Part 1 ...

It's perfect as it stands.
He felt the waves lapping and ebbing at his bare feet, dragging the sand back between his toes, forming hollows and eddies around his feet. The shifting of the torpid ground dizzied him as he looked down so that he instinctively lifted his gaze back toward the horizon for balance. And that's when the thought struck him; perfect. It doesn't get better than this.
He remembered something that someone had said; ‘Imagine getting everything you've ever wanted, all the time.'
And now, standing here at dusk, watching the white, cloudless sky dulling to a pale blue, he'd found it. And he could stay here forever.
He stood with the cold waves lapping at his shins, the breeze brushing at his hair and the soft down of his arms. An hour passed, marked only by the approach and the chill embrace of the rising tide. The westering sun worked its way across the sky, dancing from wispy cloud to cloud toward the rim of the horizon. As it dipped in the sky the shadows of the low cliffs and the dunes swept over him, hugging him in turn with their cold shapes.
Why're you leaving?
I want to put the dark back into the night. I'm tired of working from ten ‘til four, then sleeping from morning ‘til two in the afternoon. I'm tired of fights at midnight , of adrenaline rushes at three in the morning, deals done as the sun rises. I want to go to bed when it's dark, sleep while the moon is shining and wake with the dawn. I don't want the nightlife.
Why're you leaving though?
I don't know. What I said, maybe.
Not about Benson?
No.
You're not unwell?
No.
No. Right. Not in love?
‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘I'm not in love.'

*          *

The cannonball rock sat in the middle of the cove, giving the cove a sort of horseshoe shape. The cove itself was about fifty yards wide and thirty deep; a half moon of sharp sand and small rocks surrounded by low cliffs that tumbled down toward the dunes. And in the middle sat this boulder of sea-smoothed volcanic rock, the width of a small road and the height of bus.

As the evening air cooled, his thoughts wandered from some blank centre of bliss. He turned and gazed up at the cannonball, thinking that he would have to climb it, as he thought at some moment every time he came to this beach. He looked it over; searching for a foothold or a crack that would give purchase, allow him to climb its smooth rounded shape.
He had an idea that he would climb it some time, and then spend a night and a full circle of the tide, take a warm coat and maybe a flask of hot tea, and just sit there watching the clouds and the moon and the dark sky and the white of the waves.
His gaze turned back toward the ocean and he watched the gulls following a small boat; it's engine puttering. He gave the fishermen a wave. They waved back at him.

The sound of the gulls and even the sound of the boat engine was part of the ocean, and his old life in the town was eighty miles to the south, and he was not himself as he had been.

The day drifted toward it's close, only the North face of the cove was still sunlit, and his pale skin shivered at the wind. He left the edge of the ocean and walked back up the beach, the thickened soles of his bare feet crunching against the pebbles. He picked up his boots from where he'd left them on a dune and wrapped his sweatshirt around his waist. He scrambled up the rocks and stone and onto the coastal path and began to walk, still barefoot, the mile and a half home. Pulling on his sweatshirt now he felt the warmth wrap around him like a second skin and smiled with the pleasure of the feeling as he ambled south toward the sun.
Imagine getting everything you've ever wanted, all of the time.

*           *

Home was a windswept caravan in the lee of a cowlick of grassy cliff-top. A headland. The land edged above the height of the surrounding cliffs in a low ellipse, forming a windbreak for his mobile home, such as it was. A patch of mown grass in front of his caravan, blank space for two more, a small brick shed and a standpipe set in the right angle of a low wall.

He got back and walked around the caravan site, idly, checking it out, looking around with a certain pleasure. He checked the door of the brick shed. He went to his bike, snug in its canvas shroud, tucked into the rear of the caravan, and checked the ties, tugged on each in turn. They were tight enough, fastened under the tyres and around front and back. But not tight enough to keep out the sand. He knew that this wasn't the place for a bike; it was too much trouble to wrap and unwrap every time he made a trip to the village and eventually the sand would eat it away. Every week he had to start it up and run it for an hour just to stop it seizing up.

A week after he arrived he'd packed his mobile phone, pager and credit card into a waterproof sack and buried them in a hole near the old fence; at first he’d been tempted to throw them into the sea, but he didn't want to cause any pollution. Instead he intended to take them to town some day and dispose of them. All he now owned he could fit into a rucksack and that fitted onto his bike.

Now he was here, within reach of the village, the ocean and the ruined priory.
He looked up at the clouds, graying above him.

*           *

The coastal path that threads itself between St. Claire's caravan and the cowlick of high cliff, meanders its way along the coast, passing a ruined abbey and, nearby, the broken foundations of a Norman castle. It leads eventually to a small fishing village, no more than a hamlet, some three miles to the south.  This fishing village, Murton Beach , is built around a small harbour and a single main street.
It has no beach.

On a clear day, from the harbour wall, it's possible to see Murton Abbey, the ruined priory that sits on a short headland to the north, and the priory has a beach. Two miles inland is the former colliery village of West Murton or, as it is known locally, and with some irony, Murton Tip.

In Murton Beach a half-dozen fishing boats work from the harbour and much of their trade is illegal since, due to heavy European legislation, there isn't a living to be made from legitimate activities. These remaining boats, cobles , look like shorter, squat versions of the Norse longboats that raided the same coastline a thousand years earlier; indeed their basic design is the same. But the harbour is usually quiet as most of these sturdy, timeless fishing boats were beached or burned before the millennium. The few that remain are doomed to a lingering death.

There are perhaps two hundred buildings in Murton Beach , all told, including the fisherman's huts and the telephone kiosk. Amongst them are two churches, a spiritualist temple, four pubs, two hotels, two general stores, a licensed club, a small indoor market, a hundred and fifty dwelling houses and some empties, their boarded windows winking at the passers-by. There is a small café, the All-Nite Breakfast Tea Rooms whose opening hours, depending on the tide, is from around 3am until 7pm . Three mornings a week the village enjoys a mobile library. There is a doctor's surgery, although there is no dentist.

Every morning during term the few children from Murton Beach are bussed to school, eight miles away.
And St. Claire's caravan is set three miles from this metropolis.

*          *

He lit the small gas stove to heat his small aluminium kettle, then sat down on the front step where he wound up his radio and listened to the news while the water boiled. The wind ruffled his fair hair like some kindly but unseen aunt, pleased with his company, and he smiled to himself. After ten minutes the kettle began to whistle quietly and he rose to pour the water into a pot. Then he dropped in a tea bag, stirred it for a minute, added some powdered milk and then a large, heaped tablespoon of sugar. He swirled the mix for a further moment, considered it with a practiced eye and then lifted the pot to drain it into a steel thermos flask.

He put the lid onto the flask and went to sit at the door with his radio. He wound up the radio for a minute or more and then turned it on and tuned into the World Service. He sat for another ten or fifteen minutes before he poured out his first cup of tea into the combination cup and lid of the flask.

A jogger ran along the path and into view, ‘Evening,' she sweated as she passed.
He smiled, lifted his cup in greeting, sipped at the tea. When he had half finished his tea, and the light was fading some now, he switched on the door lamp, leaned inside the door and picked up a paperback book and a spectacle case. He opened the case and put on the glasses that were inside. The lenses were a deep pink colour, and the colour helped him to read, helped still the letters on the page.

He read for an hour, until the first few drops of rain began to spot and darken his page. He went inside and closed the door behind him, sat down on the bed, reaching up only to switch on a small lamp, and continued to read. Sometimes he had to say a word slowly, out loud, to understand it.
An hour or more later, without even looking at the time, he slipped off his wristwatch and dropped it onto the narrow windowsill. The rain, from being heavy on the roof, was now slanting against the window inches from his face. He put down his book, took off his glasses with care, reached up to switch off the light and then sat in the dark listening. Breathing softly.

He woke her with a cup of tea. Wake up.
What time is it? she murmured,
He woke with a small twitch. The radio charge had ran down and it had switched off. The rain was back on the roof and he was cold. He slipped off his shorts and t-shirt and got under the quilt naked.

It's nearly four. It's almost dawn. Wake up.
Why? What's wrong?
Nothing. He smiled.
She took the teacup and sipped. Nothing?
I'm leaving, he told her.
She paused a second, eyes glittering in the dark. You're leaving me?
He turned to stare into the darkness, the smile invisible.

Dreams were reaching back up for him even as he closed his eyes. Sea gulls swooped, performing waza-ari, shrieking. Benson stepped up to him, ‘Cheers, Saint!,' he said loudly and then walked off. Bayley sat down heavily on the step of their town-house and began crying. Faces crowded, trying to get past him.
He slept soundly, without moving.

Morning came; sneaking gray light into his eyes and after only a few moments he rose from the bed. It was still raining. He pulled on a waterproof cape and stepped out into the weather. He walked barefoot along the path and down the nearest gully to the waves' edge, padded into the freezing water and squatted down to relieve himself.

After washing himself in the ocean he walked damply back to the caravan, shut the door once inside toweled dry and dressed quickly in faded cotton jeans and a heavy sweater. Then he opened his flask, pouring out the remainder of the tea; two thirds of a dull cup. He wound up his clockwork radio and drank his breakfast sitting on the bed as he listened to the shipping forecast and the political news.

He pulled out his journal from beneath a cushion on the chair and opened it. He took the lid off the ballpoint pen.
There was nothing pressing, absolutely nothing, and he had all day.

*           *

Journal #117.
When I came here I thought that it would be a quiet place, peaceful and still, but I was wrong. The sea never stops, I can hear it in my dreams, I hear those moments when the tide pauses, before it turns; the birds wake me every morning as they sing to welcome the sunrise. The wind changes direction and sometimes it's stronger or weaker but it never really stops blowing. The long grass whispers to me. The pebbles on the beach chatter to themselves.  In all this noise I don't notice myself so much.

*          *

‘Don't you feel the cold?'
‘Wha? Oh, yeah. It's not that cold?'
He stood in the general dealers, basket in hand, looking for bargains. The speaker was a tall red-haired girl, something a little older than him stacking shelves. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
He looked around the shop, fresh food in baskets, tinned food on shelves, some frozen food in a long freezer, fresh fish laid out in a cooler, a small section for clothing and outdoor equipment. A mini off-license selling cheap wine and strong cider.
‘You're the hermit, right?'
He shrugged, ‘Am I?'
She nodded, ‘Yes, you are. I'm Kendra, she told him, ‘Kendy. This is my shop.'
‘Oh, right. Hello.'
‘You are …?'
‘St. Claire. The hermit.'
She nodded, smiling, still stacking. Then she shouted across the aisle, ‘ Dunbar ! Hey, Dunbar !'
‘What?'
‘Come and meet St. Claire.'
‘Who?'
‘The hermit .'
‘I met him before. I dropped off some gas bottles the other week.'
‘He did,' St. Claire confirmed.
‘Well come and say hello again.'
Dunbar came to the aisle; he was a rangy, lank-haired man of about thirty. He held out his hand; ‘ Dunbar , again. Hello.'
St. Claire responded in kind.
‘I have to get back, I'm re-bottling. Not gas, wine,' he explained, and he waggled a bottle that he held by the neck, as though he needed to prove the point. ‘Well, re-labeling actually. Just got a shipment, fresh from a Polish trawler. Buy them for half a Euro a bottle. I add a new label and sell them for five pounds.' He fished out a wad of labels from his shirt pocket as evidence, ‘Here, look at these. I downloaded the design from a vineyard website and I printed them out on some nice paper. Good huh?'
‘Why you telling me?' St. Claire asked him with a mild smile on his face.
‘So when I sell you a bottle for only three pounds instead of five you'll think you got a bargain.'
Dunbar wandered away again.
‘He likes you,' Kendra said.
‘Got any dried milk?' St. Claire asked.
Over there.' Then she said, ‘And I've got some t-shirts going cheap, there's a girl over in the Tip, she prints them. Five for a tenner. Buy some. Wear layers and keep yourself warm.'

He walked back along the sea wall, apart from his food supplies he had a pack of new t-shirts in the new rucksack he'd bought; ‘Like the haversacks?,' she'd asked. They were chunky, simply designed, and looked vaguely military. On the lid was stitched the word Habelsac .
‘Yeah.'
‘Yours for a ten pound note.'

*          *

Drinking from a cardboard carton of milk he stood looking over into the harbour; the tide was far out and the one or two boats at moor sat at odd angles on mud. One of the fishermen gave him a wave, ‘Hey.' he shouted, greeting.
‘Hey,' St. Claire responded.
‘Storm coming,' the fisherman shouted.
‘Yeah.'

He walked past the harbour wall, across the grass where the coastal path began to travel north, through a broken gate and past a sign that told him to Keep Out. The village peeled away from the coast in a big loop and the path ran straight so that quickly he was out of sight of the houses though he could still see the harbour walls.
Ten minutes later he passed the foundation stones of the Norman Castle. Then he came to the Priory. He paused, breathing deeply and slowly. He put his bag on the ground with a clink and sat down on a sandstone outer wall, ruined to a height of eighteen inches where, he guessed, it should have been eighteen feet.
The grass was mown short, and the Priory had an unmanned visitor's centre with a local map and a history plaque showing important local sites. He'd read these already.

‘Where did I get this Viking son from?,' his dad asked, rubbing the thick blonde hair on his head.
‘I dunno? Hospital?'
His dad said, ‘I reckon that about a thousand years ago one of your ancestors came here in a longboat, tripping like a madman on mushrooms and strong beer, rowing like crazy, looking for a fight and a new girlfriend.'
‘You reckon?'
‘Yeah.'
‘Do you think he found one?'
His dad smiled; ‘Well, you're here.

He picked up his bag and walked the half-hour home. The sky was darkening, the wind was picking up and it looked like a storm coming. He was only wearing a sweatshirt and light cotton jeans and as he arrived home he was feeling the chill in the air.
He packed the food away; put the two bottles of win on the bench top, and hurriedly pulled a t-shirt from the pack. It had a printed phrase on the front:
itch -scratch - itch
and he paused to wonder t-shirts always had something to say? He'd have preferred plain white. He put this on and then pulled his sweatshirt back over the top.  He slammed the caravan door against the wind and went to wind up his radio. Then he sat on the bed to listen to the shipping forecast.  The wind buffered at the caravan and he found himself lulled by the sound. He opened a bottle of wine with the corkscrew on his Swiss Army Knife, and half-filled a plastic cup. He drank this off quickly and refilled. He hadn't drank for eight or nine weeks and it hit him quickly.

He'd drank five large glasses, a full bottle, in little more than half an hour and he opened the second bottle and went out into the coming storm. The wind hit him quicker than the alcohol but they both had his mind whirling in seconds.
‘This feels good,' he said to no-one in particular and sat down cross-legged on the damp grass.
He put down his plastic cup and poured a cupful, spilling some onto the ground until he got his aim right, and raised the wine to his lips, drinking from cup and bottle in turn.
‘This feels very good.'
The sky was navy blue with gray clouds. Rain speckled his face and forearms. He lay back on the grass.
‘I'm drunk, ' he told the sky, laughing.

He awoke with a red dog licking his face.
It wasn't a dog; it was a puppy. Active and friendly. He rolled over onto his stomach, ‘Hey, hey, baby. Where did you come from, huh?'
She leaped at his face, licking and whimpering. He picked her up and carried her into the caravan, out of the rain. The front of his jeans and sweatshirt were muddied by her scrabbling paws as he put her down on the bed. He stroked her head, rolled her onto her back and tickled her tummy.
‘Hungry?'
She lay watching as he went to open a packet of biscuits, crumbled four into a bowl, added water from a jug and then, after a moment's pause, emptied in a small tin of beans.
He put this onto the floor, ‘Here you are,' and watched as she tumbled down onto the floor to get at her meal. She ate quickly but messily, pausing only to look around at her surroundings before bolting down the rest. Then she defecated on the floor.
‘No!' He shouted, ‘No! Bad girl!'
He lifted her quickly and put her out, went back inside and scooped up the crap with a dustpan opened the door and threw it into the night. She scrambled back in and watched closely as he scrubbed the floor with a mix of water and bleach. He went back outside into the rain and rinsed the bucket under the standpipe, filled it up about three inches and went back in to scrub the stain with clean water. He found the dog urinating in the corner, against the bed.
‘Hey! Hey!'
He put the puppy out onto the step and began cleaning again. Fifteen minutes later he heard the dog whimpering and scratching at the door. He let her back in and she curled up in a corner to watch him again.
He emptied the bucket outside and left it by the step, washed his hands under the standpipe and returned to the caravan shivering. There was sleet in the rain. He stripped off completely, shivering harder now, hanging his clothes over the table and chair, and sat on the bed with his hair sticking to his head.

He remembered that he was drunk.
The rain was building into a storm, the caravan was rocking in the wind as he climbed under the blankets to sleep it off.
He woke with a red dog licking his face.

 

Part 2 ...

Dad says the gulls started nesting in Murton Tip after the mine closed down. But Murton Tip's always had gulls; he just didn't notice them when he was young. Sitting here on Vera's step, drinking Lambrini with Nil and the others, the screaming of the gulls reminds me of dad.
He's gone,
They're here.
I'm here.

At Vera's off-license, Lambrini is 1.99 for a litre bottle. I'm sixteen and she knows it but she sells it to me anyway, we all buy at Vera's, if we couldn't then we'd buy at Khan's and she knows that too. And if not Khan, we'd buy a half quarter of blow from one of the stewards at the workmen's club and make a lung out of an empty coke bottle. Then we'd suck up the lung and be just as sweet and groovy.

The Lambrini is eight degrees proof and by the time I'm finished it I'll be jelly-legged and happy. Someone might get lucky. It's Friday, it's seven o'clock and it's a warm Spring evening.
Nil is laughing, saying to someone, ‘We were discussing “social behaviour”', she held up two fingers on each hand, miming quotation marks in an ironic mimic of Craigy, ‘in Citizenship today, and I told Craigy that the girls behaved much worse than the boys. He asked me why that might be so and I told him it was because we had no natural predators.'
She's laughing again; sometimes she is the smartest person I know. Every Friday, lesson four, we stay in our tutor group and discuss things. Citizenship: we've discussed drugs, violence, teenage pregnancy, relationships, responsibility, further education, aspirations, sexism, racism … lots of stuff for people like us; racist dead-enders who take drugs and get pregnant at seventeen. Craigy is OK, for a teacher, but he tells us nothing about our world. I know just enough to vote with my feet.

‘He was asking where you were again.' Nil told me.
‘What did you tell him?'
‘I said you had bad period cramps. He said you should go to Holland and Barrett and buy some homeopathic supplements. He said to get your arse into school or he'll send the EWO round.'

