(A Shinglesea Beach novel).
“But what good’s opening the trapdoor to the loft gonna do?” said Misty.
“Hot air rises”, I said, wrenching the bloody thing down as best I could “So with any luck all the hot air will rise into the loft, and it means the ground floor of the bungalow won’t be as humid”.
“What if it blows the roof off?” Misty giggled.
“If you don’t mind me saying”, said Henry (which was entirely spurious of him, as I always mind him Saying, it doesn‘t matter what the subject is) “This is very dangerous. A health and safety executive wouldn’t like it at all”.
“There aren’t any health and safety executives in ‘Barnacles’”, I pointed out.
“Well it’s a good job that’s all I can say”, said Henry “Somebody could impale themselves on that hook sticking out of the bottom of the trap-door”.
“I can but dream”, I muttered to myself.
Admittedly, it wasn’t very convenient having the loft trap-door hanging down in the middle of the living-room, but the heat was so intense that I was desperate to try anything. I had tried just about everything else, throwing open all the doors and windows, putting all our fans on (well, both of them), and still the place was like a friggin’ sauna! And rain - oh God how we need rain! If this situation went on much longer I could see myself ending up like Gerard Depardieu in that classic French film, the one where he plays a farmer who is desperate for rain in order to save his crops, and ending up having hysterics because a distant neighbour is getting rainfall and not him. I had already got insanely jealous of people in other parts of the country on the Internet going on about heavy rainstorms, and thunder and lightning that they had had that afternoon, some even bragging that the thunder was the loudest they had ever heard. I had endlessly perused UK weather maps, but the little patches of rain shown always seemed to be just missing the Shinglesea area.
To add insult to injury the woman just beyond our back garden had decided to have her entire patio dug up this afternoon, and the noise had been horrendous, like having major road works right outside your house. Talk about Mad Dogs and Englishmen, we always carry on with a blithe disregard for the weather in this country!
“What are you up to, guys?” said Xanthe Cooper, wandering in from her wagon parked just outside our gate in the lane.
Since we had returned from Scotland to the torrid wastes of Southern England, Xanthe had taken to wearing a black plastic basque, which looked as though it had been stitched together out of two old bin-liners. I wouldn’t mind but (to use the words of Mrs Jackson) she had very little up top to fill it.
“Trying to cool the house down”, I said “I bet you wish you’d stayed up at Ghyll House don’t you?”
“No”, said Xanthe, sticking out her bottom lip in a sort of nonplussed way. I noticed that Xanthe generally had two facial expressions. One a grin that looked as though she’d had a coat-hanger rammed in her mouth, and the other a “I-don’t-really-understand-what’s-going-on-but-I-don’t-mind-I’ll-just-sit-here-like-this” expression. The second one was the one she used the most. It always left me with a feeling that most things in life went way over Xanthe’s head. And yet, I was never fooled into thinking she was stupid. She had too good a grasp of vocabulary to be a true dimwit. Xanthe intrigued me, I couldn’t make her out. And apart from occasional spasms of odd behaviour, such as holding entire conversations with herself, (I put that down to the fact that she had spent a lot of time recently living alone) she was a relatively trouble-free lodger. I would rather have an Xanthe around than a Henry any day.
“It is very oppressive in here”, she said, as though telling us something we didn’t already know “Everywhere else seems to have had thunder this afternoon”.
“I know!” I said “If any arsehole in the future tries to rubbish Global Warming and making out it’s not happening they’ll have me to contend with!”
Henry chortled (grrgh!), and said I seemed to have been a bit crochety since we had returned from Scotland. Well of course I was fucking crochety, Henry! We had arrived home to tropical temperatures, the news that our county was now officially classed as a desert (in spite of all the rain we had had in the Spring), the Water Board managing to slither away from getting hit with a fine which they would richly deserve, a hectoring letter from the Inland Revenue “advising” me that I must return my tax form by the end of January next year (7 months away, give us a bloody chance!), a reminder from the local clinic that I was due another particularly grisly medical test which usually involved outright torture, that odious fat pig John Prescott refusing to resign yet again, (sometimes I felt they should put the headline “’I WON’T QUIT’ SAYS PREZZA” on a fucking loop, it seems to come round every month!) the imminent threat of a nuclear face-off between North Korea and The Rest Of The World … and don’t get me started on the bloody neighbours!!! Verily, I was pissed off. I was starting to think that Henry had been right all along, and that we were all heading for meltdown.
“The world is in a very peculiar state at the moment”, he had said to me earlier in the day, and for once he was understating the situation!
I had been seeking comfort in Jack Daniels, Agatha Christie, and Misty’s face (not necessarily in that order). Misty’s face was of course of perennial fascination. I knew that Magda’s Aleck had been causing a bit of a stir in the neighbourhood amongst the young girls. He is a good-looking lad ‘tis true, and although I don’t normally have any problem with pretty men (I’ve enjoyed looking at plenty of them myself), Aleck’s face was a bit TOO pretty. He always, to me, looked like some doe-eyed long-lashed faun creature peering out from the foliage in a stunned and bewildered fashion. He’s the sort of bloke you think “ah yes good-looking feller” when you first see him, but the good looks quickly pale into the commonplace, and you don’t notice them at all after a while. Whereas Misty (yes, and I’m well aware I’m biased thank you very much) never ceases to fascinate. His little cartoon face is a constantly-changing panorama of human emotion.
Magda had found a flat she wanted to renovate. It was in an old derelict art-deco block along the empty sea-road up beyond the ‘Waterwitch’. They hadn’t been lived in for years, but I could see that once they had been fixed up properly they would go for a small fortune. The sea-views from the bedroom windows alone would be worth paying serious loot for. Property developers must have been fighting tooth-and-nail to get their hands on them. It unnerved me though that Magda said Aleck wanted to do a lot of the renovation work himself. “You know how proud young men of his age can be”, she said. “Maybe”, I had said “But that’s a helluva lot of work for someone to do when they’ve never so much as lifted a paint-roller before!” There was nothing I could do or say to dissuade her though. She wanted to flatter Aleck, on a constant ongoing quest to reassure him that the 30 years difference in their ages didn’t amount to diddly-squat. He was A Man.
But at least they would be gone from outside my house. I didn’t mind them being there, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that everybody else in the neighbourhood did. I was starting to get rumbling noises along the lines of having 4 camper-vans (including my own) parked outside my house was turning Beach Lane into a gypsy site. What one earth must visitors think? And although I liked Magda, Aleck, Xanthe, Al, Robbie, Jason and Paul (let‘s draw a veil over Henry), I did often yearn for those far-off days when Misty and I had lived alone together at ’Barnacles’, before Rufus Franklin had appeared on the scene and everything had become irrevocably changed forever.
One place nobody else was ever allowed in though was our bedroom. It was an unwritten law that Misty and me didn’t mind opening some bizarre sort of halfway house, but there had to be one room where we could be alone. Misty got undressed and slid onto the bed. I had removed one of the fans from the living-room and was plugging it in on Granny’s dressing-table.
“Put it on full blast”, Misty ordered.
“Yes alright!” I said “Sometimes I’m starting to feel like the bloody caretaker around here!”
“You should get Henry to do more”, he said.
“Get Henry to do more?!” I said, in horror “He tried to change a light bulb in the living room the other day, and practically brought the ceiling down in the process! No way! Sometimes it’s like having Frank Spencer around!”
“What happened with that?” said Misty.
“He broke the light fitting”, I said “The silly great turnip! I hope Magda doesn’t get any bright ideas about helping him with the flat renovation”.
“I’ll be glad when they get started on that”, said Misty, sourly “I can’t stand much more of Aleck, he keeps giving me snotty looks”.
“Oh now Misty!” I laughed “It’s just his normal expression!”
“I was sitting on the veranda earlier, eating a packet of crisps”, said Misty “And he got out of their van, and gave me a right expression”.
“Well give him a right expression back!” I said.
