016
THE ANCHOR LAKEY: Episode 5
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Intro: A segment of Ludovico Einaudi's "Fly" is played on the piano over a track of rustling trees and whispering.
SUKIE:
Hi, guys! Welcome back to the Anchor Lakey. Thank you to everyone who showed up to the café for the book club the last couple of weeks. It's been so nice to get to know more people in town! I can't believe we've been doing this for a month already, and you're still listening. Unless those viewer figures are all from my mum.
OLIVER:
And mine. I think between them, the parental units may be responsible for a good thirty percent of all our listeners so, uh, shoutout to Sara and Helen, I guess?
SUKIE:
Today's episode comes with a major breakthrough. It's taken four weeks, but Oli has finally finished reading The Key to Anchor Lake, after much persuasion and encouragement.
OLIVER:
In my defence, it's a really heavy book. It's dark, and it's sad, and it can be pretty hard to read. I got the impression that Mary was angry and cynical and I know those are kind of my trademarks, but ... yeah, it was hard.
SUKIE:
Have your feelings about the book changed now that you've read it?
[Oliver pauses for a few seconds and sighs]
OLIVER:
Yeah, I guess. Obviously, I understand it all a lot more now. And after reading it, I've given up on the idea that it's all a bunch of fiction from the mind of some crazy lady, 'cause there's a lot of hard fact in there.
SUKIE:
As I've been telling you for literal years.
OLIVER:
But I still think – and you're gonna hate me for this, I know, but we'll work through it – that whoever Mary is, she's a crazy old superstitious lady. She writes like there is a legit curse, like this whole town has some unavoidable fate. But that's bullsh-
[Oliver cuts himself off with a cough]
That's a load of crap. Buying into the idea of some kind of decided destiny means you don't do anything to change it, and you just let life happen. Pure evil in the form of a man deciding to kill a load of kids isn't a curse or some predestined four-times-a-year disaster. It's awful, but I think it's a bit ridiculous to say that, oh, it was destined to happen because it was twenty-five years since that bomb exploded.
[Oliver is clearly agitated, jigging in his chair]
Let's be real. When you look at the earlier stuff, like the plagues and droughts and storms and fires, all that is stuff that was happening all over the country. You could probably throw a dart at a map of the UK and find a town that's had all the same crap happen. They just haven't had a Mary who has conjured up a weak link and cherry-picked the right things to fit this pattern she's decided.
SUKIE:
I think that's a bit reductive.
OLIVER:
But look at almost any year, and I'm sure you'll find other bad stuff that's happened. There are tragedies every year. But Mary decided these are the ones that matter. Why is she the leading authority? Who is she to decide? How come she includes five dead in a landslide in 1669, but she never even mentions that lorry crash that killed six people in 1987? Because it doesn't fit her pattern. The one she chose.
SUKIE:
But it's about the scale, and the likelihood. What are the chances that there would be a landslide that would bury the cemetery and kill five people who were visiting graves? It's ironic and maudlin and weird and unlikely. As awful as that lorry crash must have been, it's not exactly unusual. Thousands of people die in crashes every year. Crashes like that happen every week. You know what doesn't happen every week? Kids getting struck by lightning during a random dry storm that comes out of nowhere. Trains losing control on safe tracks and plunging into a crowded street. If Mary was picking and choosing tragedies to fit her timeline, most of them would be mundane. But they're not.
OLIVER:
I'm just not sold. I don't buy it.
Hundreds of thousands of women were killed for being witches across Europe. Millions have died in plagues and famines. Thousands have lost their lives in storms and pandemics and accidents. I don't think Anchor Lake is unique or special for that, and I don't think it's cursed.
To be honest, after reading the book, I reckon Mary Nesbitt's pretty irresponsible.
SUKIE:
Irresponsible? How?
OLIVER:
She whipped everyone up into a frenzy. I was talking to my parents, and they said that back in the nineties, when someone first realised that all these big things happened every twenty-five years, people would just kind of huff and go huh, that's odd, and that'd be it. It wasn't a big deal; it was a lousy coincidence.
But then Mary comes along and writes this book, all mysterious because we don't know who she is, and suddenly everyone's gripped. Everyone wants to read it. Everyone has an opinion. She made everyone afraid – even after 1994, when everyone was grieving and devastated and the town was shattered, no-one was scared of what was going to happen in 2019.
Now that's, like, a thing. And everyone's so obsessed with guessing what's going to happen – which is morbid as hell, by the way – that we're probably going to make something happen. We're either going to die of mass hysteria, or someone's going to snap and kill their neighbours.
[Oliver is breathing hard. Sukie is silent. The silence stretches on for fifteen seconds]
SUKIE:
Okay.
OLIVER:
Okay?!
SUKIE:
I hear you. And that's a valid point, Oli. Thank you.
OLIVER:
I know this is your passion project, and I know how much you love digging and sleuthing around and wrapping yourself up in the history. But I think that there's only so far it should go before everyone's paranoid and obsessed and afraid. The way I see it ... an angry old lady wrote a book to make herself feel better, and it got turned into a cult item, and when it comes to cult, there's always someone who takes it too far.
[Sukie is silent for a few seconds]
SUKIE:
...do you mean me, Oli?
OLIVER:
No! God, no, Sukie, that's not what I meant at all. I'm totally with you when it comes to finding Mary and seeing if there's an actual connection here. I was just thinking about 1969 and 1994, and how they don't fit the pattern. Both of those events were down to individual people wreaking havoc on purpose. What if we get to the last day of 2019, and nothing has happened, and some superfan of the book wants to preserve this idea of the curse, so they go on a killing spree?
[There's a quiet sniff. Sukie's and Oliver's voices are quieter when they move away from the phone]
Sorry, Sukie. I didn't mean to upset you.
SUKIE:
It's okay, it's not you. It's just ... yeah, I get what you're saying. I feel bad. You're totally right.
OLIVER:
I don't think you should stop, Sukes. But maybe we take it easy? Just, you know, appreciate a bit of cult history and chat about the book, and meet new friends through it. But it's not the be all and end all.
SUKIE:
I know.
[There is a long pause, long enough that it seems they have left the room]
OLIVER:
We'll find Mary, Sukes.
SUKIE:
We will?
OLIVER:
We'll find Mary, and we'll ask her about the book, and then we'll be done with this. Well, I will. But only once we've found Mary.
SUKIE:
Okay.
[Another long pause]
Sorry about this one, guys. Every week I say we'll be structured and it won't turn into the Sukie and Oli show, and every week it does.
[She sniffs and there is a flapping sound as she fans her face with her notes]
Okay, well, I think that's probably enough for today. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to The Anchor Lakey with Sukie Watanabe and Oliver Day.
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hope you liked this!