Craigy doesn't bite or get embarrassed when you mention periods, which is a shame because we do it to embarrass him, to put a wall between us and him; we do it to the lads sometimes too. Sometimes, when we start talking about blood clots or how to dispose of a sanitary towel when your at the beach, he'll say, ‘Ladies, I think that this subject is inappropriate for class.'
Ladies. That winds us up.
One time Belinda Smart said, ‘ I'm not a lady!' and Craigy just smiled to himself as though to say, I know . But Belinda is a thief, she has a real criminal record, not just cautions and stuff; she was thrown off her works experience at Saiid's surgery for stealing a purse from the receptionist. They couldn't prove it, but they knew it was her. We knew it was her, because she told us. They said that seeing as there was a thief around they'd prefer if Belinda didn't return, for her own protection, just in case something was stolen from her .
She laughed all the way to Top Shop.

I wish we could study stuff like that in English, how people can say one thing and mean entirely the opposite. I said that to Craigy during a Citizenship lesson on ‘Responsibility and Honesty' and he said that we do, or at least that we should. But I could tell that he was thinking that he's not an English teacher and he can't force Miss Angelus to teach us stuff like that. Instead we study homonyms and metaphor and we talk about that fact that, according to Miss Angelus, Shakespeare was a gay catholic, which seems really important to her. Nil wrote a poem about her:
Angelus, Angelus, Angelus Belle
Knew she was right
And she still went to hell
Craigy says that humour is a form of defence and, sometimes, so is poetry.
The seagulls nesting on the roofs of the houses around Vera 's delicatessen and off-licence, Nil laughing, Lambrini at 1.99 for a litre. Belinda saying, ‘ I'm not a lady,' and thinking she was being clever.
This stuff is important to me.

‘What else did he say?' I ask Nil.
‘He says you're a smart girl, and you're wasting yourself wagging school.'
It pisses me off that Craigy is so patient, I know he thinks I'm smart, but I'm not. And if I am, it's not relevant. School is a waste of time anyway.
Nil is making a call, and some biker boy pulls up and gets off. He looks like a real biker, not some chav on a knocked-off dirt bike. I stand up and move over from the doorway to let him get into the shop.
‘Thankyou,' he says.

I don’t care much about school; I've got a job. Two jobs in fact. At weekends I work in Kendra's supermarket over at Murton Beach . During the week I baby-sit for my sister so that she can go to work; she works at a print factory as a packer. She usually pays me forty pounds a week, but if she's on nightshift she gives me extra.

After I spoke to Craigy about how people don't say what they mean he gave me some books to read. I stashed them under my bed. They're still there. I think Craigy probably only earns about three or four hundred pounds a week. I heard that he's the most qualified teacher in the school, that he could be working in a university.
Not within fifty miles of here he couldn't.

My sister left school at fifteen and dropped two kids before she was eighteen; then she left her boyfriend to live by herself and when she got bored living on the social she got a job in the print factory. She's twenty now, and she earns about five hundred a week packing boxes. She works in one of the places where they make money, actually print the stuff, so they get paid well, I think, to avoid temptation. Plus she gets child benefit and her ex gives her eighty pounds a week for the kids. If she goes out on a weekend she'll pay me twenty or thirty pounds to stopover. But I usually don't baby-sit on Friday nights.
I think Nil was right; we have no natural predators.

I unscrew the cap and pour enough Lambrini into my mouth to fill my cheeks, it warms inside my mouth as I gulp it down bit by bit. I feel it burning into my stomach.

Vera 's Off-licence is on Central Avenue , one of six shops in a row; Vera 's, the Chinese takeaway, a burnt out youth club, a closed library, then a hairdressers and a chip shop. The smell of boiling fat, Chinese food, cheap booze, peroxide, stale piss, and on a Friday all the boys wear CK1 – it's an appealing combination of smells.  Every weekend we sort of drift here, towards these shops to drink, cause noise, argue, laugh. Sometimes the lads bring a football; Belinda or one her friends, or Grebey or Cliffy might have a kitbag full of stuff for sale. There's the odd fight. Music. The police drop by.

My phone is switched to vibrate and when it starts to shake in my pocket I let it go on and on. When it stops I check the message and then text a reply.
I've been coming here most Fridays for the last five years. A lifetime. Lots of kids come here. Some come every week and others come and go. But mostly they come back, until they're old enough to get their own place, or they leave Murton Tip altogether.
I take another mouthful of Lambrini and I listen to the cries of the seagulls nesting on the roofs of the houses.
*          *

‘Give me a hand with this.'
‘Just a minute Kends, I'm busy.'
‘Dunbar, I need your help!'
A minute later he sauntered in, put down a bottle of wine on the bench, its fake French label hanging off, and hefted the two crates of tinned beans, grunting, ‘Where?'
‘Front of shop, on the counter.'
He waddled into the front shop and set them down heavily. Then he disappeared out of the front door, saying, ‘I'm just popping out.'
She followed him, ‘Where? And when will you be back?'
‘I'm going to see Sinclair,' as he slammed the door of his van, revving out the sound of her voice and pulling away.
Kendra went back into the shop and began to stack the beans on the shelf, pausing only to serve a customer.
‘Eight ace.'
‘Are you eighteen?'
‘Oh, aye.'
‘No you're not. Bugger off.'
‘You bugger off!'
‘Well you fuck off. Right now,' she said. ‘Come back when you've got hairs on your balls.'
‘I'll go to the Tip and buy some!'
‘Go on then! Start walking!'
The door slammed and she returned to her shelves.

At about four o'clock the afternoon newspapers arrived in three bundles. She slit the plastic ties in turn with a small knife and divided the papers by their titles, then checked her list to set up the deliveries for the papergirls.

*          *

Journal #135

At first I felt the cold pretty badly, there's no escape from the weather here and the first month or so was dreadful, but then I stopped noticing the cold so much after a while, and I began to enjoy the warmth that my clothes gave me instead. One of my favourite things now is the feeling of my clothes against my skin, The salt air makes everything feel thicker and smoother. I've shrunk a little too, and the looseness of my jeans and my sweaters makes them feel new and strange and different.
*           *

Dunbar left the shop front in a roar of loose exhaust pipes and a cloud of oil-tinged petrol fumes he hadn't really meant to go and see St. Claire. Dunbar was a natural loafer; a schemer, not a worker, and when Kendra was in the mood to work him he was usually in the mood to get away. He planned on driving into Murton Tip and spending a couple of hours at the Big Tip, one of Murton Tip's two working men's clubs. But he guessed that Kendra would check he next time she saw St. Claire so he bumped the van off the road and drove along the coast path, past the Priory, through the rotting gate and. He got to within about a half mile of the Caravan Site and pulled up against the fence, where it stopped at the coastal path, ten yards from the breakers and the cliff.

He got out and climbed through the fence, sauntering along to the caravan site. St. Claire wasn't there, so he sat down on the low wall next to the brick shed and waited. He'd only been there a few minutes when St. Claire arrived, with a small red dog trotting along beside him.
‘Bought a puppy?'
St. Claire looked up, smiled and then scooped up the dog in one hand, stroking her as he approached Dunbar . ‘No, she found me the other night. The stormy one.'
He grinned, ‘She's been messing up my home ever since; chewing, shitting, whingeing, running about. I hate her.'
‘She's a pedigree,' Dunbar observed, bending to stroke her.
‘You think?' St. Claire asked before having a closer look and saying,, ‘Yeah,
Dunbar took a good look at her, ‘She's a Staffordshire bull terrier. Neat,' stroking her, ‘Well made. Do you know where she came from?'
‘No. Maybe ran away from somewhere around here.'
‘There isn't somewhere around here. This,’ he said, pointing at St. Claire’s caravan, ‘is it. Nearest house is in the village, or if you walk about four miles north, to the old mill,' he continued, ‘And I know the old lady at the Mill, she keeps cats, not fighting dogs.'
St. Claire shrugged, ‘Maybe it was a tourist.'
‘Yeah, maybe. I'll put a sign up in the shop if you want.'
‘Thanks.' St. Claire fished out his door key and asked, ‘Want a cup of tea?'
‘Got any beer?' Dunbar said, following him in.
‘No, and I drank that wine you sold me.'
‘Any good?'
‘No. But it got me drunk.'
‘It will do that,' Dunbar agreed. Then he asked, ‘Did the label stay on?'
St. Claire couldn't say, so he went to the cupboard where he kept the empties, checked and then nodded to Dunbar .
‘I'll have the bottles back. I'm making some homebrew and I need another forty empties.'
‘Be my guest.'
Dunbar said, ‘Maybe I'll bring you some when it's done, we can have a drink together.'
‘Sure, that would be nice.'
‘Tea will do fine until then.'
He stepped over the dog and sat down, ‘What's her name then?'
‘Millie.'
‘You staying here long?' Dunbar asked suddenly.
St. Claire paused, then he nodded briefly, pouring a measure of water into the kettle. He turned and asked, ‘Sugar?'
‘Four, but don't stir it.'
After lighting the gas flame and setting the kettle on it he carefully spooned four heaped sugars into the spare cup.
‘What made you come here?' Dunbar asked.
‘It's quiet,' he said. Then he gestured to a jar, ‘Have a biscuit.'
Dunbar took a biscuit from the jar and stretched back on the chair, one of those couch/beds that wrap around the front end of the inside of caravans.
St. Claire asked, ‘What made you come here then?'
‘I'm from here.'
St. Claire shook his head, ‘No you're not.'
Dunbar smiled, ‘Well, from around and about. I just got stuck here a few years ago.'
‘What do you do?'
‘Buy and sell. Imports and stuff.'
‘Smuggling.'
‘Some. And help Kendra in the shop. I play in a band too, Johnny Clash. We play punk-rock country and western. You should come and see my band play sometime.'
‘Are you any good?'
A rueful shrug, ‘We're shite man, if I'm honest. But if you're drunk and you like to dance, we'll do.'
St. Claire mixed up some powdered milk and water.
‘So what did you do before you came here?'
St. Claire smiled to himself but gave no reply as he stirred the milk.
‘I wouldn't ask, but I'm a nosy bastard, and you're not telling. Are you, like, an eccentric millionaire, or a retired spy?'
‘No. I just wanted a quiet life, had a bit of spare cash, decided to change my life, slow down a bit.'
‘My life changes all the time,' Dunbar observed. ‘But then again, it pretty much stays the same.'
The kettle was boiling and St. Claire poured the scalding water into the pot. He mashed the teabag with a spoon, stirred it and then mashed it again. Then he poured the tea into two cups and added the milk solution. He handed a cup to Dunbar, ‘Cheers,' he said.
‘Cheers,' Dunbar replied.
Then he asked again, ‘So why are you here?'
They drank their tea and Dunbar thought that his question had been ignored and that maybe he’d stop trying, but then St. Claire said, ‘I had a scare about a year ago. Something happened, and I thought I might die. But, to be honest, when I thought about it, I realized that I really didn't care; my life was so intense it would almost be nice not to have to worry about stuff.' He shook his head in wonder at the memory. ‘A fair trade, I thought.'
Dunbar frowned, ‘That's a sad state man. If life's getting you down so bad you stop caring then you have to reconsider your values a little.'
St. Claire nodded, ‘Yeah. So when I found I was probably going to be all right, that I wasn't going to die any decade soon, I thought I'd better take stock.'
‘Throttle back.'
‘Yeah, recalibrate. I'd lost my centre and I needed to find it again.'
‘Exactly,' Dunbar agreed. ‘So what did you do before all this? Some high-powered job? Are you, like, a burnout?'
St. Claire shook his head. He hadn't thought what to call his job; he tried to explain, hoping he’d understand it himself; he said, ‘When I was sixteen my parents left home, they were in love, and so I had to get a job, quickly. So I worked as a bike courier for about eighteen months year. Illegally at first, but I was working sixty, seventy, sometimes maybe eighty hours a week. It was great.'
He nodded to himself at the memory, ‘But I was becoming a bit of a mentalist. I was on the road so much I was coughing up diesel every morning. I didn't have a licence. Then I did. Then I lost it. And I was getting arthritis,' he grinned, ‘Or at least a permanently stiff neck.
‘Then I got into a fight one night in a pub. I was having a drink after work and this guy just hit me, for no reason, broke my nose and knocked me onto the floor. I didn’t know what had happened, but when I got up he hit me again and snapped my nose back the other way and I fell down again. I sat there for a moment, and I thought I'd better stay down and hope he didn’t kick me to bits, or get up and start fighting back.’
He smiled at Dunbar, who was sitting on the edge of his seat, ‘So I got up and threw him through the window.’
Dunbar rubbed his lip, ‘Neat trick.’
‘Yeah. Anyway, the manager offered me a job on the door, you know, security? The guy I’d put through the window was his bouncer, and I’d just broken his collarbone. So did I want to replace him?  That’s when I started the doors. Then I left that pub a couple of months later and started working in a club. I tried to keep the courier work going but I was earning a week’s wages in one night, so I gave up.'
‘Still got the bike though.’
St. Claire glanced out of the window; ‘The Max? It’s not my courier bike, but yeah, I still like riding. Never got out of the habit.’
Dunbar looked at St. Claire, his slight frame, his young face, he seemed a little incredulous, ‘Really though, you're not a fighter?'
St. Claire nodded. ‘Yeah, I am. It’s true. My mother is a judo instructor;’ he said, ‘she was in the Olympic squad, won tournaments and stuff. Dad teaches aikido and self-defence. I sort of grew up with this stuff.'
‘So you've got black belts? You're a hard case?'
‘Yes, and no.' St. Claire said with a bashful smile at some memory. ‘I'm not very good at punching people's lights out or breaking jaws but I can put people on their neck, and I know enough to get out of trouble. I've got a baby face and I'm not threatening, so people don't get offended by me.'
He continued, ‘At first I was just working on a Friday in that first pub, but I ended up working four nights a week in a nightclub, for about four years. A big club. Lots of kids, lots of money. Lots of drugs.'
He thought for a moment of the power he had held and then, a few short months ago, had given back.
‘Good money?' Dunbar asked.
He shook his head, ‘Not directly,’ but there were perks, he explained; ‘The doormen controlled the drug dealers; sponsored them and took a cut, thanks very much. No one got hurt, really, and I made a good stash; bought a house, car, had lots of holidays.'
‘You're a sort of drug dealer?' It was more of a statement than a question.
‘Was, sort of. We licensed a stable of dealers in the club. Got a slice for just letting them work there.'
‘A dealer pimp.'
St. Claire liked this phrase, ‘Yeah, a dealer pimp.'
‘Makes my Polish wine scam seem almost legal.'
‘It is almost legal,' St. Claire said with a grin.
Dunbar chuckled, ‘So you're rich?'
‘Comfortable, maybe for a few years.'
‘But it’s bad money.’
St. Claire nodded. ‘I gave most of the money away. Maybe I’m hoping the clean air will scour what’s left of me clean.’
‘It probably will,’ he said and the wind buffeted the caravan in agreement, ‘It’s wild as fuck out here.’
He looked closely at St. Claire, still not quite believing, ‘But you're serious , man? About the drugs?'
St. Claire nodded,
Dunbar finished his tea with a slurp, put down his cup with a satisfied smile, then said, ‘It's a story alright.' Then he picked up the cup again and used his finger to rake out the sugar at the bottom, ‘Nice tea, mind.'
‘I like it.' St. Claire said, ‘In fact, I like it here.'
‘You're not on the run from anyone?'
‘No. I could go back, I just don't want to.'
‘Ever?'
St. Claire shook his head, ‘Never, ever.' Then he looked at Dunbar , ‘Why the smile?'
‘Stay as long as you like. You buy gas, wine, food. It's all extra business.' And as he spoke he was thinking it was also a good place to come to avoid Kendra giving him work.  Then he asked, ‘So why do you call the dog Millie?'
St. Claire considered the question for a moment, then said, ‘Dunno.'
*          *

They ended up outside in the fresh air again, St. Claire washed out the two cups under the stand pipe before walking with Dunbar back to the van; the dog trotted alongside them.
‘I'll put that sign up for you,' Dunbar said.
‘Don't put that it's a Staffy, or someone might claim her and maybe use her for pit fighting.'
Dunbar said, ‘We don't do that round here, Sinclair. Don't worry.'
‘OK. Thanks man.'
‘Sure.'
St. Claire walked back along the path with him toward the van; he said, ‘You won't say what I told you, to anyone?'
Dunbar shook his head, ‘I don't tell stories. Only about myself,' adding, ‘I'll come back some night with some booze,' he winked, ‘And we'll risk some harm with cheap red wine, if you dare,'
‘Expensively labeled cheap wine,' St. Claire corrected. 
‘Yeah,' Dunbar smiled, ‘We'll do it soon. We'll talk more.'
‘You can tell me where you got your accent from,' St. Claire said
‘I get it from everywhere I go,' Dunbar said as he got into the van and started the engine.
St. Claire watched as Dunbar reversed the van in a large semi-circle, at one point the wheels were almost hanging over the cliff edge, and then speed off in a roar and a cloud of blue smoke.

He walked back to the caravan and poured himself another cup of tea. He instinctively felt that he could trust Dunbar, who was such an obvious charlatan that he was beyond suspicion, but he wondered why he had told him all that stuff.
He felt uncomfortable, bemused, by his own desire to tell Dunbar about himself; something that he would not normally have thought to do with anyone. Benson always warned him not to give anything away, and he hadn’t. Even to Benson, who was, he’d supposed, his mentor. The man who’d taught him how to survive on the doors. How to pick the girls who would, and the dealers who wouldn’t. Benson had been his guru. His spiritual guide on the long downward path of violence; ‘The road to hell is wide and smooth,’ Benson would say with a grin. ‘So let’s motor.’
He thought about Dunbar; he'd held some back, the really bad stuff, but he was getting soft, talking like that. And he knew that, really, he could never go back, whatever he’d said to Dunbar.
*          *

Dunbar arrived back at the shop in a good mood; he swept into the shop and spent an hour or more doing odd jobs, humming happily, clearing out junk and generally getting on Kendra's nerves. Finally she sent him upstairs to their flat to watch the tea-time soap operas. Shortly after he left she found herself feeling quite warm and horny so she closed the shop, early, and followed him upstairs. She intended to work out her mood on Dunbar's lean, hard body and be back in time to re-open the shop in its evening guise as an off-licence.