We finally had some thunder just before dawn. It wasn’t much to write home about, but there were a few very loud bangs. I could hear a dog inside one of the nearby holiday cottages howling. It didn’t do much to clear the air though. As James Stewart’s nurse says in ’Rear Window’ “all it did was make the heat wet”. Mid-morning I was down towards the back fence of our back yard, inspecting the rowan tree, and making sure it wasn’t suffering unduly from the heat, or from where we had dug it up to get the jar out before going to Scotland. Kristy, the woman whose back garden backed onto ours, and who was having her patio dug up, appeared over the fence to speak to me. It’s common knowledge in the neighbourhood (probably because she insists on giving everybody she meets full details of it) that she is having an affair with the moron who is making all the noise. She also has an incredible ability for blanking out the fact that he has a wife and several kids.
“He was here til gone 9 o’clock last night”, she chirruped at me.
“Yes I know”, I snapped “We could hear him!”
She was a bit taken aback by this, and then rallied with the irritating words “he’s mad isn’t he!” She really does seem to have the idea that everybody should find her power-tooled paramour as exciting as she does. Personally, I think he’s a miserable old sod with a hairy beer-gut, who’s on the wrong side of 50, but there’s no accounting for taste I suppose. Kristy too is also over 50, but acts like a teenager. She assures me that this is because she never had a chance to be a teenager when she was a teenager.
“It’ll be finished soon”, she said, fluttering.
“Yeah”, I said, sceptically “Only to have your other boyfriend come along in a strop and dig it up again! I have images of your patio being endlessly dug up for the rest of eternity!”
The other boyfriend is a truly sad, pathetic case. Owen Maddock is one of those forlorn-looking middle-aged men who seems to shuffle around with the full weight of the world on his shoulders. If you’re ever feeling sorry about your lot in life, have a look at Owen Maddock sometime and be grateful that at least you aren’t him! He is the sort of man who has never had any success with his career or money, and even less success with women. He seems to have been born for the express purpose of sitting in the corner of a bar staring mournfully into a pint of bitter.
Owen has carried a torch for Kristy for years, and has got bugger all back for it. He is even more pathetic than Henry was about Jeannette (who is still at ’The Hedges’ I should add). Henry at least though has his own (admittedly peculiar) form of ‘joire de vive’, he has some spark of life in him, even if it‘s not life as we know it. By contrast, Owen has become so disenchanted and bitter with his unrequited passion that these days he snarls when he speaks, and glares morosely at everybody. Kristy blanks this walking tragedy out completely. As far as she is concerned, Owen exists to provide a free taxi service to and from her favourite pub, to do the heavy work in her garden, any jobs that crop up around the house, to be called out in an emergency, and to buy her clothes and flowers. For the rest of the time he is supposed to completely vanish from view without complaint. Sometimes I do believe that she doesn’t regard Owen as human, he is some kind of machine.
“He was very kind to me when I got divorced”, she told me, over the fence today “I wanted somebody to be kind to me after my ex-husband”.
“I understand that …” I began, but didn’t get very far.
“These days though he can’t accept that I’ve moved on”, she said “That I don’t want to see him as much as I used to”.
“You can’t keep stringing him along like you do”, I said to her “If you don’t want his company, then you have to spell it out to him bluntly. It’s the only chance you’ve got that he’ll take notice”.
“But that would be cutting my nose off to spite my face!” she said, shocked “He does so much for me, and who else would come out at 3 in the morning if I needed them?”
(Yes, this is called being selfish, I thought. Kristy is one of those charming, bubbly people you get in life, (of both sexes), who you think are so much fun, but if you’re not careful, only realise when it’s too late that they’ve stripped you of just about everything you possess, including your self-respect).
“He gets so upset”, she went on “He says he can’t understand why everybody keeps laughing at him, he says he gets so fed up with it!”
There was really no answer to this. I went back into the kitchen, and got shouted at by Misty for bringing damp earth into the house.
“Since when did you get so damn house-proud?” I said.
“Since this place was turned into a bus-station!” he said “With people traipsing through it all the time!”
“Now look”, I said “We’re going into town this morning, and we’re going to see the registrar. We’ll get a date fixed up for the wedding”.
The registrar at Fobbington Town Hall talked to us in her office as though one of us was terminally ill and applying for legalised euthanasia. Perhaps she treated all same-sex male marriages like this, but she seemed to be under the impression that we were getting married just to tie up legal problems.
“It’s true that I want to make sure that Misty is taken care of, should anything happen to me”, I said, aware that his little cartoon face had swivelled to look at me, indignantly “I’m going to make a will soon, to make sure that none of my family can turf him out of ’Barnacles’”.
“Why do you keep talking about you dying?” he squawked “Anyone would think you was 93!”
“Well I fucking feel like I’m 93 these days!” I replied, and then calmed down a bit.
“Families can be rather unscrupulous sometimes”, said the registrar, tactfully.
(An unwelcome image of my odious, bratty nephew, Arthur, who would probably fight you to the death to chase a pound coin under a bus, slid across my mind).
We got onto the more pleasurable aspects of getting married, like flowers, piece of music etc. Misty got so excited about all this that he forgot about all the depressing legal talk. A date was fixed for the 21st of October, a month which has always been a favourite of mine, and we were well chuffed. It was so hot in Fobbington that we did nothing else except call in on Mr Beresford, and then I wished we hadn’t as all he did was moan about my lack of productivity of late. I pointed out that I had been on holiday. “You could have done some whilst you were there”, he said, grouchily (what? Paintings of stags on dinner-plates, sort of sub-Landseer you mean?). I said we hadn’t been there very long. “Well you’re back now”, he said. This is the sort of annoying conversation that can make you very snappy for the rest of the day if you’re not careful. I didn’t think there was any point in explaining to Mr Beresford that I was having a helluva job knuckling down to some serious work at the moment, as my house and garden was over-run with people. A creative person needs space in which to work, not just physical but, perhaps even more importantly, mental space as well. To get down to some quality creating you can’t have your mind completely stuffed up with the interminable chatter and clatter of everyday life. As Laurence Olivier once raged about the impossible life living with a hyper-active person like Vivien Leigh, “I need space to THINK!” Once again I yearned for those days when I quietly got on with painting at ’Barnacles’ whilst Misty contentedly knocked his golf-ball about.
Back at ’Barnacles’ today Xanthe leapt out of her wagon almost the moment we appeared. She was very excited because she had taken a photograph out of one of her wagon windows, which showed a blurry black shape standing by our garden-gate. I said it was probably a fault with the camera, but she swore that it was something paranormal. I must admit that when I looked through the viewfinder it did seem kind of weird.
“It’s a Shadow Person I know it is!” she said, following us into the house.
“That’s all we need!” I grumbled.
“I’ve got another one too”, she said, following us into the house “I took this one in Henry’s old living-room”.
“What have you been doing in there?” I said, accusingly.
“Henry wanted to collect the rest of his things”, she said “So we went in after She’d gone out. He said the house gave him the creeps, so I said I’d take a few pictures whilst we were there, and there’s a really nutty one of his living-room”.
I looked into the camera again. The shot of the gloomy old living-room at ’The Hedges’ showed a dark shape which appeared to be dangling from the ceiling. It was blurry, but had appeared to have exaggerated long thin limbs sticking out of it. I was uncomfortably reminded of that time I had seen Rufus Franklin’s living-room at ’Lobster Pots’.
“Horrible”, I said “Just horrible”.
Jason Bland was sitting on our sofa, working on his own lap-top.
“People can sometimes get very confused between evil spirits and demons”, he said “I prefer to call them evil spirits myself, it gives it less of a sensational aspect that way”.
I looked at him dumbfounded. Now I had heard everything! Jason Bland, who staunchly believed that there were portals to Hell everywhere, lecturing us about over-sensationalising things! I felt I needed a lie-down after that. I went into the bedroom and slammed the door.
Misty tapped on it a few minutes later.
“It’s me, Misty”, he said, as though in my madness I had forgotten what his voice sounded like.
“You can come in, Misty”, I said “I haven’t locked and bolted the door!”
He came in, carrying a mug of tea for me.