An hour or more later, the shop was open for its evening liquor trade with Dunbar behind the counter, selling his chat and his charm and his cheap beer and wine, while Kendra lay on the sofa upstairs, under a quilt, watching TV.
A man came in, looking for a bottle of single malt. ‘I've got some on discount,' Dunbar told him, ‘It’s in the back,’ and went to get a bottle of fake Glengoyne he’d bought from one of the Polish trawler bottles.
‘Discount?' the man asked, when he returned.
Dunbar nodded, ‘Special new customer discount.'
The stranger smiled back at him and, unaccountably, Dunbar shivered.
‘Chilly,’ the customer said, walking over to push the door shut; ‘It's a bit wild and woolly, around here.'
Dunbar nodded, taking his money, ‘Wild and beautiful,' he said, opening the till for change.
‘You get many tourists?'
Dunbar paused, then he said, ‘Naah. People come for a couple of days, but the north wind drives them away.'
He smiled, ‘You looking to move up here?’
The customer shook his head, ‘No,' he said, took his bottle and left. Dunbar watched him go. He went to the door and saw him get into a black BMW and drive away.

At eleven thirty Dunbar closed the store for the night. He switched off the main lights and went outside to pull down the steel shutters, he paused briefly to listen to the surf and the gulls and the wind.
*          *
Mr. Donovan was talking as I entered the class, he paused, and the class went quiet, and he asked me, ‘Why are you here?'
I shrugged, opened my bag and took out my books, I'm not sure why myself. I haven't been to his class in four months. I rarely come to school and I don't intend turning up for most of the exams; Art, English maybe, CAD probably.
History, Mr. Donovan's lesson, I won't be being examined on.
History means nothing to me. I live in a village where life ends at about seventeen, where the window cleaners use sandpaper and where you need to travel eighty miles just to pass go.  So I said to him, ‘I don't know why I'm here.'
‘Will you learn anything from this lesson?’ he asked me.
I shook my head, ‘Nothing.'
Someone behind me giggled. Donovan stifled the giggles with a sharp glance.
‘I appreciate your honesty,' he said me.
He shuffled some stuff on the desk, looked up at me again and asked, ‘Do you want to just go then?'
‘If you like.'
He nods; I get up, pop my stuff back in my bag and leave the room.
I like Mr. Donovan; he's honest. He makes me be honest. What was I doing there? Things have gone too far for me to just start going back to lessons again.
I go to the school café and drink coke and wait for last lesson.
At two the bell goes and I walk through the crowds to my tutor class.
*           *
He closed his notebook and put it down on the grass at his feet. Then he put his spectacles back in their case and placed the case on top of the notebook. He poured a cup of tea from the flask.
Because St. Claire had slowed down the pace of his own life he could see the rhythm of other things more clearly; in the way that watching a speeded up film highlights the ticks and mannerisms of a person that would otherwise go unnoticed. He began to see the rhythms of life.
He saw that two or three times a week, at around four in the afternoon, a pair of lovers parked their car near the old fence on the coastal path. After a couple of glimpses of this he avoided the path between four and five if he could, or walked to the extreme cliff edge while passing.
He saw things from the past more clearly.

He smelled the ripeness of the coming spring. He felt the change in the air that brought out the pollen and the buds and the insects.
He saw that a young mother walked her child along the path late-morning on weekends, and walked back early afternoons. Some days she returned carrying him on her shoulders, sleeping.

The herring gulls woke him every morning before dawn. Then he would either turn over and go back to sleep or get up and greet the sun coming up over the North Sea , standing barefoot beneath the whirling, shrieking birds.
At night, in the distance, he heard the occasional, random sound of a police siren. And maybe the roar of a car engine.

Different rhythms washed over each other. He saw the fishermen go out with the rising tide and return with the ebb. He watched the rip tide work is way along Priory beach. Heard the pebbles and the sand whispering beneath the whitening waves. He listened to the radio, its programmes and reports. He learned how arbitrary the human clock is when set against the natural one. As the days lengthened he slept less. But he ate less too, and his solid middleweight frame was becoming slight and gentle, almost child-like; thin, lithe, fair, bearing no other weight than flesh and bone. He didn't know it but his blood pressure dropped to the level it had been when he was thirteen. His hair had bleached to the colour of his Viking ancestors.
He was experiencing a change of focus, of emphasis and he recognized this, instinctively, but he did not dwell on it.

Two or three times a week he walked to the village. He explored the coast; past the dunes, past the Mill and up as far as the new pine forest plantation where one day he followed a stream for two hours through green carpets of pine needles and acorns.
Millie followed him, cocking her ear as he told her, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this girl.’
His dreams became more vivid and he remembered them more often.

Babe put a gun to Jimmy Boyd's temple and shot him, blood falling like liquid ropes, ruby and glittering in the neon.  ‘Ssshh,' Babe said, turning to look at him, even as Jimmy fell sideways, slamming onto the ground, twitching.
He turned and walked away, beaten.

He flinched, like a sleeper, finding his rest.
He rose from the front step and stood barefoot on the grass. Writing his journal ached him. Sometimes he wrote about memories and other times he wrote about the day. He wrote slowly in a thin, spidery style and his face worked as he concentrated. He drew small illustrations.

He stretched long and hard, pausing only to go into the caravan and return his coloured spectacles to their case in the  drawer. His frown eased. He'd written for an hour, taken a short rest, and then written for another hour.  He'd written of the pine forest, and of the mill, and then he’d written of Mrs. Kaur, on her knees, repaying her son's debt.
Princess .
Such a bad thing, he thought; so personal. He stretched again, shifting position so the sun was on his back and his shadow stretched long before him, toward the sea. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. His hair was fading as his skin grew darker and it was growing longer as his frame grew smaller. He never washed it now; it just stayed clean; milled by the sand and the sea air.
*          *

He locked the caravan door and went for a walk to the big dunes that sat on the coast a mile or two North. Millie trotted along beside him. When he reached them he scrambled to the top of the largest one he could see, it rose some forty feet from the surrounding scrub ground. He stripped off his t-shirt and dropped it onto the grass-tufted sand, stepped back a few paces and then ran forward and launched himself headfirst off the edge of the dune. He fell for what felt like an age but what must have been less than a second and then tucked in his head and did a shoulder roll as he hit the sloping sand, rolled twice more and skidded in a heap toward the foot of the dune, landing in a back-scratching, rolling dust pile with an ‘Ooff,' and then an adrenaline spring to his feet when he reached level ground.
‘Yes!' He shouted, brushing the sand from his shoulders and doing a short spinning dance. Then he began to laugh, so much so that he had to bend over to contain himself. He fell back onto the sand, still laughing and laughing. Millie, who had watched this from the top of the dune had come tumbling down after him and started running around in circles yapping and barking. Panicked by his laughter she ran over to him and nipped his thumb.
‘Ouch!' he shouted, but the laughter, though subsiding, still took him in receding spasms.
He did a dozen more leaps from the top of the dune, and these felt good, but none felt as good as the first.

An hour later, as they walked back he told Millie, ‘That feels better.'  It was mid-afternoon when they got back and he went to the standpipe and sluiced the sand from his shoulders and torso. His muscles were stiffening and one or two bruises had lifted where he had rolled over small rocks at the bottom of the dune.

He stood on the grass and did some stretches and some shadow skipping. Then, without thinking he began doing a kata, long learned and almost as long forgotten, trying to ease the stiffness in his shoulders, focusing on performing the routine, losing himself in the form. He concentrated on balance rather than power and went through the positions, stiffly at first, and methodically but, by virtue of repetition and concentration he warmed up and improved.

He repeated the kata repeated it again. After thirty minutes or more he began to understand what he was doing, his muscle memory returned and was able to relax into it. He took apart the difficult moves and practiced them separately before grafting them back onto the full kata. Forty-seven separate moves.
After an hour he began to insert rolls and break falls into the kata, dancing tai tsabaki, eyes half closed; he knew that elaborating in this way missed the point, took away the reliance on form, and that it was form that removed the fear and aggression that limits progress, but he didn't really care, he loved the rush of throwing himself down and rebounding off the firm but springy sand grass. His body enjoyed it too; muscle memory of fifteen years on the mat. After a while, when he had had enough, he went inside and lit the gas beneath the kettle and then went back outside to stretch and cool down.

The kettle whistled and he went to scald the tea.
He sat on the step of the caravan as the light faded, scribbling in his journal. When it got too dark to read he went inside to complete his entry. He made a pot of tea and wound up the radio.

Thoughts came to him like visitors.
Benson would say at times, and say it like a mantra; ‘Women are it . They are the core of things, St. Claire. Look at them.'
He'd smile to himself as stood and watched some swing-hipped girl walking by, or maybe paused to fix herself inside her bra in the full-length mirror inside the club door.
He'd maybe whisper across at St. Claire , ‘Give yourself to the pain , man. You'll learn to love it.'
‘I'd rather not.'
‘Take the pain, Saint. Commit .'
And he'd reply, ‘It's just a girl, Benson.'
‘You have no sense of adventure, Saint Claire.'
‘I have no sense of masochism, Bense.'
‘ Love it, babe. Live on the side of the volcano; give yourself away. Think of the warmth and the smells and the fullness of your dreams.'
St. Claire would smile at this kind of comment and his head would turn with Benson's as some woman or women walked by.
‘Comfort and joy, Saint. Comfort and joy .'
And she'd pause to check her lipstick in the mirror or straighten her dress with a shimmy of the hips.

He woke to find that he was still in his chair, it was dark and the radio had wound down. He sat quiet for a moment, listening. Then the brilliant flash of a distant thunderstorm lit up the caravan. Quietly he stripped the quilt from his bed and, picking up the pillow, went outside. There he rolled the quilt out on the grass by the caravan wheel. Millie woke and raised her head but did not move. He lay down on the quilt and rolled it over himself, settled his head on the pillow and looked up at the stars. The thunderstorm was far away and the air was clear and light and cool.

He heard the sea pause, as the tide turned, and it caught his breath for a second; dark and difficult thoughts left him, a breeze kissed his cheek and he slept until morning.
*          *

Joe's first fishing boat was an eighteen foot, open deck coble called Miss July. He'd bought her for the cost of a week's wage when he was sixteen, and used her for twenty years. His second boat, Claudie, was thirty feet long, with a cabin, net-boom and winch. Radio masts lifted fifteen feet above the cabin; a row of weather-worn car tyres sat along each side.

Claudie was high in the prow, rising seven feet out of the water, and almost as high at the stern; she was low-waisted and fat across the middle. With a good catch she was shipping water and, over the years, Joe had always invested in a quality pump. Left to her own devices she tended to steer in anti-clockwise circles of a half-mile radius. Joe always loaded to the right to compensate.

Joe's staple catch was lobster, and there were two dozen pots stacked at the stern. He poached salmon when the season was right, and on moonless nights he ran illicit goods from the industrial-sized Polish trawlers that regularly, and illegally, bottom-trawled close to the shore.
Claudie bobbed and dipped in the water of the dock. She was eager, like a debutante whose dance card was full. Rope lay in tidy loops about her deck, the ends fastened with bright blue gaffa tape or woven onto three inch steel eyelets.
The dock was quiet. Joe sat on the harbour wall, enjoying the sun on his weathered face, knitting repairs into a small drift net.
‘Hey Joe,' St. Claire said, approaching.
Joe nodded, ‘Hey, Saint, nice morning' Joe said, automatically scanning the horizon as he did so.
‘Yeah.'
‘You out for a walk?'
‘Yeah.'
‘You should come out with us some time; spend a day on the water,' Joe said.
‘I might do that.'
Joe tied off a piece of braided cord and then cut away the ragged end with his folding knife.
He said, ‘You’re looking fit.'
St. Claire nodded; ‘I think I am.'
Then he looked across to where a number of cars and mini buses were parked and people were walking in and out. ‘What's going on over there in the church hall?'
‘Craft fair; they have one every month, in the Spring and Summer.’
‘It's Spring already?'
‘Yeah. It's not a church hall now though,’ Joe said, ‘it's a Spiritualist Fellowship Hall.'
He allowed a brief, wry smile to cross his face.
‘You don't believe in the afterlife then, Joe?'
Joe, folded away his knife, slipped it into his pocket. He patted the harbour wall, ‘This is what I believe in, the here and now.' Then he said, ‘I tell you what though, I used to think fish would always be swimming in the sea. And now they're not.' He hawked up some phlegm and spat it into the water of the harbour, ‘So I suppose anything is possible.'
St. Claire nodded toward the market, ‘Maybe I'll pop in and buy something.'
‘Aye.' Then he said, ‘Hey Saint, the end of August, there'll be an eclipse. You want to come out with me and Sonny, out of sight of the coast, and watch the sun disappear?'
‘You’re thinking ahead.’
‘Full eclipse only happens once in a lifetime.’
St. Claire said, ‘Yeah. I think I will. Thanks.'
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Joe said.
St. Claire walked across the road to the church hall.  At the door he paid the entry fee of fifty pence to a long-haired boy slouching back on his chair, head leaning against the door frame, police tag dangling from his ankle.
Inside, the market smelled of sweet foodstuffs and spices and a hundred years of beeswax polish. The stalls were busy. People milled about. He was unused to crowds, and the noise that crowds made, and had to force himself to relax.
Teenagers stood around a stall selling musical instruments, checking out the guitars above which a sign instructed ‘No Teen Spirit'. At another stall a stout woman was sniffing at a jar of freshly made lemon curd. She put down the jar and reached into her purse. Children were hugging bags of sweets bought loose from another stall.
He spent an hour looking through the stalls and barrows, flicking through racks of vinyl records, chatting to one or two people.
He stopped at an open barrow that held racks of second hand books, postcards and posters. The stall holder was standing to one side talking to someone, holding a mug of tea in her hand. He looked at some tattered first editions, he picked up a half-dozen postcards, and he spent a few minutes or more looking at the paperbacks. Without his spectacles he found reading difficult so he found himself forced to judge the books by their cover.
‘I've got a good selection of comics,' the barrow girl said. ‘Manga, American Super heroes, Dark Knight, stuff like that,' and he looked up to see she was talking to him. ‘And some really early Viz,' she added, faltering for a moment as she looked directly into his eyes.
‘Can you pick a half dozen for me?' he asked her, ‘Just a random sample,’ and held her gaze until she broke away.
‘A taster,’ she said, ‘right. Good way to start,’ and he studied her for a few moments while she flicked through a box of comics; she had short glossy hair, slicked back from her face and her pale freckled skin glowed health. He looked away and raked through a half full box, found a tattered paperback book with the title, ‘The Fabulous Mr Bigsby' and on the cover was a picture of a City of London Gent against a backdrop of lurid swinging sixties images.
‘I'll have this too,' he said, and the girl looked up, took the book and packed it in the bag with the postcards.
She said, ‘If you like it I have a few more of those. It was a series, written by the guy who did the Skinhead books, I think; you know, Skinhead, Suedehead and all those? Someone like that, anyway. The Bigsby books never really sold well though. He did the Hell's Angels books too, I think. I can't remember his real name. They're cash-ins, but they're really entertaining.'
‘You know a lot about books.'
‘I read all the time,' she said ‘It's my thing,' and then, noticing him looking, she pushed her hair away from her face, ‘Hi, by the way.'
‘Hello.'
‘I'm Madeline. Maddy. This is my stall.'
‘St. Claire. This is my first time.'
She began to flick through the racks of paperback books looking for the other ones in the Bigsby series. A thick strand of hair fell foreward across her face and she pushed it back; ‘I bet they turn up a few minutes after you have gone,' she said.
‘I bet.'
There was a pause.
Then she asked, ‘Do you ever think about growing your own food? On your little homestead by the sea?'
‘No.'
He wondered how she knew where he lived.
‘Oh,' she said, then brightened almost immediately and dropped another book into the bag, ‘Have this, if you like. On the house. It might change your mind.’
‘Thank you. I owe you.'
‘Buy me a bottle of wine sometime,' she said.
He saw she was blushing.
He gave her the money and left.

At another stall he bought a jar of honey and some mint cake. He bought some dark chocolate too. He bought a packet of mint tea and a packet of lemon tea and half a pound of loose Earl Grey tea.
‘Original fake Calvins,' a woman told him from behind a barrow, ‘Sewn together in Indonesia by English speaking virgins.'  She winked broadly at him as she held up a handful of white underpants for him to see.
*           *

St. Claire went outside and filled the kettle at the standpipe, pausing only to look across at the fields and low hills inland. Filled, he took the kettle back inside the caravan, lit the gas stove, and boiled the water to make a pot of tea. While he waited he picked a book from the ones he'd bought from Maddy at the market, and sat down. He thought about her for a few moments; sleek, interesting, interested.
As he sometimes did when he was trying to understand someone, he thought about her in judo terms; she balanced too far forward, on her toes. If she was an opponent, sparring in a dojo or fighting for a belt, he’d push, they’d push back, then he’d drop them with tai-otoshi, or something similar.
He shook his head and grinned to himself at the incongruity of his thoughts; simple fact was, she was attractive, and she was interested in him.   

At a loss as to what to think, he looked down at the book, the title read – The Small Gardener– and on the buff cover was a black and white line drawing of a small man wearing suit and a trilby hat and pushing a wheelbarrow. St. Claire took out his spectacles and put them on before opening the cover. Inside it said, in small print; 1st Edition 1953 . He wondered if it was worth anything. He doubted that there had been a second edition. And printed in the bottom corner of the inside leaf was Price - 1s 6d. Just above this was a line drawing of the same small man, this time wearing overalls and highly polished shoes. What did 1s and 6d mean?
On the back page the blurb read, Garden too small? Not enough time? No space for tools? Then read The Small Gardener and learn how to grow the most using limited resources. He flicked through to the index; the book was divided into eight chapters. Each chapter issued a challenge to the reader.
Chapter one was entitled, ‘Why do you want to become a small gardener?' and after making the tea, he read through the chapter and spent an hour just trying to work out why, indeed?
He weighed up the pros and cons set out in the book before taking the plunge.
Chapter two was entitled ‘Who's got the time to become a small gardener?' and this rhetorically entitled chapter was devoted to the science of maximum effect from minimum input. It was mainly about planning, he decided, after reading it through for the fourth time.
He made another pot of tea before beginning Chapter three, which was entitled, ‘Why would you want to grow that?' and, though he had sympathy with the challenging nature of the chapter titles he figured that it was a little too bristly for the average reader and that was probably why it had never become a best-seller. He imagined the author to look just like the small cartoon character; wearing a trilby and overalls and asking challenging questions.
In chapter four he was challenged, ‘Would you eat that stuff?' and he decided he would, if the would grow to an edible size. He decided to employ the knowledge gleaned from The Small Gardener to cultivate a small plot where he would grow spring onions, wild garlic and small sweet potatoes.

The next day he bought some cane and plastic sheeting from Dunbar’s shop and erected a makeshift greenhouse at the side of his caravan.  It would be a good thing to do, he thought.  He thought that the salt air might badly affect his plants but The Small Gardener said that so long as there was no direct sea spray and so long as the soil did not contain above a certain level of sand it would be fine.
He went back to Chapter One - ‘ Why do you want to become a small gardener? '
Why indeed. 
*          *
Journal #47
Bayley reminded me of the first time we spoke. We were lying in bed, wiped out, and she'd turned over to face me, running a fingertip along my nose, tracing its crooked path. She told me I was sitting in a café and the sun was shining on my hair and I had eleven stitches across my forearm. ‘I counted them,' she told me.
I was drinking latte, I remember that much, and the stitches had split and the wound was leaking.
‘You're bleeding,' she said, and took out a tissue, leaned across and dabbed the stitches.
‘Compress it,' I said, and she hooked her thumb under my wrist and pressed the tissue pad against the wound. She was leaning awkwardly across two tables so I said, ‘Sit next to me,' and she shuffled across.
‘I'm on my way to work,’ she said, pausing to look up, ‘so if you're going to try and bleed to death you'd better do it while I'm still here.'
‘Do you work far?'
‘There,' she pointed, at an office block across the way, ‘The Revenue.'
‘Can you be a bit late?' I asked.
She nodded, ‘Sure. I work flexi-time,' and gave me a warm smile.
I went and ordered us both another coffee, pressing the tissue onto my arm. The bleeding had stopped. I'd been training at Benson's dojo, an old garage down on the quay side; I'd showered and then walked back up into town, and it was eight thirty in the morning. I was having coffee.
She was having coffee.
‘And before we spoke, I saw you, you know,' she confided, as we lay together, ‘long before we met in that cafe. I saw you in the club.'
She snuggled into my arm, ‘Before we ever spoke,' she whispered, ‘I watched you.'  She kissed my chest and she told me, ‘I thought you looked like a fallen angel,' and she kissed me again, ‘So I decided I would have to save you.'
‘Who from?' I asked.
‘From yourself.'
Truthfully, I always thought that she would.
Save me.
From myself.
And when I left her, she disappointed me a little, in not having done just that.

 

Part 3 ...

The window in Vera's deli is cracked. The big window. It's had a small plate of glass glued over the crack for as long as I can remember.
Fix the window, bitch.
She sells wine that's even cheaper than Dunbar's. It tastes like fizzy piss mixed with cheap perfume. I feel a bit old now, too old to be hanging around outside the off-licence; I'm sixteen, but there are no clubs and the pubs all know me through my brother and I wouldn't get served and anyway, they're full of old farts and wrinklies and women with tight dresses and slack arses. So it's here, or my room.
I come here when I'm not busy doing something else, and when it's sunny and Nil or someone is already here but I'm coming less and less. I'm growing up in a dead village in the middle of nowhere.
Here's a thing someone told me; when lobsters are caught in lobster pots they can easily escape, but they don't. Because other lobsters in the pot pull them back in. After a few failed escape attempts they give up and then they start pulling the newer lobsters back in too.
I used to think that I was a lesbian, because I had a crush on Nil, but I realised that it was just that there were no attractive men that I knew. I'd go to school and I'd see boys with no brains and teachers who were just too old, or desperate.
Nil has poise. She has self-control and she has studied irony in her every word and movement. Sometimes I think she's smart but mostly I know it's only because she has long slow limbs and she's really not too bright and her skin is the colour of malted milk, but back when I was about fourteen I used to think that her mind hid things from me, things I would never work out. Then I realised that everyone pretty much thinks the same way and any energy you spend on hiding yourself away or admiring the appearances of others or being untruthful is purely a waste.

This will be the last summer I sit on Vera's doorstep. She says that we're all babies, that when she was a teenager she was working and dancing and going on holidays three times a year. She said to me one time that being at school beyond the age of fourteen was just a government plot to keep people off the streets where they might earn money and spend it, or they might have fun. She told me that they started putting the school leaving age up when they invented the birth control pill and they've been raising it ever since.
Now she says you can't get a real job with regular money before you're eighteen, and even that's seen as some kind of career failure. Vera admires people who pay their own way.

She saw me sketching one time and asked me where my camera was; ‘At home.'
‘You can make money with a camera. Weddings, Christenings, glamour shots of bored housewives.'
‘I like drawing, and painting too.'
She looked at my sketch and asked me, ‘Then why're you hanging around here with these chavs?' Then she asked, ‘Did you draw that?'
‘Yes. It's not finished.'
‘Well don't waste yourself girl. There's enough stupid girls round here to keep the maternity wards and the magistrates courts full.'
Then she went back into the shop and I think she must have forgot we ever spoke because she never mentioned it again. Except once, about six months ago, when she was talking to my mam in the street and she called me ‘ Frida Kahlo ' for a bit of fun.
Right.
Fix your fucking window.
*          *

He switched off the engine, kicked out the stand and stepped from the bike, his legs a little stiff from the ride, and a little shaky from some of the corners he had taken. He pulled off his helmet. He was hungry.
‘Gi's a look at your bike.'
He looked at the voice, some ten year old kid, smiled and said, ‘Don't tax it, huh?'
The kid came closer, grubby, smelling sweetly of filth, ‘Can I sit on it?'
He shook his head.
‘Aw, go on.'
He leaned close to the kid, ‘If you sit on it,' he said quietly, ‘I'll rip your head off and feed it to my dog.'
The kid thought about this, stroking the warm fuel tank with his fingertips, and then said, ‘I'll just look at it then.'

St. Claire walked past a group of teenagers drinking wine on a doorstep and on the wall at the end of the row of shops. Frantic music was coming from a cheap boom box; two boys in ragged Adidas were kicking a ball against a boarded up shop window. As he walked toward the shop a couple of the older boys sauntered toward his bike; he ignored them. Two girls sat on the step at the doorway of Vera's Delicatessen; one, a thin-faced girl with sun-in hair and cheap sportswear, was talking to her phone. She glanced at him long enough to check he was looking at her; she was hard and pretty and she rolled her thin body away from the door to let him step past. The other girl, slender and bored looking, with an unruly mane of dark hair, Lambrini bottle in hand, was looking right at him. She took a mouthful of wine and swallowed it slowly, then she stood up to let him through.
‘Thankyou.'
She sat on the wall, gazing calmly at him. Taking him all in.

Inside the shop, he went to the sweet counter and chose three large bars of chocolate. Then he looked for tea, ‘Is this all you have?' he asked, holding up an economy box.
The shop assistant nodded. He put the box on the counter along with the chocolate.
The woman totted up; ‘Two pounds seventeen.'
He paid, dropped the box of teabags and two of the chocolate bars into his habelsac and left the shop chewing on the third.
‘Hey, Nil,' the dark haired girl was saying to her blonde friend.
‘I'm on the phone,' Nil replied, irritated.
St. Claire walked over to his bike, two ten year olds were sitting on it; one on the pillion saddle, one on the tank. A big teenager was sitting between them.
‘Gi's a go on it,' the teenager demanded.
‘No.'
‘Aw, go on, just up and down the street.'
St. Claire shook his head dismissively, almost absent-mindedly, saying, ‘I gotta go.'
The teenager got off. He was a tall, heavyset boy and he towered over St. Claire, who smiled at him and straddled the bike. Then he finished off the first bar of chocolate, stuffed the wrapper in a pocket, put on his helmet and inserted the key. The engine started with a turbine whine.
He gestured to the ten year old kid who'd first approached him and was now sitting on a high wall watching him, ‘Hey, jump on.'
The kid dropped from the wall and leapt onto the back of his bike, gripping St. Claire 's leather jacket, who turned and said, ‘Hold the grab rails, not me.'
‘Alright.'
St. Claire revved the engine hard, lifted his visor and turned to the kid, asked, ‘Ready?'
The kid laughed, heh heh heh, and said, ‘Oh, aye. Fucking aye!'
St. Claire slipped the clutch and the bike took off like a rocket, leaving a thirty yard trail of smoking rubber on the road as he hit sixty miles an hour in two seconds, front wheel raising off the ground. The kid had wrapped his arms tightly about St. Claire's waist and was howling in excitement. The bike reached the end of Central Avenue in less than six seconds and he brought the front wheel down, the bike screeching to a halt at the T-junction, the back wheel rising high into the air and bouncing back down onto the road.
The kid slid slowly off the bike, shrieking and laughing with delight, holding his tummy and rolling around on the tarmac as he laughed uncontrollably. Then he scrambled up and began shouting to his friends at the other end of the road, ‘Hey! Hey! I got a go on the bike, Heeeey!' and jumping up and down as he shouted.
The other kids began running up the road. St. Claire pulled away, smoothly and gently this time, leaving the kid to his friends.

‘See that?' Nil said, holding the phone away from her ear.
Annie nodded.
‘I thought he was pretty,' Nil said.
‘Well you can have him if he comes back.'
Nil waved away this comment with a lazy hand.
‘Did you see that?' Grebby said, coming back from the road.
‘Who do you think he was?' Nil asked him. He took a mouthful of her Lambrini in reply.
‘No one,' Annie replied for him, but as she was speaking she was thinking of his pale blue eyes; his long lashes. And he was carrying one of her habelsacks.

A mile further on St. Claire stopped at a telephone box. He put a pound coin into the phone and rang a number.

*          *

Joey was atop a ladder, leaning across at an angle, whitewashing the ceiling around the skylight, holding on as best he could with his left arm, which was encased in plaster from wrist to elbow.
‘Shut the door' he shouted.
Then he looked down, saw who it was and when she came closer, he said, ‘Put a foot on the ladder, if you like. It wobbles a bit when I lean too far.'
‘Climb down and move the ladder yourself,' she said. ‘Coffee?'
‘Yeah,' he said, coming unsteadily back down the ladder. He stepped back, ‘What do you think?' he asked her, sweeping his plastered arm around in a vague, encompassing way,
‘So Brother Gavin is letting you live here?' she asked, ‘rent free?'
He nodded, ‘So long as it's clean and tidy, and I'm out of sight three evenings a week, for the Spooker meetings.' He shrugged, ‘I do a few odd jobs,’
‘You're a caretaker.' It was light-hearted, but an accusation all the same.
‘It needed a clean up,' he countered, a little embarrassed.
‘I thought you were going to be a rally driver.'
‘I wasn't good enough,' he replied.
Looking around the chapel, her eyes took in the darkened wood panels, the ageing pews, the plain cross hanging from the wall. She changed her tone and asked him, ‘You ever been to one of these spiritualist meetings?'
‘Once, just last week,' he confirmed ‘I thought I would check it out.
‘They had this voice,' he smiled at the memory of it, ‘It was a voice from the other side,' he said, emphasising the last three words as he looked at her with a twinkle, ‘It was speaking in a fake American accent, sort of like Elvis if he had grown up in Murton Tip.
‘The voice was saying things like, “Your husband Billy is alive and well in the other world and he is waiting patiently for you.”'
He paused, ‘You making coffee then?'
‘In a minute.'
Her eyes were still soaking up the chapel.
‘Kettle is in the vestry.'
She nodded and went to find it and he folded the ladders one-handed, before putting the lid back on the paint pot.  She came back a few minutes later with two mugs of coffee; he was sitting, feet on a pew, knees tucked against his chest staring blankly at a wall. She handed him his coffee.
He drank some and then continued his story, said, ‘One of the people at the spiritualist meeting, the fake dead Elvis voice told her, “Your mother was bigamously married. To a black man. From Dundee . She had a secret life. You have five half sisters.”
She rolled her eyes, ‘I hear he puts on a good show.'
‘The whole place went berserk.'
He stood up and walked over to the chancel, settling comfortably onto an old crumpled sofa. Annie followed him over and perched herself on a stool opposite. He continued, ‘I left early, it was pure mental. All these old girls wetting themselves and Brother Gavin like a wizard in the middle of it all. Conjuring spirits.'
‘They say he's got a harem,' Annie said.
‘A coven, maybe. I can believe it.' He stirred the coffee with his finger. ‘When I left the hall, I was going to the Tip, and I took a short cut around the back.'
‘Onto the old railway line?'
He nodded. ‘That was the plan. And guess what? Dunbar was sitting out back in his van. He was wearing headphones and talking into a microphone. I realised where I'd heard the fake Elvis voice. It was Dunbar 's country and western voice. Dunbar is Murton Elvis.'
Joey grinned broadly, shaking his head, ‘That guy is a bigger crook than me.'
She looked around, ignoring him now.
‘What?' he asked her.
‘Nothing.'
He asked, ‘Do you think this used to be a Christian church?'
‘Chapel. Yes,' she said. ‘It was a Methodist Chapel.' But she could tell this didn't mean much to him so she asked him, ‘What else do you have to do?'
‘A bit of patching, few screws to tighten, a couple of sockets to fix. Polish the piss stains off the pews. General maintenance.'
‘Is that all?,' she shook her head, ‘Community Service. What a joke.'
‘Gavin's my guarantor.' He raised his leg and patted the offender's tag on his ankle, then he said, ‘I need a foldaway bed.'
‘Well I haven't got one.'
‘Ask your big sis. She's got one.'
‘Ask her yourself.'
‘I can't. She scares me.'
‘She sees through you.'
He nodded.
She picked up her bag, took out a pad and said, ‘Mind if I do a couple of sketches?'
He shrugged, watching her. ‘You still doing all that stuff?'
‘You still stealing cars?'
‘Yeah,' he said, ‘And this is my reward. I'm sharing a house with ghosts.'
‘Lucky you.'
She shuffled the pad to find a clean sheet and then slid a pencil from the ring binder. She turned to face him; ‘Smile,' she said, voice deadpan.

He sat there watching her watch him for ten or fifteen minutes. ‘The world is divided into watchers and doers,' he told her.
She scribbled fast, loose, crisp.
‘I'm a doer,' he confirmed.
She glanced up, ‘And I'm a watcher?'
He nodded.
‘What about those people in the middle?'
‘You can't be both.'
She frowned, rubbed at something on the page with a fingertip, glanced at him again. ‘Can you switch?'
‘I've never heard of it before.'
‘In theory, even?' She scratched at the page again, with a fingernail.
I suppose in theory.' Then he said, ‘From a doer to a watcher maybe. Not the other way.'
He watched her for a moment or two longer, ‘That stuff will ruin you,' he tells her, smiling.
‘Ruin me?', she asks, her hand flicking lines across the page.
He watched her, imagined her in three or four years time, her hip supporting a child, body all filled out. He couldn’t decide if that would be a bad thing or a good thing. ‘Or save you.'
She looked back at him, lean-faced, lank hair, blank eyes; a throwback; a pure-blood reiver thief. She knew what she would give up if she ever left. ‘Ruin me,' she decided, after a pause.
He watched her, his mind forming a question. She looked up at him and nodded, as though she'd read his mind, and then she continued with her sketch. The thick pencil felt dry and warm in her hand.
‘What would you paint, if you could paint anything?' he asked her.
‘Disney World,' she replied.
 
Joey watched her raking through her bag for something, another pencil maybe, and glimpsed the Nikon camera he gave her. She paints like a photographer, he thought, swiftly, thoughtlessly, but he knew she got it, the essence, which is why he’d stolen the camera for her. 

Her scrutiny began to make him feel twitchy; he rose, ‘Later,' he said, without explanation, and wandered out into the street to get some evening air, scraping the chapel door against the ground, leaving it ajar.
She paused, went to the door, lifted it and shut it quietly. She returned to her work.
There was a jut to her hip as she stood, pondering her next move, deciphering some code even as she created it.  The jut of her hip shut out everything else.
*           *
Journal #91
We'd be standing at the door for up to five hours, through the coldest part of the night. In the winter you couldn't do more than an hour at a stretch. Or you'd be too cold to function. We'd go inside and get warm but you needed a minimum of two guys in front of the door, to hold the territory.
Whatever the weather, the girls still wore mini skirts and backless tops and laser heels.
In the snow you'd feel good, breath like dragon steam, stamping the ground, girls piling through the club door. You'd feel like you owned something. Like it was a share of your night out they were getting.
Fresh blood on fallen snow.
At night it shines black.

We tried wearing thermals, but when you went back inside the sweat'd run down your back. Scarves were a no-no, after someone tried to strangle Miles with his. We wore reefers; they gave good stab protection, and black woollen hats. Black gloves. It was worth investing in a pair of soft leather gloves. Someone gave me a coloured beany. I wore it that second winter.

That would have been my favourite time, standing at the door, snow falling, late January maybe, the noise of people and music coming from inside. The smell of cool fresh air, perfume, alcohol and musk.

If I had to take a memory to heaven, just one, it would be that one, standing there in the falling snow, smiling. I'd shake my head and the snow would fly from the tassels on my beany hat. Benson would slap my shoulder. Some girl would walk past; I'd catch her eye.
That was the winter before the trouble began.
*          *

Millie was growing strong, through exercise, good food, and St. Claire's benevolent neglect. Sometimes he'd be a little concerned that she was becoming feral, disappearing for the odd day or two and returning lean and tired or, as on one occasion, blood splattered, claw-slashed and limping. There were rumours of wildcats still living in the more remote parts.
Like all of her breed she was intelligent, fearless and adoring of human company. St. Claire, whose life consisted of days of solitude and calm reflection punctuated by short periods of activity, would sometimes carry back a piece of driftwood from the beach for Millie to play with. She chewed through these in hours; other times he would involve her in mock fights, using a length of driftwood as a Boand taking Millie on in a contest of aggression and stamina. She came to recognise the start of these games as he limbered up, swishing and striking the air with his improvised wooden sword. Barking would follow and then a game of catch the stick as he swung through it the air in front of her. St. Claire was swift of thought and light of foot, Millie a snarling red ball of aggression, twisting and turning to tear at the stick that he held; the odd times she caught it square he might have to spend ten minutes prising her jaws away from the wood at which moment the game began again. When the game really got going he would drop down and swing the bo from his knees, Millie learned to sometimes run behind him and run up and over his back to leap over his head at the sword. She once cut short a game simply by running past the driftwood blade and biting at his wrists, where she could see the sword ended. ‘Bad girl! Bad girl!,' he scolded her and she retreated in some confusion; but she didn't try this new technique again.
He was careful not to hurt her, though he would goad her, swiping with the odd firm stroke, if she looked like she was tiring. Sometimes she would snatch the wood and run away, carrying the wood to a distance at which it was safe to chew and observe.
These matches, though not regular, and unplanned, often lasted for an hour or more, usually until the stick had disintegrated into woodchips, and would leave man and dog exhausted, lying prone on the grass, bruised, grazed and happy.
After one such play session that had lasted over an hour St. Claire dropped down onto his haunches, rolled onto his side and reached out to stroke Millie, patting her heaving, panting ribs. She was momentarily suspicious that the game was about to restart and snacked at him.
He stroked her, ‘Hey, hey,' he whispered, ‘It's only me. It's only a game,' he told her, and she relaxed at his touch and the tone of his voice.
Later, he stood again and picked up the remains of the stick, throwing them happily into the long grass, ‘This is what we do, girl,' he said, explaining gently, ‘We're warriors in exile, you and me, hiding from the pit and the door.' Then he sat back down and laid back as she clambered onto his chest, her muzzle gently against his face. He rubbed her fur and tickled her tummy, ‘You and me both, girl.'
But the truth of this statementseeped through the endorphins and the sweat and the prickles of the cropped grass against his skin and the soles of his feet, and it entered into his heart and saddened him. Pushing Millie off, he rose from the grass and walked over to the deckchair by the caravan door where sat down; he felt his vitality falling away.  Millie rolled onto her stomach and watched him intently.