“Are you alright now?” he said.
“No, I’m as mad as a hatter!” I said “I stupidly thought we could put all that nonsense behind us when we finally disposed of the jar but …”
“Not really”, said Misty, sitting down next to me at the end of the bed “It doesn’t alter the fact that there are still odd things going on in this area, and that there probably always have been, it’s just that we’ve only just started really noticing them these past few months”.
“And being lectured on sensationalism by Jason Bland of all people!” I said “This was the guy the other day who said he was starting up an Internet thread about the Sun being hollow and people living inside it! Sometimes I wonder if he’s a time-traveller who’s lost in the wrong century!”
Somebody had put the radio on in the living-room, and there came the familiar sounds of a disturbing news report, complete with people shouting and screaming. I knew even without finding out what it was that fresh carnage had occurred somewhere.
“There have been some explosions in India”, said Misty “Dozens of people killed”.
“Bloodshed”, I said, quietly “More bloodshed. The world is soaked, saturated, in it”.
Magda provided a welcome distraction from the wrongs of the world the next day by inviting us out to look at the flat she wanted to do up. I must admit I was completely fascinated by this. I had driven past that derelict block no end of times over the years, and had often speculated as to when somebody was going to do the decent thing and pull it down. Now I was glad they hadn’t. Although I’m never likely to make a property developer myself, I could see that this place had masses of potential.
“We have to be very careful though”, said Magda, leading me through the large, bright rooms “It has to be sympathetically renovated you know, to keep all the 1930s detail in. We can’t change any of the light-switches or the door-knobs for instance. This has worked in our favour. One of the other developers who was interested wanted to gut the entire place, rip everything out and replace it with modern stuff. He got a heck of a shock when he was told he couldn’t!”
It gave me a kick to hear Magda talking about herself as a developer. She already counted herself as a fully-fledged one. Misty was standing out on one of the bedroom balconies, which gave a superb view of the sea.
“You’ll be able to charge a mint for this when it’s done”, I said to Magda.
“That’s if I don’t decide to live in it myself”, she said “Although No.1 rule of property developing apparently is not to get too emotionally attached to the place you’re renovating”.
Aleck was wandering around the empty bedroom, and Misty looked boot-faced through the glass at him.
“What’s HE doing here?” he snarled.
“Misty!” I said, in my best reprimanding voice “This is his place as well you know!”
A few feeble spots of rain out of a feeble cloud pattered down on us, nothing to go remotely berserk about. It’s the sort of rain that dries up practically before it touches you. Nevertheless we decided to lock the flat up and head for home, and I noticed that Magda gave it several fond parting shots. On the way home we stopped to pick up some fish-and-chips from the chippy. There was a handful of tourists hanging around, and I couldn’t help thinking how tatty Shinglesea Beach must look to them. The verges hadn’t been cut for some time. There was a lot of litter lying about because some idiot keeps setting fire to the litter-bins, so the Council aren’t exactly rushing to replace them. And a tatty old banner advertising the World Cup (now over) only seemed to add to the squalor. We looked like some hillbilly town from the American Mid-West, a sort of Place That Time Forgot.
Suddenly a child ran out of the chippy and promptly skidded onto his backside on the forecourt. He landed with such a hard smack that I asked him if he was alright. He grinned at me and, with the full resilience of youth, got up unscathed. His hatchet-faced mother followed him out of the chippy and gave me a look of acute loathing and disgust, no doubt suspecting me of being the vilest of paedophiles for daring to speak to her son. I felt like shouting at her “What if he had really injured himself, and I had just stood by and ignored him, what would you have thought of me than, eh?!”
I was so pissed off about this that I decided to have a stiff drink and a bath when I got home, regardless of the hot weather. Al said he wanted to talk to me about various things, but I said it would have to wait til afterwards, and that I would meet him on the veranda in a short while. I guessed it would be something about the Shinglesea Beach website. Paul had kept it ticking over during the short while we had been away, on condition that Henry wasn’t allowed anywhere near it. Since we had got back, Al had taken it off my shoulders. With his knowledge of computers and his journalistic training he was ideal.
I was a bit concerned about Al. He seemed to be desperate to fill up his life with endless activity. I knew this was because he was still fighting some demons within himself. The brief bout of amnesia he had suffered the previous Summer still bugged him, and things that had happened to him in Cornwall, and our stay at Ghyll House in Scotland, had left him with an almost evangelical zest to get to the bottom of all the strange things that were happening. He had gone from being a mild-mannered sceptic to a sort of demon-busting witch finder general. He said he was going to write a series of articles on all the unexplained phenomena in the Shinglesea area of recent years. This filled me with a sense of foreboding. There were undoubtedly dark things going on around here, but I was nervous about people probing into them too deeply. The disturbing fate that had happened to Anna Turnball was never far from my mind.
It wasn’t just paranormal stuff that Al had the bit between his teeth about. He had also announced that he was going to attempt to swim the English Channel!!! Clearly he had been inspired in this by David Walliams’ recent successful attempt. I had joked that it seemed a heck of a lot of effort to go just to cool off in the sea, but Al seemed pretty determined. Then again, he seemed pretty determined about most things these days.
“Well at least it’ll keep you away from the dark side of life for a while”, I said, when I had replenished my glass and put on my dressing-gown.
“I don’t understand you really”, he said, sitting out on the veranda “After everything you’ve seen happen around here lately I thought you’d be desperate to get to the bottom of it all”.
“There have been too many grotesque murders around here lately, Alan”, I said “And I don’t want to see any more of them!”
“I’ll be careful”, he said.
“It’s not a simple as that and you know it”, I said “You know yourself how disturbed you’ve been by what’s been happening for years down in Clag Heath. Whether it be Aliens or people disappearing into some kind of time distortion down there I don’t know, but around here it seems to be Satanists, and they seem to be every bit as bad as anything you’d find in a Dennis Wheatley novel! People have been killed, horses have been mutilated, and God knows what else they’re doing as well! Every day I look at the local news and I wonder about each weird thing I read. The other day there was something about a man’s body being dumped out of a car on the motorway, and I was thinking, was that their doing as well?”
“Interesting”, said Al “I thought it was gangsters when I first read that one! But I had just been watching ’Gangster No.1’ on DVD! Seriously though, do you think all that’s happening around here is JUST Satanists? What about that Black-Eyed Woman you said you saw in the pub a few weeks ago, all these black helicopters that I’ve noticed keep flying around in this area, some of the strange visitors this village has had this season …”
“What are you saying?” I said “That we have aliens too?”
“I think it would be very boring if it was as simple as that!” Al laughed, which was pleasant to hear for a change “Aliens visiting us from Outer Space isn’t something I can get too excited about …”
“Ah that’s your journalist’s urge to make an interesting story”, I teased him.
“Well I must admit ’Close Encounters Of The Third Kind’ did bore me shitless!” he said “No I can’t get worked up about ET and his friends. I guess that speaking as a journalist I do find it all a bit old-hat. I do though think it’s something far more sinister. What was it Rufus Franklin said to you about those students who played the ouija board in his cottage? That they had managed to raise some creature from another dimension, a creature that wasn’t human?”
“Which he trapped in a jar”, I pointed out “And which we threw to the bottom of Loch Ness”.
“But say it’s not the only one”, said Al “Say there are several more around like that, and say that they have been getting through some kind of portals into our dimension”.
“Portals?” I said “I think you’ve been talking to Jason too much!”
“No I think he’s crazy”, said Al “Harmless but crazy. I can stretch my imagination quite some way, but not far enough to believe that Hell exists as an actual place!!! But after everything that’s happened in this past year I can believe that the time we’re sitting in here and now may not be the only one, and that if there are other forms of time, other dimensions, then there may be other forms of us inhabiting them”.
“Evil forms?” I said “Is that what you mean? And that some people, like Janey Brierson the lady you went to investigate, have disappeared into these dimensions?”