*          *
Not going out today?’
 ‘Naw. Bad weather due,' Sonny replied, looking up to scan the cloudless blue sky. ‘I just thought I'd pop a line and try and find a salmon or two. Then he spat into the tidal mud of the dock.
St. Claire looked to where Sonny's line dropped into a half-fathom of murky tidal water and thought that Sonny probably wasn't going to catch many Salmon that day.
‘Are you sure we're due for bad weather?'
Sonny nodded.
‘You must have some kind of fisherman's skill, intuition, in telling what the weather is going to be like,' St. Claire observed.
Sonny smiled slowly, ‘Yeah.’ He pointed to the radio, ‘It's called the shipping forecast. Radio 4.'
Sonny reached into his habelsac, ‘Want a drink?' he asked, pulling out two tins of lager and one to St. Claire.
St. Claire sat down beside him.
After the first half can, Sonny glanced at his watch and said, ‘I'll just check my fisherman's intuition,' he leaned across and switched on his radio, ‘PMQ at twelve,' he said, checking his watch. It was ten to. ‘We'll finish these off and then I'll get another pack from Dunbar's.'
‘I'll get them,' St. Claire offered.
Sonny shrugged, ‘OK. Then we can listen to what's happening in the world of politics.'
He winked, ‘If we listen really hard, they might enlighten us.'

St. Claire got back a few minutes later with two six-packs; sitting next to Sonny was the spiritualist leader, Brother Gavin, who also had a six-pack; now depleted to a four-pack.
Sonny said, ‘It's usually bad weather on a Wednesday afternoon.'
‘If it's really bad we sit in Sonny's cabin,' Brother Gavin added. ‘Want a lager?'
‘I got these.'
‘Good. We'll finish off mine, and then yours. Deal?'
‘Deal.'
At this Sonny emptied his can, crushing it and throwing it into a nearby bin.
‘Shot,' Brother Gavin said, as the can rattled in off the edge.
Dunbar gave a happy sigh, ‘Super strength Danish lager. Food of the fucking Gods.'
‘Amen to that,' Brother Gavin said, and opened another with a click and a hiss, handing it across to him.  Then they joined Radio Four for Prime Ministers Questions; they sat intent, listening. But they weren't enlightened.
But Brother Gavin had a good idea; ‘Let's get a couple more six-packs from Dunbar 's. Make a full day of it.'
‘Amen to that, brother,' Sonny said, rising to his feet.
St. Claire said, ‘Hey Sonny, look!'
Sonny turned to see what St. Claire was pointing at; the float that was attached to the line coming from his rod was bobbing up and down in the water.
‘Got a live one there,' Brother Gavin said.
‘Amen to that,' Sonny said.
*          *

*           *
Between the footpath and the rotted fence, St. Claire kept the grass mown; cropped short every week or so. He'd made a passable attempt at striping, though the hand-push mower tended to scrape across the soft parts of the earth, gouging runnets into the sandy grass.

This day he'd piled the cut grass against the rotted fence, where long grass swayed, at the edge of the caravan site. Then, using a sharp stone, he'd scraped the mower blades clean of grass and soft earth, then polishing them with a scrap of cloth. Then he oiled the hubs. Then he put the mower back into the tool shed.
He lay down on the grass, using his rolled shirt as a pillow. The sun beat down. Short, stubby blades scratched at his back and shoulders and the backs of his thighs and the heels of his bare feet. The greenhouse creaked gently; tomatoes budding in the sun. He closed his eyes and stared at the pink whiteness of the sun through the back of his eyelids. The grass beneath him drank up his sweat and the wind above fanned him into sleep. He took a long slow breath through his nose and paused, breathing out slowly through parted lips. Sometimes, when he slept, he was still awake in some kind of way, narrating to himself the content of his dreams, and his dreams were more like lucid thoughts, and when he woke he felt like he had not been asleep. At other times he would not sleep at all but lie relaxed and sentient, like now. Aware of the grass and the sun and the wind and his own heartbeat, and all of this awareness floating on his warm, soft breath. Then he would let his mind wander, dreamlike and comforting. His breathing slowed. He heard his own heartbeat like a baby hears its mother's.
I did it, Benson.
It was me.
I know.
An hour later he was sitting on the step listening to the shipping forecast on his wind-up radio.

 

Part 4 ...

My room faces the sun in the morning and on clear summer mornings it wakes me bright and fresh, no matter what time I stayed up till; I'll get up and make breakfast, watch TV, have a shower. If it's before six in the morning I usually have a cup of tea and go back to bed where I'll doze until seven and wake with a thick head.
If I stay at my sister's I sleep until the kids wake me or until she comes rolling in, poured from the back of some taxi, whichever is earlier. I'm an early riser, and a dead sleeper.
This morning I wake up wake a twitch, like the alarm clock in my head has given me a little electric jolt; it isn't sunny outside, I pull back the curtains and the sky is dark grey, the same colour as the sea, and it looks like the sun won't appear before tomorrow.
I get up and go downstairs; the hall clock tells me it is almost six thirty . I make tea and toast, pour cereal and milk into a bowl, put it all on a tray and take it back up to my bed.
My brother gets up for work and I hear him crashing about in the bathroom so I go downstairs to make him a cup of tea. He's down in the kitchen about five minutes later, wearing his work clothes, eyes mostly closed against the morning, hair either sticking up where it shouldn't, or plastered down by a night against the pillow. He sleeps on his left side mostly, he has creases on the left side of his face and the hair on that side of his head is the most out of order.
‘Morning.' I say.
‘Uh huh.'
I leave him to work out what he is going to eat and go back to my room where I finish my tea and toast, turn on the radio and get back beneath the quilt. Sometimes I like to think and other times I like to dash straight in.
This morning I want to think a while.
Today is dad's birthday. Mam won't mention it. My brother might though, just to cause a row, so I'll keep him sweet when he comes in from work.

Every year on my dad's birthday I draw a picture of him; each year he looks a bit different.
I'm an artist. There, I said it. It's not that I draw a straighter line or a truer circle, as they try to teach us to do at school. I just get the message across more clearly than other people. More truthfully. 
I read a lot of books too, mainly about artists, and I go through phases when I like a certain artist or school of art. And I try to paint like them.

When my dad comes back I'll be able to say ‘this is you when I was twelve and I was in love with Monet' or ‘this is you on your thirty-eighth birthday, when I was fourteen, and you'd been gone six years, and I wanted to paint like Dante Gabriel Rossetti.'
And he'll look at each painting and know that I loved him and never forgot him.
Last year I printed slogans onto t-shirts, AgitProp, my art teacher told me, well, he said, sort of, and I sold most of them at school, some I persuaded Kendra to sell for me. The guy on the beach wears some.

At the moment though I'm into simple lines, a development from my six month obsession with calligraphy, which came out of a phase I had with cartoons, which came from Liechtenstein and Warhol, and so on all the way back.
So I get out my charcoals, and a couple of stick of chalk, and I pin a heavy sheet of grey A3 paper onto a board and rest it on my knee as I sit on the bed.

On Saturday mornings when my mam worked, dad would take me to town and I'd drag him around the art shops. On my eighth birthday he bought me an easel, a real one, not a kiddies. On my ninth birthday he bought me oils.
On my sixth birthday he bought me a box of 99 crayons.
‘Draw me,' he'd say.
‘Aw dad, I can't.'
Some mornings I'd wake up and there'd be a book on my pillow about Picasso, or Chagall.

I should go to school, I really should. I'm not one of those kids who are scared to go; I'm not phobic or anything. I don't get bullied and I'm not thick. I just can't find a good reason to waste my day in a classroom studying physics or citizenship or Buddhism. I could learn that shit in a library. Phil, the head of year eleven will bollock me for it tomorrow, if I go in.
In a month I've got my exams.
We made a deal, I promised I'd go in and he said he'd square it with the EWO. I'll tell Phil the truth, it was my dad's birthday and I spent it with him.

So I spend some time thinking about his hair, which I think is probably no more grey than it was last year; I know hair doesn't age at the same speed every year, but I make his hair longer this year. And in my mind's eye I give him an extra few pounds too. But I keep the smile fixed in my head, maybe a little muted, like it is when he's happy but distracted, or trying to understand me when I'm babbling to him.
It's a head and shoulders sketch, so I'll put him in a t-shirt that shows his neck and throat and how strong he is and how his eyes sparkle and how his brows are dead level straight and still black. I try to think of how much I want to show and how much I want to tell.

Then I pick up a charcoal stick and do it.
I pick up a chalk to add a suggestion of colour to his eyes, then another chalk for his mouth.
And there he is.
Dad.
There you are.
*          *

4 am
Millie trots along the coastal path carrying a rabbit doe in her mouth. In the darkness Millie's red fur is a soft inkspot of black. The doe in her mouth is still warm, neck broken, bleeding slightly from her nose and ears.
The wind picks up and Millie finds a sheltered spot and drops the doe onto the ground, licking at the blood on its face. After a few minutes the squall dies away as suddenly as it appeared. Millie picks up the doe and trots toward home.

5.15 am
In the All-Nite Breakfast Café, - open 5am til late - the lights are on, and proprietor Rene Mustard is in the kitchen.
The only customer is Brother Gavin, leading light of the Murton Beach Spiritualist Society. He is reading an old copy of Spiritualist Today! and chewing on a fried egg sandwich. He wipes the yolk from his chin with a finger, and then licks his finger.
Then he turns the page to the small ads: Cleopatra speaks. Dead child gives financial advice. PA system for hire. Elvis is dead. If you can read this then you too can speak to the departed. First issues comes with free binder.
Rene is listening to the radio as she prepares food. The water boiler hisses and burbles. She doubts that anyone else will come in much before six but, out of habit, she is always ready with the tide.
‘Another couple of slices, Gavin?'
He nods, still chewing, and raises three fingers as he scans the magazine, and she puts the frying pan back on the gas flame and drops in three rashers of bacon and a knife edge of lard.
Eleven houses further along from the café, Shirley Hodges, secretary of the Murton Beach Spiritualist Society (motto Keep in Touch) tosses uneasily in her sleep.
‘Brother Gavin?' she murmurs, reaching for him across an empty bed.
Moonlight shines on the ruined walls of Murton Abbey. Scratched into one of the granite foundation blocks, the words Tom Watt 1707.
In the old chapel overlooking the harbour, Joey Ballantyne sits on his mattress, long hair covering his face like curtains, eyes dilated, staring into the still moonlit blackness that lies across the darkened wood of the pews. His breathing is slow and deep. He is young and healthy; a thirtieth-generation border thief; restless, and wired.
He has appetites. He has energy to spare. He has three months to live.

5.45 am
The fisherman, Joe Taylor stands, at the window of his bedroom, staring out across the ocean toward the moon, gauging the waves and the wind and the chances that any fish are left swimming in the sea.
His sea.
His face is weathered, granite, impassive.
‘Come back to bed Joe,' his wife murmurs.
‘Go back to sleep, Nan ,' Joe replies softly and picks up his work clothes from the back of a chair. He dresses quickly and quietly and then goes downstairs and quietly lets himself out onto the front street. He walks the hundred yards to the Breakfast Café.
‘Morning Joe,' Rene greets him from the kitchen. The radio is playing hits from the sixties and seventies.
‘Morning Rene,' he replies with his grin, then nods at Gavin.
‘Going out?’ Rene asks.
Joe shakes his head, ‘No point.’
‘Breakfast then?’
He nods.

6.15 am
Maddy Garvey wakes from a deep and satisfying sleep during which she dreamed of the fair-haired boy who lives on the beach. She decides to call Dunbar and find out more about him.

Three miles away, that same fair-haired boy stands on the lip of the headland watching moonlight dance across the waves.  He sees a satellite drifting across the sky toward the dawn.  He stretches, arms raised to the sky, reaching out for a hollowness that envelopes him. Millie is lying a few feet away chewing on the rabbit carcass. When St. Claire goes returns to the caravan Millie picks up the doe and follows him.
*          *

He woke early, troubled, with some vague thought or problem he couldn't identify, never mind resolve; he went outside and worked on his garden plot. He was growing tomatoes beneath clear plastic sheeting, and garlic bulbs and runner beans. He'd checked his copy of The Small Gardener, chapter 4, entitled What can you grow here, then? And sure enough, it said that these were hardy enough for most conditions. Fifty yards from the North Sea would be easy then, he'd thought. And so it was proving.  Despite this, even after a couple of hours of tending and weeding and watering, he still could not get rid of the vague nagging sensation of something unresolved. He cleaned off his trowel and put it back into the brick shed. Straightening up to stretch his back he went back into the caravan to make tea.

Later, sitting on the step drinking tea, listening to the World Service, he knew that he needed to shed some part of his life; get rid of something. Apart from the caravan and the dog, he had little left. Only the bike.

He stepped out into the bright cool day and pulled off his t-shirt, dropping it onto the grass, and got washed under the standpipe, rinsing his hair, scrubbing his face with the palms of his hands. Then he washed his armpits, pulled off his pants and washed his crotch. He picked up his t-shirt and used it to towel himself dry standing on the damp grass.
An hour later he was in his leathers, straddling the bike, starting it up. He revved it a couple of times to heat up the oil and the steel. He pulled away from the caravan and rode down the coastal path to the old fence. When he reached the road, he took a right turn before Murton Beach and rode the B306 for seven miles until it intersected with the motorway. The bike felt sweet and powerful beneath him and even the bends felt good on a machine that was usually reluctant to go anywhere except in a straight line.

He reached the city in good time, took the road to the Westgate, where the motorbike shops were, and he found a parking bay. He switched off the engine, popped up the visor on his helmet and stepped off. Ninety minutes later he handed over the keys, the papers, his leathers and helmet and left the motorcycle shop with £3000 in his pocket.
Walking back through town he realised that it was Spring, and warmer here than on the coast; he hadn't been in the city since the Autumn. His hair had grown long and the weather had bleached it to the colour of straw; he was twenty-five pounds lighter.  He slowed down, ambling, welcoming the city smells of diesel and grease and humanity; hearing the sounds of conversation, traffic, the clack of heels on pavement.
At a junction he paused, leaning against some railings, watching the pretty girls; an automatic reaction to being back in the city; he reached back into what he had once been and found it, surprisingly, still strong and vigorous. He laughed softly to himself. I need a girl, he thought, a warm, willing, laughing human girl. I need company.

In the city centre, walking through crowds in the old square he saw a group of skaters, long-haired, healthy faced, on their boards; they polished their moves, chatted with girls; they wore tattoos and loose black clothing, and some cruised around the square on BMX's. Rock music playing from a speaker stood on a plinth. At the far end of the square three Peruvians played on panpipes and a stand up bass. Bus engines roared and coughed diesel as they squeezed through narrow lanes.
The square trapped the sun and baulked the breeze and the girls wore tops that displayed their brown stomachs and their bare arms. One of the boarders nodded at him as he passed, ‘Hey,' he said.
He smiled back, ‘Hey' and then walked over to a bench to watch them. He was wearing worn jeans and old boots and one of Dunbar 's t-shirts that had a slogan on the front that read Easy is Right , and he was carrying a rucksack. He was twenty four years old and his hair was long.

He watched the boarders on their boards and their bikes, mellow people with angry music blasting from the plinth. He lifted his feet onto the bench and stretched out a little, the sun on his face.
‘Been travelling?'
He looked up; the kid stood one foot on a battered old board and smiled, ‘Been abroad? I mean, you’re looking well tanned.'
‘Yeah, thanks. No. I mean, I live up on the coast, near the beach. I just get out a lot.'
The kid sat down beside him, St. Claire pulled his feet toward his knees to give him space. ‘I thought I hadn't seen you here before.'
St. Claire dropped his rucksack onto the floor, sat up. ‘You all get here every day?'
‘Yeah, it's either this or go to college. Or become a phone monkey.'
Phone monkey. The phrase reminded him of Bayley; so sharp he felt it as a shudder, a tremble in his stomach.
‘You alright man?'
He smiled, ‘Yeah. Just a bit cold.'
The kid stamped on his board, it flipped up into his hand, he said, ‘If you're new in town, come to the Jamaica tonight. I'll buy you a drink.'
‘Thankyou,' St. Claire said.
‘We're going to Newquay tomorrow, so tonight's going to be a send off.'
The kid turned to watch a girl, he stared with some concentration; she had flat brown hair and a flat brown stomach. She had a tattoo on her shoulder, a bird, a crane. As she passed, St. Claire saw she had a smaller tattoo on her wrist, a fish, and that the heron was watching the fish.
‘Hey, Sushi,' the boy said.
‘Hello' she said, and glanced across at St. Claire before turning away with a flick of her hair. The kid turned and smiled wryly at St. Claire, stood and said, ‘Well, I gotta go and board.'
St. Claire nodded.

He watched the boarders and the girls. He watched the people as they passed. He stretched out on the bench again, rested his head on his habelsac and just watched. His eyes closed.
Bayley, he thought.
She had chestnut hair that hung between her shoulder blades and hazel eyes that glittered when a thought moved her or when passion took her.
*          *

The solicitor had been brief, ‘All of Mr. Benson's estate went to his girlfriend and their children, apart from the deeds to this building.
He held out a sheaf of papers. ‘These are yours, Mr. St. Claire’.