“Why not?” he said “You know as well as I do by now that people disappear without trace all the time, some seem to literally vanish. Now some, like the woman you told me about who disappeared in Fobbington at Easter, simply fall into the wrong hands. Perhaps others, like Mrs Brierson, sort of …”
“Fall down a time shute?” I said, not meaning to sound flippant, but I really couldn’t think of any other way of putting it.
“Some perhaps fall into it like that I suppose”, said Al “Like falling down stairs, they just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, whereas others … may be taken”.
“Those strange men Mrs Brierson was seen talking to on the afternoon she disappeared?” I said.
“It would explain a helluva lot of things”, said Al “Like The Men In Black sightings for instance, and I don’t mean the film!”
“Some people seem to think they may be government agents”, I said “In which case we’re led into the whole murky world of conspiracy theories, and back to your hated aliens again”.
“Yes, and I don’t want to go down that route, not unless I absolutely have to”, said Al.
Everything in the world continued to go pear shaped over the next couple of days. Scary situations in the Middle East, skeletons positively cascading out of the cupboards back here, and people being found dead in mysterious circumstances.. It seemed a strange time to be talking about getting married, but there you go, that’s the wonders of Life sometimes.
Magda had good news about the purchase of the flat, and I decided to celebrate by popping up to the Mini-Mart on the main road and buying her a bottle of Brut Cava. Whilst I was standing in the queue, I was accosted by Kristy, who nudged me in the ribs and exclaimed that she had had a very good morning indeed.
“Good”, I said, wondering (naively) if this meant her bloody patio was finished at long last.
“Yes, a very GOOD morning”, she said, and practically leered at me.
Too late I cottoned on that she meant she had had sex with the beer-bullied builder that morning. I know we live by the seaside, but Kristy seems to act as though her entire life is a Donald McGill postcard. I felt like saying “how would you like it if I came up and leered at you and jabbed you in the ribs every time I got my leg over!” Also what the hell do you say? “Jolly good”, “Satisfying was it?” “You look well fucked!“ I couldn’t help being reminded of a boy I went to school with, who insisted on going round telling the entire class (in glorious Technicolor) the morning after he lost his virginity! (Looking back on it I’m amazed he didn’t show slides! (as you did in those days)).
She kept pace with me all the way home, giving me all the details of , what quite honestly, sounded like a pretty bog-standard bit of humping to me. On top of all that I had to be given all the details of all the text messages he had sent her that week. (Now THAT really was boring!!). Owen Maddock came up in conversation. He was taking her to see Madonna in concert next month. “That’s too good an opportunity to miss”, she said, and then looked at me nervously as though I was about to scream my head off at her or something “I mean, I can’t afford to let that go can I?”
Somehow the fact that I thought the way she treated Owen was pretty unscrupulous had managed to penetrate that cast-iron devil-may-care exterior of hers.
“Yes it is“, I said “After all, the old girl’s getting on a bit these days, she might not be able to do another world tour”.
“Exactly!“ said Kristy.
“Well if you’re happy with sharing a hotel room with him”, I said, when I heard the concert was to be in France “Then it’s up to you”.
“Strictly twin beds “, she said, forcefully (poor hapless, bewildered old Owen, one of life‘s perpetual car accidents) “I couldn’t imagine sleeping in the same bed with him could you?”
“The thought makes me want to vomit”, I blurted out.
At which she let out a screech of laughter that must have jolted people out of bed over in California!
“French hotel beds are well set-up for sex as a rule”, I went on “The headboards are often glued firmly to the wall, so you’ve got something nice and solid to hold onto”.
She looked at me for a moment as though I’d suddenly started speaking Chinese, and then gave another hysterical whoop of laughter.
“That’s more information than I needed to know!” she shrieked
We parted company at the top of Beach Lane, leaving me with the feeling as I always did after talking outside with Kristy, that we had raised the noise level in the neighbourhood to a completely unacceptable level. I saw Jeannette Temple creeping towards me like a snake that had developed the art of walking upright, and beated a hasty retreat into ’Barnacles’.
I tried to knuckle down and do some work that afternoon, but was plagued by somebody’s car-alarm going off and screeching away for what felt like hours. When it finally went off, I heard somebody cheering from out in the lane. Come the evening, Magda decided she wanted to carry on celebrating, and took us all out to ’The Ship’ for a cheap and cheerful supper. We all went, except Henry, who had driven off a while earlier (with bolognaise sauce liberally splashed all down the front of his shirt) with the intention of going for a walk up Fairy Hill. He seemed to have forgotten all his concerns of earlier in the Summer that Fairy Hill was an evil Pagan site, and not fit for good Christians like himself.
Outside ’The Ship’ a really rough-looking old slapper in a knitted hat was bemoaning, in a drunken voice, how bored she was. “Bored, bored, bloody BORED!” she cried. Yeah alright love, I think we get the message, I thought. We had all of us just got settled in nicely, when Henry appeared, having (unfortunately) sussed out where we were. He was in an agitated state.
“I was pushed over up there”, he said “Pushed over, would you believe!”
“Who by?” I said, thinking it must be somebody who finds him as exasperating as I do.
“Nobody, that’s just it”, he squawked “It was an invisible presence!”
“Henry”, I sighed “You probably tripped over something!”
“No I didn’t”, he said, petulantly “I was completely alone up there, but something pushed me, I know it did!”
“Sit down Henry, and stop causing a scene”, I said, shoving a bar-stool over to him.
I offered to buy another round of drinks.
“Another G&T, Xanthe?” I said to the said lady, who was sitting there with her forehead creased and her mouth slightly open, as always.
When I got back to the table after my excursion to the bar (and had to forcibly restrain myself from hitting Henry over the head with the beer-tray), Al was telling everyone about his practice for swimming the Channel.
“I can’t wait to see you when you set off”, said Magda.
“I won’t look much of a sight”, said Al “Me in my Speedo’s, goggles and goose grease!”
“When are you actually going to be doing it?” said Misty.
“I don’t know yet”, said Al “But don’t worry, it won’t clash with your wedding”.
“Who’s going to be the one wearing white?” Aleck sniggered.
Misty cracked his knuckles - always a worrying sign. And then, to make matters worse, Henry decided to spake forth.
“I can’t agree with this wedding”, he said “Marriage is for the procreation of children, it says so in The Book Of Common Prayer”.
“Oh what rubbish!” said Magda “Gray and Misty are one of the most devoted couples I have ever met”.
“God put together Adam and Eve”, said Henry (the pompous prat) “He didn’t put together Adam and Steve”.
“If I have to hear that inane, unoriginal remark one more time I shall do something thoroughly unspeakable!” I said.
“Pastor Hogg wouldn’t approve, I know that much”, said Henry.
“Pastor Hogg?” I said “Would that be the kiddy-fiddler by any chance?”
“I don’t mean to cause offence”, said Henry, having just caused maximum offence “But I want you to experience The Rapture you see. And unless you follow the rules, you won’t get The Rapture”.
“I’ll get The Rapture alright”, I said “The day you finally move out of ’Barnacles’!”
The others (bless them) were all concerned that I might be completely upset by Henry’s remarks. I tried to reassure them that, much as I find Henry grossly annoying most of the time, he has lost the power to completely shock me. I was more concerned that Misty might do serious injury to Aleck. Fortunately, by the time we got home, he was too far gone to do injury to anybody. That didn’t stop Paul coming to our bedroom door to assure me that he thought our forthcoming wedding was “pretty cool”.
“Henry was bang out of order coming out with all that”, he said.
“What do you expect of a repressed poofter?” I said.
“You think Henry’s a poofter?” said Paul.
“Cause he is”, I said “I’ve always thought he was as camp as Christmas, and any bloke who wears those pyjamas isn’t exactly going to be Warren Beatty is he! What I will draw the line at though is being lectured on morals by Pastor bloody Hogg!”
Paul laughed, and said “I’m taking part in a demo tomorrow, will you give us a toot of support if you go past?”
“Is it the save the local hospital campaign?” I said, having signed several petitions for this since we had got back from Scotland.
“Nah, it’s to highlight Zimbabwe”, he said “Everybody’s forgotten about it at the moment”.
“No we haven’t”, I said “It’s just the world is so fucking awful at the moment that even genocide is going unnoticed. Good call though”.
I shut the bedroom door, thinking of an old Stevie Wonder song from my school days, which had contained the line “peace has come to Zimbabwe”. Gawd, and we wonder why we’re so cynical these days!!! I looked over at Misty, who had fallen asleep upside-down on the bed, that is with his feet on the pillows. I decided that that looked an interesting way to sleep for a change, and joined him.
I had a succession of disturbing dreams that night. One featured my Father, who was cooking some vegetables in my kitchen. When I came through the back door he looked up at me and smiled (weird on its own!) and said in a warm voice “Gray, you’ve come home at last!” As if this wasn’t unsettling enough, I then dreamt that I had a puppy, and that it died of starvation because I neglected it. This was an extremely upsetting dream. (For the rest of the day I went around pondering with myself as to whether I should put in regular donations to an animal welfare charity, as if to atone in some way for my appalling treatment of the dream puppy). I was woken up by Henry having a fit of the vapours as usual. He was in such an agitated state that all sorts of extreme thoughts were going through my mind as to what was the matter: all-out nuclear war? (only too plausible with the current state of the world), aliens landing on the beach? Hordes of cannibalistic zombies trudging relentlessly towards us up Beach Lane?
“A pipe is leaking in the bathroom”, he said, breathlessly “It’s letting out a series of little drips”.
“Then put a bowl under it, Henry!” I said (There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza).
“We can’t waste water at this time!” he faffed, and went to the bathroom.
“I’ve got a really bad hangover”, Misty moaned, next to me.
“I’ll get you some Alka-Seltzer”, I said.
I put on my dressing-gown and went into the kitchen to wrestle with the new-fangled design of the Alka-Seltzer tin (why oh why did they stop making the little round tins, with the lids that I could easily prise off with the arm of a teaspoon?). Jason pursued me from the living-room, saying that he had a really awesome piece of video footage that showed A Real Ghost.
“It’d better not be one of those wind-up efforts”, I said “The ones that let out a horrible scream for instance, they nearly give me a fucking heart-attack!”
“I’ve got a really awesome one [it appeared that everything was really awesome this morning]”, said Robbie “It’s a picture of a beautiful girl. But if you stare at her for several seconds her face changes to this sort of demonic leer”.
“Too many people take drugs these days”, I said.
“This one’s the dogs bollocks”, said Jason “Here, have a look at this”.
I gave the glass of Alka-Seltzer to Misty, and told him that I would hold his nose and force it down him if he didn’t drink the whole thing. The video on Jason’s computer showed an empty room, which only seemed to confirm my worst fears that this was one of those Ring-inspired scream efforts. Suddenly a wispy white shape came through the door. It seemed to be the outline of a young woman in a short white petticoat. She strolled to the middle of the room and then slowly evaporated. I didn’t know what to make of it to be honest with you. It was certainly eerie, but it also had the feel of a clever fraud to it.
“It feels a bit too sophisticated to be the Real McCoy”, I said “I can’t help feeling it’s really a shot of some geek’s girlfriend”.
“Gave me the creeps I can tell you”, said Robbie “Even more than that pic of Princess Diana Gary Sanderson sent me”.
“Not the one of her dying?” I said.
“Yeah”, said Robbie “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. You see pictures of car accidents all the time, why should this be any different to a shot of any other woman with an oxygen mask over her face?”
“I can’t think of an answer to that!” I said “Except it doesn’t surprise me that Gary Sanderson has copies of it!”
“He spends a lot of time on rotten.com”, said Robbie, wandering over “I went on it once and came out again. It’s full of Gary Sandersons. A lot of them admire Hitler”.
“Sometimes it’s a shame cyber-space isn’t a real place”, I said “Then we could all herd them into places like that, and lock them in!”
“I went to look at a picture on there”, said Robbie “And it showed a decomposing corpse, I nearly threw up on the spot!”
This reminded me so uncomfortably of my dream about the puppy that I said I was going to check my own e-mails, before the heat made using the computer unbearable. Nothing much to report, except an e-mail from my daft brother-in-law showing a hosepipe in full throttle pointing at his garden shed.
“One for all you poncey Southerners”, he wrote “Give you something else to moan and whinge about!”
To which I replied “poncey Southerner I may be, but at least I’m not so daft as to try and water my garden-shed!” I felt quite pleased with myself about this. Too pleased. I was in such a self-congratulatory whirl that I ran myself a tepid bath, and then absent-mindedly got into it with my pants on!
Henry’s manic angst didn’t stop at the pipe in the bathroom leaking. He got himself in a state later on in the day because he said he had noticed that Jeannette’s father had come to stay with her at ’The Hedges’.
“Why is he worse than her then?” I said, finding it hard to imagine such a monster existing.
“A very strange man”, said Henry (HENRY thinks he’s strange? Blimey, he must be bad!!!).
“In what way?” I said.
“He has funny ideas”, said Henry, obliquely “He doesn’t approve of baths for instance, and he doesn’t like to hear music playing”.
“You make him sound like a member of the Taleban!” I said.
“Jeannette takes after him in many ways”, said Henry, with a sorrowful shake of the head “I have a terrible fear of going back there. You won’t make me go back to her will you?”
I was rather dumbfounded by this for a moment.
“Henry”, I said “I don’t have the power to make you go anywhere. I don’t even seem to have the power to make you leave my house! What are you going to do come October, when you’re both supposed to be going home?”
“I won’t be going there”, he said “She can have the house, I’m not interested”.
I could see I was going to be faced with the dilemma that if I didn’t start being really tough with Henry, I was going to be having him hanging round my neck forever more. It wasn’t a thought that filled me with joy.
I decided to go for a walk along the beach. Misty was going round to Mrs Jackson’s house to see her new dog, the one she had got recently to replace poor Tufty, who had disappeared without trace from outside the mini-mart last Winter, never to be seen again. The air was like hot soup, with only the very briefest of sea breezes to tantalise us. Everywhere was quiet, apart that is from Kristy’s charmless builder, who seemed to have now set up a saw-mill just over our back fence. I was starting to get sincere hopes that he would collapse from heat stroke.
After musing by myself for a while on the shingle, I went and sat outside ’The Ship’ with a drink. Al came round the corner into my line of vision, and must have caught a momentary flicker of dismay on my face.
“It’s alright”, he said “I can see you want to be alone, I can go inside”.
“You don’t have to”, I said “We can talk if you like”.
He bought his drink, and then rejoined me outside.
“You must be fed up with us all”, he said “You don’t have to make polite noises I know you are”.
Al and I have a lot in common. It isn’t just that we’re about the same age, or that we’re both involved in creative work, it’s that we both seem to have been at a strange and extraordinary time in our lives in the past year, and we were both trying to make some sense of it.
“Something seems to have clicked in my brain”, I said “I always hoped that one day it would happen and I would find my own style to work with, and now it seems that I have”.
“And you can’t get started on it because you’ve got us lot all around”, he said, sympathetically “I’m going through exactly the same thing you know. I don’t want to be just a freelance journalist anymore, I want to go back to what I originally set out to do, to probe, to investigate. To look deeply into things”.
“We could certainly do with some serious journalism in this country at the moment”, I said “We don’t need another ’Heat’-style magazine!”
“I met somebody once who used to take the kind of photo’s they use”, he said “A paparazzi photographer I suppose, except that the kind of celebrities he snapped I couldn’t have put a name to in a million years! All the time he was talking to me I just kept getting the thought going through my head ’no job for a grown man’”.
“It’s all a load of rubbish isn’t it?” I said “We had a celebrity wedding in this area last year, at a posh hotel out in the country. They went to the most elaborate ruses to avoid the press, you’d have thought MI5 were arranging it! And yet I didn’t have the faintest idea who they were! I’ve a vague idea she might have been a singer, but as for him, couldn’t tell you, I‘d never even heard the name before!”