St. Claire pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket. The paper was soft and old, the address barely visible. The building was a two-storey concrete prefab near the quayside, originally a garage, then Benson’s dojo. Now, what? He wasn’t sure as he stood outside? The double doors were ajar so he stepped through. Inside was a large open space, big enough for eight or ten cars, it was gloomy, pierced by shafts of sunlight, and the smell of oil and paint. Dark stains on the concrete floor.
‘Hello?' he said.
‘Hello? Who's that?' came the reply.
St. Claire walked toward the voice. In the corner of the room stood a figure. St. Claire peered through the shadows to see someone standing amongst large canvas sheets. ‘Hiya,' he said.
‘Do I know you?'
St. Claire shook his head.
‘You're trespassing.'
St. Claire said, ‘I own this place.'
‘Oh.'
‘It's alright, I'm just popping in to see what's going on.'
‘I pay my rent.'
‘Sure. I'm just checking the place over.'
The voice said, ‘You really the owner?'
‘Yeah.' St. Claire went to the offices at the side of the central open space. He looked inside; they’d been converted into living accommodation. He climbed the concrete steps to the second floor, two more rooms. The same, he guessed, at the opposite side of the building.
When he came back down the stairs he saw man behind the voice, his size, maybe a bit older, dark-haired. He walked over and held out his hand, ‘Hi. I'm St. Claire.'
The older man shook his hand, ‘Steven.'
St. Claire looked around, looked at the canvases, ‘These yours?'
Steven said, ‘I'm a sailmaker. These are repairs. This one, I'm painting team colours on it. That one, it's going to be a theatre fly. Small theatre.'
St. Claire nodded.
Steven said, ‘I was thinking of doing the place up a bit, making some repairs to the roof. I've done some already, fixed the skylights, and re-hung the doors.'
St. Claire tuned out as he tried to recall the memory of Benson's dojo, here, where they stood, but he couldn’t. He said, ‘Sure, why not? Let me know when you've done all the jobs, I'll give you some time rent free.'
‘Great. Yeah.' Steven smiled broadly, ‘Where will I contact you?'
St. Claire frowned, then took out his journal from the habelsac, tore a page out and wrote down the address for Dunbar 's shop. ‘You can get me here,’ he said, handing him the slip.
Then he asked, ‘Does anyone else live here?'
‘No. My girlfriend stayed for a while, but she's gone now.'
St. Claire thought for a moment; ‘I'd be grateful if did the place up a bit,' he said, looking around, seeing the dust rising through sunlit columns, ‘I'm fond of it.'

He hitched a lift that left him thirty miles short of home; he felt drawn and tired, and the sun was failing. He walked until it was dark and he was exhausted, then he found the corner of a field beneath a hedge, opened and drank a bottle of Pepsi, unwrapped his sleeping bag and lay down. He slept soundly until dawn.

He hitched another lift that left him about seven miles to walk home. In the morning light, beginning to recognise the landscape again, he felt a weight lifting; he felt connected again. He walked along the dusty edge of a deserted road, between barley fields and rapeseed fields and fallow fields. To the north he could see the dark edge of the nursery forests and the scriven hills of Scotch Gap. He could hear the distant chug of a John Deere. He saw an airliner chalk a white line across the sky.
Someone was lying in the road ahead of him.

‘I knew I should have nicked a car,' the boy spoke with a muffled lisp, through bruise-blackened lips. ‘I was walking home and this car stopped and I thought it was going to give me a lift.'
He sobbed, body jerking.
‘Lie still for a moment,' St. Claire checked him over for breaks and injuries, expertly running his fingertips along his arms and legs. Finding nothing obviously broken he looked at the boys’ face, both eyes were swollen, the left almost closed. His nose was broken. Broken teeth showed through his cracked and swollen mouth as he spoke, ‘What you doing?'
‘Making sure you're OK.'
Something between a shudder and a sigh slid out, ‘I thought you were a Gaylord.'
‘Don't flatter yourself. Stay still.'
He ran his fingers along the youth's spine and neck. Nodded. Then he ran his fingertips over his head and around his jaw, ‘Hurt a lot?'
‘Yes,' he nodded, ‘They did me. Just for a laugh.'
St. Claire pressed his fingers onto his stomach, his ribs then he said, ‘Tender?'
‘Yeah.'
‘Any stabbing pains? Anything feel sick inside?'
‘No.'
‘Sit up.'
With St. Claire 's help the boy sat up. Then he pulled himself onto his knees and stood up.
‘Feel OK?'
‘No. I'm hurting all over.'
‘Nothing broken? Still no really sharp pains? Nothing tearing you up inside?'
‘I can walk,' he said, he gave a short laugh; ‘I just woke up. Dunno if it was the beer, or getting done over.’
‘You might have concussion.’
The boy stood, still shaking.
Come on then,' St. Claire said, ‘See how far we get.’
They set off, walking slowly. The youth said, ‘I seen you on your motorbike, before. Outside of Vera’s Deli.'
St. Claire nodded.
‘I'm Grebby.'
‘St. Claire.'
‘I know, I know. The hermit .' He continued talking, ‘The ones who did this to me, they stopped the car and came over to me, they were from Rainton. I should have ran. Straight off, I should have legged it.'
‘Can't outrun a car.'
‘Right. They asked me where I was going, and then they did me over.'
‘How far do you live?'
‘Murton Tip.'
‘That's about three miles.'
Grebby nodded, more aggrieved than in pain. ‘Those bastards nicked my phone. But there's a shop along here, I'll phone someone.'
‘Just walk slowly,’ St. Claire said.
The kid went on, ‘They left me in the road. I couldn't move; my head was spinning.'
‘You'll be fine.'
‘You ever been beaten up like this?'
St. Claire nodded, ‘Once or twice.'
‘It's shit, isn't it,' Grebby said, and he stopped walking, slowly bent double, heaving with the pain, and began to cry, softly. ‘Aww man. My stomach hurts.'
They found a stile. St. Claire said, ‘Sit on this, I'll jog along and phone for you. Give me the number.'
Grebby told him the number, he continued talking, needing to explain, ‘Then they came back and asked me if I was OK. And they dragged me off the road in case I got hit by a car. I said I was alright, so they said they hadn't done a good enough job and they gathered around me and did me again.’
‘Sit here, I'll be back soon,' St. Claire told him.
Grebby said, ‘No. I'll come, it's not far.'
‘Sure?'
Grebby nodded. ‘You live on the coast, right?'
St. Claire nodded.
‘Where's your motorbike?'
‘I sold it.'
Ten minutes later they reached a garage, and went inside. Grebby went to the payphone to call home. He put in two coins and dialed, then he glanced in the small mirror behind the phone and groaned, ‘Aww my face.' Then he groaned, said, ‘Where are my fucking teeth?'
He was crying as the call got through, ‘Mam? Mam? It's Philip, I've been done over mam, yeah I'm all right…' but he was sobbing as he spoke.
St. Claire tuned out of the conversation, he'd heard a few like that. He picked up a king-size Mars Bar from the rack, the woman at the counter asked him, ‘He's not going to collapse or anything, is he? I've got to do a balance before I go off shift.'
St. Claire shrugged, paid for the Mars Bar and then went outside.
Grebby followed him out a minute later. He said, ‘Want a lift home? Our Bobby is coming for me.'
‘No I'll walk. I can cut across the fields before the Tip.'
‘You live on the beach, right?' Grebby repeated, as though he couldn't quite believe that someone would do such a thing. He fingered the sharp stumps of his teeth. Then he grinned crookedly, a grimace, ‘I feel fucking terrible.'
‘You'll be fine. See a doctor,' St. Claire said, ‘Don't eat or drink ‘til you do. Go straight to the doctor’s surgery over on Murton Beach. Then when he's checked you out go and see a dentist. A couple of crowns, you'll be back to normal.'
‘Better,’ Grebby said. ‘They were all crooked before.' He sat down on the wall outside the garage. ‘I'll get those bastards.’
St. Claire said, ‘That’s just the hurt talking.’
‘I know their faces. I know where they're from. One on one. I'll do them all.'
‘Then what?' St. Claire asked.
‘Then nothing.'
‘I'd better get going then.'
Grebby said, ‘If you hadn't sold the bike I was planning on nicking it.'
‘It's gone now.'
‘I owe you one.'
‘See a doctor.'
St. Claire left him sitting on the wall alone, waiting for Bobby.
*           *
Dunbar grunted as he jerked on the metal shutters, they rolled down with a clatter and stopped with a clang. ‘You can tell when he's lying,' he said, ‘he rubs his left hand across his head.'
They stood and watched the crowd milling around the door of the chapel as he spoke. St. Claire nodded, ‘He's always doing that, Dunbar,' he said.
‘Well? That proves my point.’
They'd counted thirty or more entering already. ‘Nearly all fucking women,’ Dunbar observed.

Brother Gavin lived in a three-storey house on the seafront, overlooking the dock. He lived with three women. The chapel was next door. ‘He's got a harem.' Dunbar had told St. Claire shortly after they first met, ‘A coven. Sex-Witches for Christ !'
He repeated this phrase again to St. Claire; ‘Sisters for Christ and The Forward Spirit,' St. Claire corrected him, giving them their full title.
Dunbar turned the key, spat on the ground. St. Claire smiled, ‘I thought you two were pals.’
‘We are,’ Dunbar said, ‘I just can’t take him seriously’.
Brother Gavin and the sisters were part of an evangelist spiritualist movement called ‘The Forward Spirit' that had gained popularity in the area over the previous few years. Brother Gavin was one of the leading lights of this movement.
‘Forward Spirit!' Dunbar said. They watched Brother Gavin talking to a group of a half-dozen born-again spiritualists; Brother Gavin rubbed his left hand across his head a number of times as he spoke.
‘See?’ Dunbar noted.
‘I saw him rub his head with his right hand once,' St. Claire said.
‘Nah. For real?'
St. Claire nodded, ‘Right hand. True.'
Dunbar thought this over. Then he asked, ‘What do you think that signifies, Saint?'
St. Claire mused, ‘Left for lies … right for …'
‘Right for shite .'
St. Claire giggled, said, ‘Gavin's OK,' and he smiled wryly at Dunbar's sneer, ‘I might go to one of his meetings. See what all the fuss is about.'
Dunbar said, ‘Well if you get to the other side, and you come across my dad, tell him he's a thieving bastard.'
He slid the final bolt-lock into the shutter, slotted the key locked it. Then he slammed the shutters with the palm of his hand.
‘Feel better?' St. Claire asked.
‘Nice and secure.'
Dunbar didn't usually close until eleven, and he never closed if the shop was busy, and Kendra would re-open at half-five in time the morning papers. But tonight he was taking her for a meal. And it was almost eight.
‘Want a lift back?' he asked St. Claire.
‘You should be getting ready.'
‘What's to ready? I'm clean. I've got money.'
They turned to watch Brother Gavin greeting members of the Forward Spirit.
‘Look at that short stubbly bastard, conning the stupid public.'
‘He doesn't get money out of this, Dunbar .'
Dunbar squinted with one eye against the setting sun, ‘He must do.' Then he added, ‘Or maybe it's just the power. And all the shagging. Look at the women.'
True enough, Brother Gavin was now surrounded by about a dozen women, smartly dressed, of a certain age.
‘Fragrant fucking Gavin.'
‘Are you jealous, Dunbar ?'
Dunbar squinted again, ‘I just can't understand the logic, man! I mean, look at him. God's dwarf!'
From the midst of his congregation Gavin looked toward them and waved.
‘He knows his fucking name too,' Dunbar cackled.
Even at this distance they could see that Brother Gavin was perspiring. He rubbed his left hand across his head. Dunbar, chuckled to himself, reached into his pocket and took out the keys for the van, saying to St. Claire, ‘Come on. Jump in.'
St. Claire went to the other side and climbed in. As they drove away Dunbar stared into the rear-view mirror. ‘I don't understand the logic! What's he selling?'
*          *

The fairground pitches up in a field three miles north of Murton Tip. There are waltzers and a Ghost train, Shuggy Boats, dodgem cars, a rollercoaster, shooting stalls, coconut shies. The smell of burger vans and diesel generators. The pop and hiss of Pepsi cans, shrieks and laughter, loud music.

Villages from miles around empty as the locals congregate at the fair, flattening the grass beneath their feet, dropping litter; they mingle, talk, fight, flirt and play.
The fairground boys are practised sexual predators and swiftly move in on girls who shriek and giggle and look over their shoulders.
It is the May Fair and excitement is at its height.

In a nearby field someone has set up a sound system and teenagers dance and drink cheap wine and cider. The fair goes on all evening. All weekend. The days are lengthening.  A girl is wandering through the crowds, taking photographs. She is watching the fair and the crowds but is only distantly a part of it. Occasionally a friend will come up and chat with her, or she will pause to compose a photograph. The sky is black as it passes midnight and some of the fairground boys line up their cars, switch on their halogens spotlights.

The girl places the camera on a flat rock, sets the timer and takes a series pictures of herself among the boys and girls. People are dancing, talking, drinking; couples fade into the night to make love and then return to the music and their friends. By two in the morning the energy is dissipating, enthusiasm and passion dampen; people are drifting off in pairs and groups. The music is muted.

One group of girls and boys separate from the diminishing crowd and begin to walk along the coastal path towards home. The girl with the camera is one of them. The night is cold and she is wearing a borrowed jacket over her dress.
They are mostly drunk, or just tired and happy. They walk quietly, chatting, and at one point they stand around and wait while the girl with the camera takes a series of shots of the ocean and the stars.
The Eastern sky is fading from black to the deepest shade of blue.

‘Hurry up, Annie ,' Nil shouts, as they drift away impatiently. Somewhere close by a dog barks, greeting the coming dawn. By the time they reach the dunes, the boys are a little way ahead, talking amongst themselves.
‘What's up with them?' Annie asks.
Nil pauses to light a cigarette, inhales deeply and stares after the boys, but she says nothing.

A few minutes later the boys stop. Between them they’ve chosen one of the girls. The slender girl with masses of curling black hair. The one with the camera.
Annie. The camera means nothing to them. Just a laugh.
Beneath the old combat jacket she is wearing a pretty spring dress.
They’ve chosen her because they haven't chosen her before. As a group, they approach her, and then they lay her down and rape her.
The two other girls wait some yards away, chatting quietly, sharing a cigarette, and when each boy is finished they check to see if the girl is alright. 
Straighten her hair.
Soothe her.
Laughing, the last boy zips himself, then he bends over, picks up a handful of sand and throws it into the slender girl's face; ‘Bitch,' he says. Then he picks up the camera and throws it far into the dunes.
*          *

The chill air caused him to frown.
He was standing on a low, crumbling cliff-edge, staring down at the figure standing motionless in the ocean, waves tumbling about her breasts and waist, splashing at her throat.
If she goes under I'll bring her out, he thought.

He continued to watch her, as he'd watched her already for a half hour. He wondered how long she'd been standing in the water like that. The waves pushed her dress in billows around her chest. Her hair was plastered wet to her head, lifting away in damp curls.
He looked at the sky which was lightening from the East; the wind caught his own hair and threw it around. Then, without pausing to consider, he stepped down the cliffs and onto the sand, but still he did not go out to speak to her.

Then she turned her back on the horizon and looked at him, walked slowly out of the waves toward him, her clothes wetly sheeted across her. When she got to him she stopped, blinked heavy-lidded eyes and looked at him.
‘You're all wet,' he said.
‘I'm getting drier,' she said. The air moved across her and she shivered. ‘I got sexed,' she told him. ‘and I'm trying to get clean again.'
He nodded.
‘I don't know what to do,' she told him.
He stayed quiet, so then she asked, ‘Are you the hermit guy?'
He nodded again, ‘I suppose so.'
‘I thought you'd be older,' she said. ‘I've seen you already, outside of the deli, but I didn't know you were him.'
‘I’m him.’
She raised up a hand and gently touched his face, then she stepped back and pulled her dress over her head, began to ring it out, saying, ‘I need to dry this out,’ standing in front of him white-skinned and bare; thin-shouldered and hard nipples.
He took off his coat and she suffered him to put it around her shoulders.
‘I saw you too,' he said, then, ‘Come back to mine and I'll get you dry.'
She stiffened, ‘Are you going to sex me?'
No,' he told her.
She relaxed, nodded, slipped her arms into his jacket and held her dress loosely by her side; ‘I'll need to dry this,' she told him again, ‘and carefully. Or it will stretch out of shape.'
Her long skirt slopped wetly in her hand as they walked up the beach. She picked up an old green camo jacket that had lain on the rocks and wrapped it around her waist, kilt-like. Then they walked up to the path and along to his caravan. ‘This is like one of those dreams,' she said, conversationally, ‘you know, the ones where you don't have any clothes on,' and she laughed quietly to herself. ‘Cept it’s real.’

Millie was sleeping underneath but she woke as they approached and trotted toward them, circling the girl warily. He unlocked the door and let the girl in first, taking care to keep a very curious Millie out with his foot. He went to a cupboard and took out his best towel and gave it to her. ‘Give me your wet clothes,' he told her.
‘There's only my dress.'
‘I'll dry it for you. I've got jeans and a t-shirt you can borrow.' He went outside, rinsed the cotton dress under the standpipe, then carefully wrung it by hand before pinning it onto the short washing line that he kept strung between the caravan and the brick shed.
Then he went back inside and she was asleep, lying on his bed, wearing his jeans and t-shirt. Quietly he unrolled the quilt over her and then went outside to sit with Millie.

She woke up about half-past ten and went to the door to find him sitting outside. ‘Do you want to come into the bed with me?' she asked him. ‘I don't want to sleep alone.'
He nodded and followed her back inside. She drew the curtains and turned to look at him, gave a short sigh, and pulled off the jeans. Then she got beneath the covers of his bed. He paused to take off his boots and then climbed in beside her, still clothed. Awkwardly he moved closer to her. She turned onto her side to accommodate him, to face him, eyes inches from his, lips almost touching. Reaching up, her fingertips traced his jaw, his crooked nose, his throat.
He relaxed slowly, sensing her need struggling to overcome her fear.  She gave him the slightest of wry smiles, ‘Is this our first date?'
His slow smile warmed her, and she closed her eyes, pushing her head against his chest, wrapping an arm over his waist.
‘Sshh,' he whispered.

‘I haven't got it. What can I say? Business is poor. Quiet'
Moose spoke fast, his voice was nervy, a little aggressive, ‘Summer, and all that. People are abroad, in Ibiza or Crete or the Costa Del Crime.'
‘The thing is, Moose,' St. Claire said, ignoring the comments, ‘The thing is, you owe me.'
Then Moose began to get brave, he looked up into St. Claire's eyes, smiled and said, ‘Anyway… what you gonna do? You don't scare me. What you gonna do? he repeated, ‘I boxed for eight years.' He looked around the office, ‘There's no one else in here. Just you and me. You should be scared, not me, I'll punch your fucking head off.'
Benson walked into the room a couple of minutes later, looked at St. Claire, who had Moose face down on the floor in a bone-crunching elbow lock.
‘How are the negotiations?'
‘I think we're about to reach an accord,' St. Claire said.

About lunchtime he woke to find her whispering softly in her half-sleep. She woke too, embarrassed, ‘I talk in my sleep,' she told him, but he just held her gently and afterwards she slept again.  A couple of hours later he rose quietly and made them some food to eat. While the water was heating up he sliced the single green pepper and then he chopped up a hard-boiled egg. He flicked salt into the water. He pushed the egg and pepper to one side of the board and then diced two small red onions, cutting them in turn; first one way and then the other so that each collapsed into a rounded heap of tiny cubes; some red, some white, some pink. The water came to the boil and he tipped in a cup of white rice and then a tablespoon of brown that he ladled out of a bowl. The boiling subsided and the rice sunk firmly to the bottom of the pan. He stirred it a couple of times.
He put the kettle onto the other gas ring and lit it.