“Probably a footballer”, said Al, glumly “They usually are”.
“Anyway all I need is a bit of space”, I said “And it’s not your fault I’m not getting it. If anyone’s to blame it’s bloody Kristy and her endless succession of noisy boyfriends. They’re more intrusive than anybody else, even Henry!”
“She lives in fantasy land that woman”, said Al “Silly as a sack she is. I’ve listened to her. She tries to make out she’s got all these exciting relationships on the go, but anyone with half a brain could tell her that she’s only being used for a quick grope!”
“Poor old Kristy”, I said “She analyses everything they say in the minutest detail you know, trying to read more into it all than there is, every word they say chewed over and over. I think Xanthe’s got more sense than her, and she’s as mad as a March hare!”
“Oh Xanthe’s alright”, Al laughed “Once you get used to the fact that her brain’s in another Universe for most of the time. I keep hoping she’ll pair up with Jason, if he’s into older women. That’d be a great meeting of minds!”
“I’m never entirely certain how much she’s taking in!” I said.
I remarked that we were going to have to move from our spot soon, as the sun was coming round the fence and making things rather fierce.
“I don’t like these temperatures”, said Al “They frighten me. This country wasn’t meant to have temperatures as extreme as this”.
“The slightest bit of breeze becomes cause for celebration”, I said “God knows what we’ll when we finally get some serious rain! And yet we had tonnes of it only the month before last, it feels like years ago!”
“But that’s just what we’ve been saying”, said Al “The world seems to have speeded up. When I think back over the past year, I get dizzy!”
One day we broke the national record for July temperatures (and only a degree-or-so off the all-time record). It was a period that was both disturbing and exhilarating at the same time. I was frustrated that it severely stymied work and doing anything exciting, and yet the fact that we were forced to slow-down to a ‘manana’ level that was completely new to us was liberating at the same time. We were being forced to do things differently, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We Brits are very good at imposing pointless restrictions on ourselves, and the tropical temperatures were sweeping all that aside.
Meanwhile, as the heat forced glass to blow out of bus-shelters, our beaches were jam-packed without an inch to spare, and boffins invented a UV-detectable bikini (a massive bestseller on eBay, according to Mrs Jackson), the world continued to go mad. There were times when the insanity became simply to much, and then I found that tears were never very far from my eyes. I could be bought back to earth by little things though, such as Misty telling me that he was practising the art of levitation and that one day he hoped to be able to leap up onto the chest-of-drawers in our bedroom (I didn’t inquire as to why this would be such a desirable accomplishment to have), or a girl walking a beautiful chestnut-brown pony up Beach Lane one evening.
Work progressed at a snail’s pace. I was usually being dragged outside to our moth-eaten garden for cold drinks, or out to the beach. One afternoon I took Misty and Xanthe up there for ice-creams. Suddenly I noticed that the air seemed to be getting foggy. It turned out that the old derelict bowling-alley up on the main road, near the mini-mart, had mysteriously caught fire. People were running off the beach to go and have a look at it. We followed in a leisurely fashion.
Speculations were rife was to what could have caused it: discarded fag end, bit of broken glass? As we walked back down the main road, in the general direction of ’Barnacles’, I saw an extraordinary-looking woman marching purposefully towards the mini-mart. She was … well-nourished I think is the polite word for it, weighing about 16 stone, and wearing an ankle-length black skirt, black blouse, and an orange kerchief on her head, the whole unflattering ensemble making her look like a Russian peasant. She had a weedy younger man in tow, who seemed to wear a somewhat haunted expression on his face.
“I’m just popping in here to get some sweets, babes!” she shouted at him in a squeaky, falsetto voice, which seemed vastly out of proportion to her formidable build.
’Babes’ gave a tired grunt of a reply, which I couldn’t help thinking was perhaps his established mode of communication. I felt there was something significant about this whole sighting, but I had no idea as yet as to what it was.
I seemed to have been yearning for rain forever, the torrents of May being but a distant memory, and one Saturday afternoon I got my wish, the storm-clouds gathered and opened. It was magnificent, although I knew, going from the forecast, that the heat would return remorselessly to plague us very soon. In the meantime though, for a brief few hours at least, we could feel alive again. I relished the wind rushing in off the sea, the rain pouring out of the gutter, the lights flickering, and the thunder rolling around overhead.
I got a valuable scrap of work done, and then felt I’d better call in the others from their wagons, even thought the massed weight of their bodies in the house would deprive ’Barnacles’ of any freshness it might briefly get.
“There was a piece in the paper this morning about pleasant and unpleasant sounds”, said Magda, following me into the kitchen “And it was amazing how many of the pleasant sounds were associated with rain”.
“Rain falling on the garden”, I said.
“And rain falling on caravan and roof-tops”, said Magda.
“What were the unpleasant sounds?” said Misty.
“Children screaming”, said Magda “Car alarms, chairs scraping on the floor …”
“I’d add fucking building works and DIY to that list!” I said, with feeling.
“Well at least he can’t work in this”, said Magda “So we get a brief respite”.
“He’ll be back with the heat”, I said, grimly.
“Mrs Jackson said that one of Kristy’s daughters got married recently”, said Misty “And didn’t tell her about it until afterwards!”
“She probably tried to tell her beforehand for all we know”, I said “But couldn’t get a word in edgeways with Kristy rattling on about her sex life all the time!”
I sent Misty into the living-room with the tea-tray.
“Will you invite your family to your wedding?” said Magda, when we were alone.
“No”, I said “What’s the point? They’ve never made any real effort to accept Misty”. “What about Misty’s family?” she said, nervously.
“After how they treated him?” I said “The only thing I’d invite them to is their own execution!”
It had stopped raining so we went for a brief stroll round the soggy back garden, arm-in-arm. I wanted to reassure her that it was nothing personal against her or the others that I was such a grumpy old git at the moment.
“I’m never at my best at this time of year”, I said “You’ll find that’s the case with a lot of people who live by the seaside. We know we depend on visitors for our daily bread, but at the same time we long for the Autumn …”
“When the grackles go home?” she smiled.
“Something like that”, I said “It just gets too busy around here sometimes, and this weather is making it worse than ever. Oh God, I am sounding like a right curmudgeon aren’t I!”
“I want to take you out to lunch one day”, she squeezed my arm “Not just as a thank you for letting us use the front of your house to park our van, but to try and get Aleck and Misty to have some sort of ceasefire”.
“I think you’ve got more chance of Israel and Hezbollah having a ceasefire!” I said “Misty seems to resent Aleck, and it’s not like him to resent people. All he can see is Aleck being a little rich boy”.
“But Aleck’s had a terrible upbringing too”, Magda protested “His parents having been rich makes no difference there. He was never really loved. Suzanne Lacey has some very strange ideas as to what love is. They both had traumatic loveless childhoods. Aleck was a very difficult child”.
“And Misty is a very difficult adult!” I laughed.
“I didn’t mean …”
“I know you didn’t. I’m just teasing Misty in his absence”.
“I think Aleck gets jealous of Misty”, said Magda “He sees that people, on the whole, are very fond of Misty. They warm to him easily. He’s never had that, and he resents it”.
“It’s Misty’s innocence they warm to”, I said “It’s in short supply in this world, particularly at the moment”.
From a nearby garden came the sound of an unpleasant old man’s voice. It was harsh and grating, and talking in a belligerent, hectoring manner. “I think that’s Henry’s father-in-law”, Magda whispered “I saw him out the front yesterday. He looks a very nasty old man. I will be glad when he’s gone home again”.
“It would account for a lot of the problems we’ve had with Jeannette then”, I said “If she’s inherited some of his traits!”
“Henry’s very worried about being sent back to them”, said Magda.
“So he’s told me”, I said “I wish Henry would get it into his soft head that he’s a grown man, and nobody can make him go anywhere he doesn’t want to. He needs to start taking control of his own destiny”.
“He’s got into a bit of a strop about you lately”, said Magda “He’s said you don’t care about him, and that he’s absolutely potty about you, he adores you”.
“I wish Henry would stop being so weak!” I said.
“Some people just are I’m afraid”, said Magda, with all her years experience as a prison officer behind her.
I gave a sigh of deep pain. I knew what Henry was up to. It wasn’t just fear that I would finally reach the end of my rope and boot him out (although any intelligent person would be looking for their own place to live by now), it’s that Henry is one of those people who go into a blind panic if you’re not noticing them 24 hours a day. When they feel the glare of your attention drifting away from them (so that you can actually live your own life for a change) they will resort to the most outrageous flattery and bribery to get it back again. He had spent 25 years devoting himself entirely to a cold, harsh goddess like Jeannette, and now it was becoming clear that he was looking for another idol to replace her with. I was tired of Henry. I was tired of people who chuck words like “adore” around with such reckless abandon. As far as I can see Adore isn’t any kind of a real, deep-rooted human emotion. It’s an excuse for the weak to prey upon the strong and feed upon their life-force.
I was starting to appreciate my relationship with Al more and more. With him I could have a practical, man-to-man relationship, one that didn’t rely on me having to be eternally grateful and putting up with any old shit because I was being Adored. Al and me enjoyed each other’s company, but if we didn’t see each other for a while it was no big deal. We both had other fish to fry, and we appreciated that in each other. As the days progressed Misty and I often went to the beach to watch him in training for his big swim.
As Al ploughed out into the sea, Misty and me strolled along the shingle. Misty kept looking at me, concerned. It was true that tension had given me a pain in my gut, a horrid feeling like trapped wind. (I put this down to a side-effect of being Adored). He indicated a bench near the sea-wall and led me over to it, as though he was helping some poor decaying old crock into his bath-chair.
“You’ll be tucking a rug round my knees next!” I snapped.
“In this heat?!” said Misty.
“Why don’t you rest your head on my lap”, I said.
“Everybody will think I’m giving you a blow-job!” said Misty.
“They would have to have particularly filthy minds to think you can give me a blow-job out of the back of your head!” I said.
He rested his head on my lap and stared up at the sky.
“It looks odd today”, he said “It’s all sort of fuzzy”.
“There might be another storm coming”, I said “Either that or it’s some muck that’s coming in off the fields from where they’re harvesting”.
It wasn’t either. Within a few minutes the fog-horns started up, and I could see a strange sort of mist coming in off the sea. There were murmurs of mild consternation all around us.
“This wasn’t in the schedule was it!” said one man, nearby.
Al waded out of the sea, pushing his goggles up onto his head. We went to meet him.
“Does it normally come in this fast?” he said.
“I’ve known it come in pretty quick before”, I said “But not like this. We’d better get back to ’Barnacles’ whilst we can still see our way. Misty, take my hand”.
“The weather’s got inspiration from your name, Misty!” Al joked.
By the time we got to the top of Beach Lane visibility was extremely poor indeed. As the fog-horns wailed, a little lad - absolutely butt-naked - steamed out in front of us on a kiddies’ tricycle. We were lucky we didn’t trip over him.
There seemed to be about five million people in my living-room when we got back to it. Not really of course, but it certainly felt like it. Xanthe was sitting on the sofa reading a dog-eared old paperback which resembled an old telephone directory. Jason and Robbie were having a feverish conversation that seemed to be partly about the freak weather, and partly about a telephone call they had just had on my landline.
“Some woman really burning up the wire”, said Jason to me “Said you had recommended Darklight Cove camp-site to her, and it turned out to be really pants. Said the caravan they were given hadn’t been cleaned, and that they had even found somebody else’s pubic hair in the shower!”
“A girl probably had done her bikini-line in it”, said Robbie, mournfully (God, how that lad needed a girlfriend!).
I was glad I hadn’t taken this call, as I think I might have had trouble not laughing (and that would have really got her wild!). I couldn’t help being reminded of an old episode of ’Hi-de-Hi’ where an old lady left her false teeth behind in her chalet!
“Got a terrible reputation that place”, said Paul “There’s a joke going round that if you don’t turn up with any weapons on you, they’ll give some to you at the main gates when you check in!”
“They used to tell jokes like that about some nightclubs”, I said “Anyway how was I to know? It always looks alright to me when we drive past it”.
“Yeah, but you never go in it”, said Paul, darkly, as though this camp-site was the ante-room to Hell, with little pitchfork-bearing demons as Red Coats “The staff are shit-scared of some of the guests there I can tell you!”
I went into the kitchen to get a bag of ice-cubes out of the freezer. My old radio in there was just announcing the news on the hour, and the newsreader kept getting broken up by a French woman also reading the news.
“Nothing too odd in that”, I said, to the others “It’s happened before. We’ve often picked up French radio here”.
The voices were interrupted by a series of short high-pitched squeaks. It was as if the BBC pips had suddenly got drunk and gone into freefall.
“That’s been happening all afternoon”, said Jason “Sounds like aliens trying to communicate with us if you ask me!”
I poured myself a drink, switched off the radio, and went out into the back garden. The fog had got denser. It was like the smog that had been generated by the big fire at the derelict bowling-alley, but without the acrid smell. The fog-horns continued to blare out. I know some people find this sound disturbing, but I rather like it, it’s all part and parcel of living in a quirky seaside place.
Even the fog-horns couldn’t drown out Kristy though. She was on the other side of the fence, letting rip at Mr Charmless Pillock The Builder about how betrayed she felt by her daughter’s recent secret wedding. Kristy was in full throttle about this, and believe me, that is quite something! When Charmless Pillock could finally get a word in edgeways, he merely grunted and said (in a distinctly unsympathetic voice) “Life ent fair is it darlin’!”
I felt that this remark was about as helpful as Tony Blair’s recent announcement that he was drawing up a plan to solve the ongoing carnage in the Middle East. (I didn’t get the feeling that the world was collectively holding its breath, waiting for this Great Plan to materialise!). Back indoors Misty informed me, from the computer, that my personal astrologer had been in touch again. Apparently she had sent me several e-mails over the past few days (it had been too hot to use the computer, my excuse anyway and I’m sticking to it), saying that she was deeply worried about me. That important things were about to happen in my life, and it was vital that I was fully prepared for them. On top of all this she was resorting to the most outrageous flattery to wring another 60 dollars out of me. I am a very warm person, (so she says, I have grave doubts about this myself), people close to me may not remark on this, but they feel I am. They feel I’m a bloody push-over more like!!! And if she could see the grim, sadistic thoughts I have about Henry sometimes, she would revise her opinion pretty smart-ish, I can tell you!
“I feel you are surrounded by much younger people”, she wrote.
“No”, I thought “Not entirely, they just ACT like they are!”
Call me a bloody fool, a gullible twit, a fool and his money are soon parted … blah-blah-blah, but I purchased another reading from her. I always like to feel I encourage private enterprise (as long as it’s legal), and I certainly awarded her Brownie points for her dogged persistence.
The fog gradually drifted away again over the course of the evening. I had a drink out on the veranda, and watched a little lad, barefoot, and in baggy yellow shorts skipping about down the lane, peering over fences, and reading notices pinned to posts. He was like an inquisitive little sprite. At around 9 o’clock Robbie came out, fresh from the shower. He said he was going out, but that he didn’t know where. Poor old Robbie, I thought, absolutely desperate for a bit of hows-yer-father. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t happening for him. He’s a presentable young lad, and has no very unsavoury habits, as far as I can tell anyway. Why all the girls were getting frisky over a vacuous pretty boy like Aleck, and not over a nice, intelligent young feller like Robbie was beyond me.
I told him to be careful and to keep an eye on the weather, it seemed to be in a funny mood at the moment.
Another thunderstorm broke towards midnight. I was woken up by a dog barking nearby, and Misty enthusing about how bright the flashes were. I must admit that even my lifelong enthusiasm for thunderstorms was getting a bit jaded now. I had forgotten how much I had longed for them at the beginning of the month. I was feeling a bit ropey though. I had had a very strange and unsettling dream in which I seemed to be turning into an hermaphrodite. This included my penis shrivelling up until it was but a mere shadow of its former self. NOT the sort of dream you look back upon with pleasurable reflection!