She woke, rubbed her eyes, stretched like a cat and then sat up, watching him.
He put two spoonfuls of green tea leaves into the teapot, and then stood two small mugs beside it. Then he stirred the rice as the water heated again. He leaned down and opened the fridge door to take out a small chunk of hard white cheese. He sliced a third of this off and replaced the rest. This smaller chunk of cheese he chopped into long thin slices.
Hearing her stir, he turned to check on her.
‘Hello,' she said.
‘It'll be about ten minutes.'
‘I'm not very hungry.'
He shrugged a little, ‘It's not much. I'll make a cup of tea first. Then see how you feel.'
‘Alright.'
She asked, looking over her fork between mouthfuls. ‘Is there any more?' but he was already stepping out of the caravan and her words were stillborn. So she ate the last of the bread and then drank the tea.
An hour later he’d rigged up an open fire in the crook of the low wall and her dress, still hanging on the line, moved in the breeze nearby.
She sat on the deckchair watching him. She looked down at his t-shirt she was wearing. ‘This is one of mine,' she told him.
He looked puzzled.
‘I printed them last year. I did about fifty.'
‘I bought ten of them,' he said.
She said, ‘See? Already we have history.'
He said, ‘Maybe you should see a doctor.'
‘I'll see Doctor Saiid when I go to the Beach.' She said, ‘I should be at work,' and she glanced at her bare wrist. ‘Do you know the time?'
He said, ‘Almost four.'
She looked for his watch, couldn’t see it on his wrist. She said, ‘Would it be alright if I kept these on and came back for my dress later?'
‘Yeah.'
He sat down on the grass beside her. ‘I'll walk you along.' She nodded, rested her hand on his shoulder. She thought about the whole day, and the night before. She felt sick, and angry.
She told him, ‘I think I'm supposed to feel things …But I don't know.'
He nodded, but stayed quiet.
‘I don't think I feel enough. I'm scared it will make me hard.'
She said, ‘Can I tell you what happened? All of it?'
‘Yes.'
He listened as she spoke and, afterwards, he stayed quiet until he was sure she wasn't going to say any more. She shivered.
He stood up, ‘You can borrow my coat.'
She took hold of his arm, gripped it tight. ‘I'm sixteen,' she said to him, ‘last night I was raped four times. Then I stood in the sea and I thought I was going to die. I've spent all day with sleeping in a bed with someone I never met before. You. A hermit.' She took a breath, laughed a small sigh, ‘I'm somewhere between a whore and a dolphin.'
He leaned across and held her tight while she cried.
An hour later they were walking into Murton Beach , a sun-streaked evening sky at their shoulder.
The bell above the door rang; Kendra, standing behind the counter shot a glance toward Dunbar as he flicked through the soft-porn mags. He looked toward the door, ‘Hey, people,' he said as a greeting.
St. Claire said to Annie, ‘I'll leave you here?' and she nodded.
‘Are you buying?' Dunbar asked, as he turned to leave.
St. Claire paused, then shook his head and left the shop. The bell above the door rang as it shut.
*           *

Following an overnight storm St. Claire discovered that the cove had been covered in a layer of driftwood. He dragged the driftwood up from the beach to the caravan, piece by piece, and then and used a bow saw that hung in the brick shed to cut it up for firewood. Moved by some frantic impulse, he worked for twenty-four hours without stopping, dragging and cutting, dragging and cutting. Some of the bits of trees that he rescued still had their bark and this chewed up under the saw blades forcing him to stop and clean the blades.

When he was finished, the horseshoe cove was cleared and there was a pile of drying wood five foot across and three foot high between his caravan and the low brick wall. He swept up the chippings and the sawdust and kept that in a bucket in the shed.
 
The nights were getting warmer but the breeze still cut through his t-shirt. He wondered if the driftwood would burn.  He took his spade and cut a small square of turf from the ground. He put the turf to one side. He packed the bare earth with his feet and laid three or four sheets of newspaper on the flattened soil. Then he took some of the sawdust and woodchips from the shed and laid it in a flat mound on the newsprint. He surrounded this loose mix with tiny splinters of wood and then laid twigs across the mound in a lattice pattern.
He roofed this lattice with larger splinters and some rolled up newsprint. Then he split some small pieces of driftwood with his axe and tepee’d them around the structure. He went away and came back with a box of matches.
Ten minutes and he had a small, hungry fire burning. This grew and he tended it and kept it going all evening and it warmed the air enough so that when he was ready for sleep he unrolled his sleeping bag and lay down next to the fire.

Benson said ‘I think I need to sit down. My legs are going.'
It took him eleven minutes to bleed out.
St. Claire was with him.
He got to the top of the stairs, ‘I fucked up, Saint.'
The music had stopped. People had ceased to be. Saint half carried, half-dragged him into the office; he was a big guy. Someone screamed, silently, Saint helped him lean against the desk and tenderly held his hand to the wound in Benson's stomach.
‘I think I need to sit down. My legs are going.'
His face was whey-white and his breathing was shallow and fast. ‘Don't go into shock, Bense,' St.Claire told him, face close to Benson's head, hand cradling his friend's stomach. ‘An ambulance is coming. Slow your breathing down.'
A thin, black, watery trail of blood ran from Benson's stomach to the floor. He looked at it and said, ‘My liver.'
‘You'll do.' St. Claire told him.
‘Aye.'
‘It's not bad.'
It was bad.
‘What would you know Saint? You don't even shave yet. Face like a baby's bottom.'
‘Who did it?'
‘No one. Some junkie I threw out.'
‘It'll be on film.'
‘I'm not dead yet.'
But he was a dead man, St. Claire could see that. Benson's stomach had gone slack against his cupped hand; he'd wet his pants and the steam reached Saint's face.
What do I do?
‘I'm not dead,' Benson repeated. He looked at St. Claire, ‘Who's on the door? If the guys leave the door there'll be chaos.'
‘It's done,' St. Claire whispered.
Benson's back arched softly, his stomach cramping, his intestines pushing against St. Claire's hand. The blackening blood pumped warmly through his fingers and pooled on the floor at his feet.
Benson had eyes the colour of tree bark.
‘What should I do?' St. Claire asked.
Benson said, ‘I'm never going to get that villa in Spain, boy.'
‘Don't get maudlin.'
‘No revenge.' Benson murmured, ‘Live well.'
‘You're not dead yet.'
Someone came in and said ‘The ambulance is three minutes away,' and St. Claire screamed at him to leave the room.
While he was screaming, Benson's heart stopped and St. Claire didn't notice.
What do I do?
Benson's head rolled back on the chair and his body slid heavily toward the floor. As he struggled to keep him sitting in the chair, St. Claire asked Benson, ‘What should I do?' and then Benson was too big, too heavy and he had to let him go, cradling his head so that he would not be injured.
‘There,' St. Claire whispered, setting the back of Benson's head against the carpet, ‘There. You'll be alright.'
Then the paramedics came in, they began performing CPR.
‘How long has his heart stopped?'
‘What?' St. Claire said.
‘What?'
The other one unfolded a stretcher and they took Benson away, still performing CPR as they went.
St. Claire sat on the desk in the office. People spoke but he didn't hear them. Uniforms. Dance music.
Girls.
Benson saying to him, ‘Take the pain, Saint!' as they sashayed past; perfume, hair all done, swinging their hips.'
St. Claire sat on the desk in the office, chewing absently at the blood that crusted beneath his fingernails.
*           *

The next morning the fire had died to an ember but he raked it and poured on more of the woodchip mix and some small shards of driftwood until it regained life. The wind had picked up and this helped the flames, and he spent most of the morning sat on a deckchair in his trainers, shorts and his reefer jacket warmed by and tending to the fire. He took his wind up radio from the caravan and set it down at the side of his deckchair. Listening to things going on, listening to music.
He thought, hmmm.
This place, he thought, I never planned ahead. I just came here to see what happened. I never planned to stay.
The wind brushed against his shins and his thighs and his face and the bare tops of his feet.

It was me.
It was my idea.
I know.
Dealer pimps. I invented it. Formalised it. I arranged the bids. The contracts. Negotiated the price. I collected debts, arranged retribution.
I know.

As the sun sat midway in the western sky he was cooking a small pan of baked beans in tomato sauce on the naked flames. He had rigged two cross spars at either end of the fire, hammering them into the earth, and setting an old half-broom shank between them he hung a full kettle of cold water above the flames to boil. As the beans simmered and the water boiled he tore apart four small bread rolls, spiked them on a fork and held them across the flames to toast. He paused only to wind up his radio again.

I told them to hurt you.
I know.
I didn’t mean for you to die.
I know.
You were just in the way. You were getting moral.
I had kids.
I just wanted you to back off a bit. You know?
It’s ok.
I killed him, after. That kid with the knife. He went too far. I killed him for you Bense.
No.
 No you didn’t.

 

Part 5 ...

‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Come and sit down.’
She sat and talked with him for a while; they drank tea, chatted about her life, her plans and her dreams.
He said, ‘Draw me.’
‘Ok,’ she said, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’ and the next day she brought a sketch pad and pencils.
She drew him.
‘I want to be a painter’, she said glancing over the top of her pad at him, scratching away with her pencil.
‘I am a painter’, she said, tearing up the sheet and starting again.
‘I'll need to get somewhere to stay, and get a job to pay my way,' she told him, a little frown across her brow.
‘You can get loans and stuff?'
‘Too young,’ she told him, ‘But I'll work it out.'
She started to sketch again;’ him, the scenery, the beach.
The sky.
Him.
Daily, she would come to his home and draw him.
She asked him things as he sat for her. Sometimes he'd open up, suddenly, briefly, with a memory or a thought.
‘You're too serious,' she told him. ‘I'll tell you a joke,' and she told him a rude one that made him laugh. Then she said, ‘Tell me a joke.'
He said, ‘I don't know any.'
‘Go on. Tell me something funny that has happened to you'
He frowned, ‘I can't just entertain you with flotsam and jetsam from my life.' But then he thought for a few seconds, ‘Alright,' he said. ‘I've got one. Ready?'
She leaned forward, nodding;
‘There was this kid called Tinmouth, yeah, his real name, Tinmouth, huh. Anyway, he used to come to the club on a Thursday night. He said he had titanium knees. He was always going on about his titanium knees.'
‘Is this a true story?'
‘Everything's a true story. Now listen.'
She nodded, mute.
‘He used to get the doormen to kick him in the knees, said he couldn't feel pain ‘cos his knees had been built using titanium.'
He looked at her to see if she understood. She nodded.
‘We'd give him a kick, or tap him with one of the telescopic coshes we kept under the counter at the front door.'
‘Classy.'
She glanced down at her sketch pad, still listening.
‘Shhh. He was nuts. He had one of those crazy faces. Mental teeth. But he was nice too. Sweet as. Titanium knees, huh. We'd humour him.'
She waited for the punchline, pencil hovering above the paper.
‘One Thursday night he was showing off his knees to these guys in the club, like he always did. He was on the dancefloor, crazy-dancing, bouncing up and down on his knees. Titanium.'
‘You said that.'
He nodded, ‘He was very drunk, excited ‘cos these guys were taking an interest. They were kicking his knees. But then, somehow, I dunno, it went a bit far; he musta took something; dropped some acid maybe, or a couple of E’s; one of the lads persuaded him to jump out of a window, one of the windows in the toilets at the back of the club, and to land on his knees, to prove how tough they were.'
‘Ouch.' She said. ‘Was he injured?'
St. Claire said, ‘Third floor window.'
She sat for a moment, waiting for the punchline. She tore the sheet from the pad, crumpled it up and threw it into the pile with the rest of her attempts.
‘Don’t you keep any of your sketches?’
‘I’ve kept three of them.’
‘You drawn me about thirty times.’
‘Twenty eight times. Finish the story.’ 
‘It’s finished. That was it,' he said.
‘That was it ? It can't be it !' Then she said, ‘Well how was he? Tinmouth, I mean? How was he?'
St. Claire said, ‘Smashed.'

They were driving along a farm road about six miles north of the caravan. Dunbar spun the wheel and the van lurched onto a dirt track, he slowed the van to a halt. ‘See over there?' he pointed to low hillocks on the horizon.
St. Claire nodded.
‘When the pits all closed they used EU money to landscape it. The Duke, the guy who owns most of the land round here, he got them to landscape the slag heaps at Murton Tip too.'
‘Is that a good thing?'
Dunbar balanced the pros and cons in his mind, ‘Well, it looks a lot better now. Ten years ago it was all black around here. The beaches were black with sea coal.' He put the engine into gear and pulled away. ‘The Duke lives in a castle,' he said. ‘About eight miles over that way.'
‘So where are we going?'
Dunbar said, ‘You'll see.' Then added, ‘There's a boat-burning next month, maybe, with a party at the Big Club, over at the Tip.' He glanced across at St. Claire. ‘It's a tradition. All the boats are getting burned off. The fishermen get a cash lump sum from Brussels to stop fishing. We burn the boat. We get drunk and have a party. Sound systems, hot-dog vans; barricade off the whole of the Tip. No Police, no nothing. You need to apply for a fucking visa to get into Murton when we do a boat burning.'
‘Is that allowed?'
‘They've been doing it since the eighties.'
‘Burning boats?'
‘Barricading the village.'
He wound down the window and spat onto the turf at the edge of the track, ‘A thousand years on, and the fucking Normans are still giving us shit.'
St. Claire remained silent.
A few minutes of silence were broken when Dunbar said, ‘Couple of people been in the village, last couple of months, looking for newcomers. Looking for a bloke, they say, mid-twenties, fair hair. Fit looking.’
St. Claire looked out of the window. He said, ‘What were these people like?’
‘Villains, I’d guess. Cropped hair, stocky types; expensive cars. Thugs.’
‘You seen any faired-haired blokes, new to the area?’ St. Claire asked.
‘I asked myself the same question, just a second or two after I was asked it myself.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. There’s no-one new in Murton Beach.’ He smiled, then said, ‘You know what the continental shelf is?’
‘No.’
‘Well, this whole country sits on it, but if you go about twenty miles out to sea, there’s a sort of underwater cliff edge where the depth of the sea goes from sixty metres or so, to maybe a mile and a half.  Just drops away.’
St Claire breathed deeply.
Dunbar said, ‘About four years ago there was an evil villain moved into Murton Tip, was dealing crack to the young’uns. The Tip is full of young’uns who’ll try any drug going. A ready market, you might say. But one day, about six weeks after he arrived, this villain, he just disappeared.’
St. Claire looked at Dunbar.
Dunbar said, ‘I heard that a couple of local fellows paid him a visit one morning, at the point of a shotgun, then they kicked him unconscious, rolled him in his own carpet, rolled the carpet in twenty kilo’s of chicken wire, took him out on a boat and, when he came round, they explained to him just how deep the continental shelf was. He was hanging from the boom arm, over he side of the boat. Then they took him back to dry land, put him on a bus and sent him on his way.’
‘And he stayed away?’
‘Aah, that’s where the story gets a bit vague. Some people reckon he returned.’
‘And?’
Dunbar shook his head; ‘If he did return, he was never seen again, that’s for sure.’
‘They dropped him over the edge of the shelf this time?’
Dunbar grinned, ‘Dunno. But that’s the rumour.’
‘So what happens if these guys return, looking for this bloke in his mid-twenties?’
‘If they become a nuisance, reckon we’ll roll out the chicken wire for ‘em,’ Dunbar said, dropping a gear.
They followed the track as it narrowed between lanes of fir trees. Dunbar said, ‘My band is playing at the party.'
He slowed and turned carefully onto a footpath so narrow that the van was scraping branches on both sides; driving in first gear they crawled along the path for about ten minutes.
Dunbar said, ‘If I left you here you'd get lost. You might never get found.'
St. Claire stared into the trees. ‘Isn't there supposed to be a big cat around here somewhere?'
‘I heard that. Some of the hill farmers reckon there's one about six-mile inland, taking the sheep. Took a couple of dogs, too.'
St. Claire stared into the trees with wide eyes, straining to see into the darkness. ‘This'd be the place to hide out.'
The path petered out at a small clearing. ‘We're here.'
‘Is this where you sacrifice me to Odin?'
Dunbar smiled. He said, ‘I'm building a Henge.'
He opened the door and climbed out, went around the back and unlocked the van's rear doors. ‘Come out here. Have a look.'
‘I'm looking for a wicker man,' St. Claire said dubiously, but followed him out to the back of the van.
‘Naah. You're safe. This is The Heaven Field,' Dunbar told him, stamping his feet on the ground, ‘Beneath the trees.'
‘The what?'
‘It's a battle site. An ancient battle. The old king was a pagan, and he was promised victory by the Christian monks if he would agree to convert his whole kingdom. And he won, and he converted to Christianity. So they called the battlefield The Heaven Field because it's where the people in this part of the world found the gates to eternal life.'
He said, ‘And now they've turned it into a nursery for pine trees.' Gazing around, he said, ‘You used to be able to come up here with a metal detector, find arrow heads, pieces of swords and stuff. About fifteen years ago someone found a skull. It had a hole straight through both temples. Arrow shot.' Then he said, ‘I reckon the monks were telling the king on both sides the same thing. Then either way the winner would convert.' He fished in a hip pocket and handed St. Claire a sheet of paper. On the paper was a diagram.
‘What do you think?'
St. Claire shrugged, nonplussed.
Dunbar leaned across him, finger pointing, ‘Look, this is the basic shape. Two circles, see?'
‘Inner and outer.'
‘Right. The inner one is made up of eight points, the outer is made up of sixteen.'
‘With a line bisecting the two circles. Yeah, I see.'
‘This line points to the North Star.'
Dunbar folded the paper, shoved it into a gap in the door frame.'
‘What do you use for the points?'
‘Look.' Dunbar unfolded the felt blanket lengthways and then across. Then he pulled back the last fold. A polished block. Specks of white danced like stars deep inside the midnight blue black of the marble. ‘Italian. Seven feet long, three and a half wide. Six inches thick. Shaped and cut to my specifications.' He looked at St. Claire, ‘Don't tell anyone about this shit. They'll think I'm mad.'
‘You are mad. What does it all mean?'
Dunbar said, ‘This was a plantation forest; the Duke owns it. But about eight years ago someone put a preservation order on the whole area. Nothing can be cut, demolished, or built even, forever. When I heard about that I thought I'd build a Henge.'
St. Claire shook his head, bemused. ‘You're a mentalist.'
‘Are you speaking in your former capacity as drug dealer and man of violence,' Dunbar asked solemnly, ‘or in your most recent, and may I add, fooling-no-one, role of beach hermit and shallow thinker.'
St. Claire laughed.
‘That's what I thought.'
The marble lay on a pallet, which had been converted so that it had metal runners on the underside. Dunbar tugged it squeaking to the edge of the van. ‘I've had to drag the others from here by myself. Between us it should be easier.'
St. Claire took one side and Dunbar the other and they lifted and laid down the pallet and block. ‘Careful, it weighs a hundred and thirty kilo's.'
‘Now is too late to warn me,' St. Claire grunted with the weight. Dunbar climbed into the van, brought out a spade, a shovel and a towrope. St. Claire looked at the rope, looked at the pallet, asked Dunbar , ‘How far do we drag it?'
‘About fifty yards, so long as we don't get lost. There's a brook we follow, just over there.'
He laid the tools on top of the pallet, wrapped the roped underneath and hand one end to St. Claire.
‘Tell me about your band.'
‘I can't.'
Dunbar took the strain of the rope, St. Claire followed suit.
‘Why not?'
‘After we've dragged this ten or fifteen yards we won't be able to speak. Ready?'
St. Claire nodded.
‘HEEeeeeaaaave.'