“Welcome to the light show!” Henry exclaimed, from out in the living-room.
“The telly’s playing up”, said Paul, who was watching it with the sound turned down “The picture keeps jigging around all over the place, and the ‘Big Brother’ live feed has disappeared completely”.
“Well you won’t be able to watch them sleeping then!” I said.
I went into the kitchen to make some tea. Misty drifted out of the bedroom, looking sleepy.
“I’m really tired”, he wailed.
“Go back to bed then, you silly arse!” I said, and I took him back into the other room, and shovelled him into bed.
“You’re not going out for a walk or anything are you?” he said.
“Yes, I thought I’d go for a bracing ramble along the sea-wall”, I said “Dodging the lightning bolts!”
He looked at me with abject horror and concern, and I had to reassure him that I was in fact joking.
“If you’re still awake in 5 minutes I’ll bring you some tea in”, I said, kissing him on the forehead.
Back in the kitchen Paul followed me in, carrying a two-day old copy of Mrs Jackson’s ’Daily Express’.
“Here”, he said “It says in here that August is gonna be even hotter than July!”
“We’re all going to die”, I said.
“And that we are re-living 1976”, he said, reading from an article carefully “’Dr Who’ on the telly, as well as Noel Edmonds and Bruce Forsyth, Leo Sayer in the charts, the Labour government going into freefall, and the long hot Summer”.
“Yes it is starting to feel a bit deja-vu”, I said “I hope they re-release ’Typically Tropical’ in that case, that always used to sum up Summer holidays for me when I was a kid”.
“And the fashions are the same as well”, said Paul.
“Flared jeans, platform shoes, big sunglasses”, I said “We can console ourselves that it will pass eventually!”
“You’re old enough to remember 1976 aren’t yer?” he said, screwing up his eyes as though scrutinising the old wrinklie for the first time “Was it as hot as this?”
“Yes, I think so, from what I vaguely remember”, I said “We haven’t got round to having stand-pipes in the street yet, and big forest fires though, like we did back then”.
“Got power-cuts in London though”, said Paul “Fancy asking people to turn off the air-con in weather like this! They need fucking shooting!”
“I just get the depressing feeling that the whole bloody world is being run by fucking amateurs”, I said, with feeling “The Rome summit to discuss the Middle East was just one big blithering display of international incompetence. The world’s most powerful man goes around saying things like ’Yo, Blair!’ and unable to even feed himself properly! It feels like we’re living in some really embarrassing black comedy that isn’t funny”.
“This is the end game you see”, said Henry (I might have known he’d stick his spoke in!) “Everything is happening as The Bible predicted. The signs are all there. Did you know that a crop-circle has appeared on the side of Fairy Hill?”
“We’ve had them round here before”, I said “I stopped taking them seriously when one of them appeared as a smiley face, like the ones people put on the Internet!”
“I don’t think you should be too cynical, Gray”, said Henry “These things are serious. The Bible urges us to look for messages in the ground”.
“Does it?” I said, although I admit my knowledge of the Bible is sketchy these days. I haven’t looked at it since I was at school.
“The messages are there in the ground”, said Henry “It says so in Revelations”.
“What are these messages telling us then?” said Paul.
“Don’t encourage him, please!” I said.
There was a loud rapping on the front door. I went to answer it, batting moths away from me as I did so, we were being plagued with them at the moment. Al was standing on the veranda, trying (somewhat ineffectively) to guard himself against the torrential rain with a magazine held open over his head. I ushered him into the house.
“Gawd, I know I sound like a bloody old woman”, he said “But I’m a bit concerned about Robbie, he hasn’t come home yet, it’s not like him”.
“It’s not that late really”, I said, trying to reassure him “It’s only just gone 12. Some of the bars in town have a late license”.
“Either that or he’s finally met somebody and got lucky”, said Paul.
“I hope that’s all it is”, said Al.
“Come on, I’ll make you some tea”, I said.
“I know I sound a bit pathetic”, said Al, following me into the kitchen “But since Clag Heath … well I don’t like people disappearing on me”.
“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about it”, I said “As Paul said, he’s probably just fallen in with somebody”.
“Was he going to ’The Crab’?” said Misty, appearing once again in the doorway.
“I thought you were tired!” I said, (Since Anna Turnball’s death Misty seems to regard ’The Crab’ as being like one of Jason’s portals to Hell, people disappear into it never to return).
“He didn’t say where he was going”, said Al “I thought he was just going to ‘The Ship’”.
I opened the back door and stood shaking it to and fro for a while. There was a pleasant smell coming in from the garden, that of cool damp earth. When you get to this stage of the Summer it gives you a tantalising glimpse of the Autumn, so close and yet still so far out of reach.
And then Robbie scared the shit out of me by barging in through the door. Misty really tore him off a strip for making us all jump out of our skins like that.
“Sorry guys”, he said, and boy did he sound lit up! “It’s just that I saw the light on in the kitchen, and heard voices, so I thought I’d pop in and see what was what”.
“Did you go into town?” said Al.
“No, nowhere near as far as that”, said Robbie.
“’The Ship’ then?” said Misty.
“Not even as far as that”, Robbie leered “A sort of private party nearby if you like”.
(He’d got his leg over at last).
“Alright, be all coy then!” said Al.
“It was just down the road in fact”, said Robbie “One of the holiday cottages”.
I suddenly had a horrible feeling that he was referring to Henry’s old house. If this silly young fool was mad enough to start knocking around with Jeannette, then I didn’t want Henry hearing about it out of the blue like this. I pulled Robbie across into our bedroom, as it was the only place in the house where we could talk in private.
“Is this your bedroom then?” Robbie smirked.
“No it’s where I park the car!” I said “You bloody idiot, Robbie! What the fuck are you getting mixed up with a vampire like Jeannette Temple for! You must need your fucking head testing!”
“You’re not being fair”, said Robbie “She’s had a tough time of it”.
“I’m aware of that”, I said “But it doesn’t alter the fact that she is one very strange individual. You must have heard what she did to Paul? She doped his drink, and locked him in the hall cupboard!”
“She probably thought he was threatening her”, said Robbie.
“Paul?!” I said, in disbelief.
“Well I mean people do get scared of young lads in hoods these days”, said Robbie, shrugging.
“She had hired him to do the garden!” I said.
“I thought she was alright”, said Robbie “She just needs a bit of TLC that’s all”.
“Where was her father all this time?” I said.
“In his room I suppose”, said Robbie “I never saw him”.
I felt very weary with it all. Jeannette flipping Temple was like a curse that couldn’t be exorcised. She seemed to have an insatiable urge to destroy people. And there seemed to be a never-ending shortage of weak goofball men like Henry and now Robbie for her to sink her fangs into.
“Look Robbie, you’re a grown man”, I said “I can’t tell you how to live your life, or who to see. All I can ask you to do is to be careful, very careful”.
The bedroom door opened and Misty stood there, looking like some sort of unorthodox avenging angel.
“You can leave our room now”, he said to Robbie.
Robbie left the room, ducking low under Misty’s up stretched arm as he did so.
“You see”, said Misty, when we were alone “You’re not the only one who can get bossy around here”.
“I’m very pleased to hear it, I was finding it quite tiring!” I said, drawing back the bedroom curtains “Anyway, let’s lie down and watch the storm. I want to make the most of this fresher weather whilst it lasts. ’Cos you can be sure it won’t last long!”
For the next few hours I kept running over that scene with Robbie in my mind, and trying to reassure myself that I hadn’t sounded like my Father. This was utter bullshit of course, as in my more saner moments I could see that my Father would have handled the whole scene rather differently. My Father was emotionally retarded at the best of times, he wouldn’t have wanted to involve himself in the affairs of someone who wasn’t closely related to him. And if he had, it would have been rather more aggressive, much less diplomatic, and generally about as helpful as hitting a priceless Ming vase with a sledgehammer.
But I still needed to reassure myself all the same.