‘I liked this t-shirt.' St. Claire pulled what was left of the right sleeve away from the stitching. Sturdy, well-worn, black, now mud-filthy and torn, it had the word Hubris written across the front. Across the back, up toward the shoulders, where mud didn't obscure it, in smaller type, was the word Nemesis .
St. Claire looked around and asked, ‘Are we reversing all the way back?'
Dunbar shook his head, then he looked round, studying the ground, ‘The forest has grown in since the last time I was here.'
‘We can do a three point turn.' St. Claire said.
‘Not even a forty three point turn.' Dunbar said, shaking his head. The front wheels were at the edge of the clearing. ‘I don't even have a bow saw, we could have cut down some of the younger trees.'  He frowned.
The sun had dipped below the level of the trees. He thought of the rumoured big cat and then looked at St. Claire. He said, ‘Well, about sixty five percent of the weight is in the front. We could lift it round in a circle.'
St. Claire let out a short, stifled laugh. He slammed shut the van doors, pulled off what was left off his t-shirt, wrapped it around his hands and said to Dunbar, ‘You owe me, big style.'
St. Clare went to the left, Dunbar to the right and they took hold of the bumper. ‘Clockwise,' St. Claire said.
They took the strain, lifted and shuffled.

On the way back Dunbar was whistling tunelessly along to the radio. St. Claire, exhausted, was sitting next to him. Dunbar said, ‘Hey, I've got something to show you.'
St. Claire nodded, too tired to speak.
‘It's right up your street. Well, up your coast .'
St. Claire nodded again.
‘The old Mill. It’s up for sale. We can go up and have a look.'
‘Tomorrow maybe,' St. Claire said, stretching aching muscles. ‘Or next week.'

 

She sketched him as they talked; he asked, ‘Have I become your new thing?, like arts and crafts, or Cartoons?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I’m going through a phase of drawing hermits, and you’re the only one I can find.
He didn’t reply but sat watching the sky.
She sketched him working. She sketched him standing on the lip of land overlooking the sea.  She collected him, like thoughts. She sketched him as he went about his business, mowing the grass, standing on the beach, walking, drinking his endless cups of tea.
*           *

‘You took some finding.’
St. Claire looked up, or rather he looked down, as he was hanging from his ankles, attached to a rope he’d strung over the roof of his caravan. He reached up, unhooked his feet and dropped down to the grass.
As he straightened up to look at his visitor, the pit of his stomach wanted to fall right out and burrow through and into the earth.
‘Hello Babe,’ he said,
Babe just sat down on the low brick wall, rubbing his thigh. ‘Not used to this walking business,’ he said, ‘Way out of practice’. Then he pulled off his rucksack, opened it and took out a thermos, asked, ‘You want to share my coffee?’
St. Claire shook his head.
Babe opened the flask and poured out a mug of coffee. He studied the brown liquid, looked up, ‘Got any biscuits?’ and without waiting for a reply he slid down off the wall and onto the grass, stretching out his legs, resting his head, closing his eyes and letting out a long sigh.
‘I’ll get some,’ St. Claire said.
‘No rush.’
St. Claire went into the caravan, glancing out at Babe, who was relaxing in the sun, eyes still closed, hand loosely grasping the steel mug of coffee. He opened a cupboard, took out the biscuit tin and went back outside.
‘Here,’ he said, putting the jar on the grass beside Babe, who opened his eyes to look first at St. Claire and then look down to the biscuit jar.
‘Thanks,’ he said, propping himself up a bit, and then opening the jar. He took out four biscuits and laid them in the lid of the jar. ‘Want one?’ he asked.
St. Claire shook his head.
Babe took a while, dunking his biscuits, drinking his coffee, pausing occasionally to breathe deeply of the warm spring air and listen to the waves. When his cup was empty he shook out the dregs onto the grass and screwed it back onto the flask, shoved the flask into his rucksack and put the lid back on the biscuit tin.
Then he smiled, not at St. Claire but, it seemed, at the conclusion of some internal dialogue he was having. He looked up; ‘You caused quite a stir.’
St. Claire nodded.
‘I think that Tom was impressed, on the quiet. No one’s ever just stood up and walked out like that,’ he said. ‘And he was pleased; that you left him all that spare cash’.
‘I didn’t want it.’
‘It was some sort of bond?’ Babe asked.
‘No,’ he said, ‘It wasn’t mine, that’s all’.
Babe shrugged, indifferent; ‘At first, people thought Tom had had you killed, and that maybe I’d had a hand in that,’ then he said, ‘But we knew otherwise, obviously. And Tom had the hounds out looking for you, I think partly because he was scared of what you might say or do, but mainly because when you seemed to defy him, he’d lost face.’
He shrugged, ‘But no-one could find you. We tried other towns, other countries even. We even sent a couple of guys up this coast, but no one found you.’
‘You found me though.’
‘Yes. Here you are.’
‘Here I am.’
‘It was completely random, that I found you.’
The wind was gusting over the top of the headland and Babe shivered, pulled up his legs, hugged them to his chest. ‘This is lovely,’ he said, ‘This place. Bit cold but, still, lovely.’ He breathed in slowly, exhaled in deep satisfaction, then began talking again; ‘I don’t know why you legged it, but sitting here, I can understand why you never came back.’
When St. Claire didn’t reply, he gazed up at the sky, palest blue and scattered with wisps of cloud. ‘What sort of clouds are those?
‘Cirrus.’
Babe nodded, seemed completely at ease; ‘How many days like this do you think it’d take, for a man to be happy?’
St. Claire didn’t reply.
They sat contemplating for a while, then Babe asked, ‘Not many, I reckon.’ Then he asked, ‘So why’d you leave?’
‘I’d had enough,’ St. Claire said, quietly.
‘Everybody has had enough, all of the time. Why’d you leave though? What did leaving change?’
‘I couldn’t hurt anyone any longer,’ St. Claire said. ‘I couldn’t even pretend.’
Babe let out a long breath, ‘You are indeed a strange one,’ and he shook his head in amusement; ‘You were in town. About six weeks ago. Talking to some skater boy. The girl he was with…’
‘Sushi Bellingham,’
‘You saw her? Yeah, well, she thought she recognised you too.’
St. Claire said nothing.
‘So she called me. Sushi’s my girl, with things like that. Tom’s long since gotten over your absence and, to be honest, the system you set up works so well for him that, even in the short to medium term, the were-gild you left was superfluous.’ He smiled, ‘But anyway, you know me, I look after Tom’s business, even though I’m sort of retired now, so when Sushe called me, I told her to keep it to herself, thought I’d check it out myself;.’
‘Will she keep it to herself?’
Babe glanced at him and the ice in his gaze caused St. Claire to shiver; ‘The skater guy said you lived up the coast, and I estimated that common sense would have made you move at least fifty miles away. So I got out a map, started at fifty miles and worked my way up the coast. Just doing a few miles at a time. Take a drive out, once a week, walk the cliff tops and the beaches,’ he smiled, ‘looking for a long-haired beardy, apparently.’
‘Sushi said that?’
Babe nodded, ‘Yeah. She said I wouldn’t recognise you.’
‘Did you?’
Babe nodded, ‘As soon as I started searching, walking this coast,’ he paused to rub the muscles of his thigh, patted his leg like an old dog, ‘I knew I’d know you. I thought; if this is where you’re living, this is who you are. And once I’d got my head around that, I’d have known you in the dark.’
St. Claire’s heart was pounding deep and slow in his chest.
‘And here you live, Rapunzel.’
St. Claire nodded. His legs felt heavy and he needed to sit down.
‘But I still don’t understand why you left.’
St. Claire said, ‘I wanted to be a better person.’
Babe chewed lightly at his bottom lip as he considered this; ‘Redemption,’ he observed, ‘That old thing’.
‘Not even that. I just wanted to change. To just stop.’
Babe said, ‘I read somewhere that in the bible, when they tell you to repent of your sins, it’s a mistranslation from the Greek, or maybe the ancient Aramaic language they spoke in those days. Anyway, in whatever language the gospels were written in first, the original word just meant to turn away, to change,’ he paused, ‘to just stop’.
‘I’m not religious,’ St. Claire said.
‘I’m not accusing you of being a Christian or anything but, still, part of this, maybe, is that you feel guilty about Benson.’
St. Claire nodded.
‘Because you had him killed.’
‘Yes.’
‘And, of course, you killed the guy who killed Benson. And the dealer who sold Tom’s daughter the drugs that killed her, he was working from your club. Wasn’t he?
‘St. Claire nodded.
‘And lots of other people picked up bad habits within the walls of your club.’ Babe straightened up, easing his back against the low wall, ‘But there were so many killings going on around then, that two or three or four more didn’t make such a huge impact.’ He looked up at St. Claire, sitting on the wall next to him. He said, ‘How this is supposed to work is, the logical thing, at this moment, would be for me to kill you.’
‘Yes. I can see that.’
‘Tie off the lose ends,’ Babe said, and he laughed softly to himself, ‘But as shitting-yourself-scared as you look right now, I know that if I made a move to reach into my rucksack you’d probably jump me and break my neck.’
St. Claire cracked a smile, nodded. ‘I might.’
‘Hah. Then maybe throw me over the edge, into the sea,’ he shook his head, ‘Relax, Saint. It’s not going to happen.’
‘I can’t believe you.’
Babe looked mildly irritated, ‘I need to prove it?’
‘I don’t know how you can.’
‘That’s not really good enough.’
He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Here, take this a moment. I’ll show you,’ and he stood awkwardly and allowed St. Claire to pick up his rucksack, and even as he hefted the weight, Babe had palmed a revolver from some hidden pocket and had pointed it straight at him. 
St. Claire saw the black, snub nose appear in Babe’s hand and he thought his life was over; appalled, he took a half step back, heart pounding so loud he could hear it, feeling suddenly so tired that he wanted to lie down and sleep.
Babe continued to point the gun at his chest; he said, ‘This is a Ruger point-four-one, single action revolver. Kind of old school, as guns go, but as a friend of mine used to say about such things, it doesn’t fall over.’ He straightened his arm, locking the elbow, ‘And if I was going to kill you,’ he explained calmly, like he might to a particularly dull child, ‘I’d do it here, and now, while there’s no one around. I’d shoot you three times through the sternum,’ he continued, looking St. Claire in the eye, but St. Claire couldn’t return his gaze being transfixed by the short wide barrel of the gun, ‘and you’d be dead in less than five seconds.’  
For a few moments they stood facing each other, very still. Quietly then Babe asked, ‘Do you know who I am, Saint?’
St. Claire nodded.
‘I’m Babe Walker; I’m the death of people.’
‘I’m St. Claire,’ he replied, swallowing nervously, ‘and I’m shitting myself.’
Babe almost laughed at this, but held it to a smile, ‘I’m not going to kill you, Saint,’ he said, and relaxed his arm, dropping his gun hand to his side, ‘So give me back my rucksack,’ he said, ‘because I feel stupid, standing here with a fucking gun in my hand.’
He held out his right hand and St. Claire handed him back his rucksack and he folded away the gun. Then he sat down.
‘I’m out of coffee,’ he said. ‘Do you want to make us both a cup of tea or something?’
St. Claire said, ‘I think I’ll just sit down.’
‘Ok. Whatever’s best.’
St. Claire sat on the wall, shaking.
How d’you feel?’
‘Weirdly calm now. But focused too.’
‘That’s the endorphins, I guess. Don’t sweat it.’  ‘
‘Was that…?’
‘That was proof. Yes. You can believe me now.’
They sat together against the low brick wall, watching the clouds. ‘So if you’re not planning to kill me,’ he asked, ‘Why’re you here?’
‘Curiosity.’
‘Hmm. You’ve just walked from the village?’
‘Yeah. My car’s parked there.’
St. Claire looked at him, ‘A black Nissan coupe?’
Babe nodded.
St. Claire whistled, ‘I saw it, this morning. Must have passed you.’
‘I stopped at the Abbey. It was way busy in the village.’ Thought I’d do some sightseeing.’
‘You always drive a black coupe.’
‘Yeah. I should change it though.’ Then he said, ‘I like this place. I like what you’re trying to do here. You should stay.’
‘I will.’
‘That’s good,’ and he stopped smiling. ‘Because, here’s the situation,’ he said, ‘if you return to town again, I will kill you.’
They sat quietly.
‘Otherwise, as nice as this place is,’ Babe said, ‘I’ll never come back here again. Deal?’
‘Sounds like a deal.’
Then Babe smiled, gentler this time, shrugged; ‘I dunno, maybe give it five years; me and Tom’ll both be dead, or in jail. And no one will even remember you.’
‘Ok.’
Babe said, ‘I saw a dog back there, by the fence. Yours?’
‘Sort of. He’s a stray.’
‘I like that. Two strays together,’ he grinned, ‘It’s like a kiddies story.’
Babe stood up, picked up his rucksack, and shouldered it. He unfolded his walking pole, slid his hand through the loop; ‘I saw Bayley, a while back,’ he said.
‘How is she?’
‘Fine. Got a new boyfriend. Nice guy, proper job and all that.’ He was about to say more, then he gave a wry smile, shook his head, ‘Look at us, Saint. What are we like? Two long-haired fucking hippies, both masquerading as hard-cases. I should have popped you while you were hanging from that rope. And you should never have run out on us in the first place.’
He laughed to himself as he tightened the straps on his rucksack, then his gaze cooled for a moment; ‘Just don’t come back, that’s all,’ he repeated, ‘No one knows you’re here, and I’m not telling. Who am I to mess up your shot at redemption?’
He patted his; ‘I saw you, working the door one night, saw you perform a hip throw on some guy, this guy must have weighed two hundred pounds, and you switched hips mid throw, flicked him from left to right, threw him across the bar. Hell of a mess.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘I never saw anyone do that before, or since, switch hips mid-throw, and I’ve seen lots of violence. It was…’ he thought of the right word, ‘pure.’ He turned to walk away, said, ‘I suppose I envy you this.’
Then he rubbed his leg with a rueful smile, ‘Three fucking miles to walk back,’ he said.
St. Claire said, ‘I always meant to ask, where you got the limp?’
Babe paused, ‘Don’t you know? I’m a war hero.’
St. Claire watched him amble off, leaning slightly on his stick.
*           *

One afternoon, maybe three or four days after he’d been visited by Babe Walker, he was sitting, bare-chested, sewing a patch onto his jeans. She was sketching him.
She asked about his tattoo. A Phi symbol, behind his left shoulder, split diagonally by a scar.  ‘It's spoiled,' he said, ‘Look.’
‘No, it makes you, it really does.'
She pulled her chair closer, so that she could study it. ‘Why did you get it done?'
‘It's a judo thing, I suppose. Balance is everything.'
‘Are you balanced?'
He shrugged. ‘I was.’
‘Did you have a girl, before you came here?’
He nodded, ‘Her name was Bayley.’
‘What was she like?’
‘I’ve thought about that, a lot. I think she was kind.’
‘Was she sexy?’
‘She was languid.’
‘That’s a good word,’ she said, ‘I’m impressed with that word. You must have thought a lot of her.’
‘I did.’
‘Not any more?’
‘Not often.’
‘Do you think I’m languid?’
He leaned over and gently pushed the waves of her hair away from her face. ‘You’re a stunner,’ he told her with a grin. Then he rose from the brick wall and moved to the doorstep, leaving her sitting on the deckchair, ‘It’s going to rain,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to go inside soon.’
Moved by a sudden impulse she said, hurriedly, ‘We could do it, you know. Make love. We could go inside and make love while I rained out here, like in a movie.’ Then she said, ‘I wouldn’t fall for you or anything. I’ve just never done it nice,’ and she gave a little laugh, like she’d told a small lie and been found out.  She said, ‘I just need someone nice. It’s not personal.’
The needle slipped and punctured a tiny hole in his fingertip. He swore silently, sucked the tiny bloodspot and paused. He was giving up. The jeans were too worn to support a patch; paper thin, the denim was splitting along the seam of the patch.
He bit through the thread and shoved the needle back into the spool, picked up the scissors and, gauging by sight, he cut the legs of the jeans halfway between the knee and the crotch. He now had a new pair of shorts but no jeans.   Millie, lying at his feet, whined softly and he looked up. Annie leaned across and brushed the hair from his eyes. A moment of static passed between them, then she sat back, said, ‘I’m teetering on the edge,’ laughing again, softly, like it wasn’t funny, ‘I feel all scrumpled. Like these sheets of bloody paper. Like your jeans. All used up.’
 I feel like I can stay like this, stay here,’ she looked around, ‘or I can change. But if I change I’ll change forever. And that scares me.’
He went over to her squatted down beside her, held her as she wept. ‘My dad went away, when I was seven. Broke the family’s heart. Everyone’s. And I don’t know if I can do that; just go away. Do what he did, to me. To my family.’
He asked, ‘What do you need to do?’
‘I need to go away.’
‘Then go away.’
She shook her head, ‘I can’t just go. I’m not going to be one of those victims, take a train, find a pimp, walk the streets … I might as well stay here, get pregnant,’ she sniffed, ‘at least I’d get a council flat.’
He stood and went back into the caravan, boiled the kettle, made a pot of tea. She sat outside. When the tea was made he went to the door, ‘The wind is picking up. Come inside.’
She nodded and followed him back. Shut the door behind her. She took off her coat, slipped off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the bench while he poured them both a cup. ‘Earl Grey,’ he said.
She wrinkled her nose, sniffed, ‘Perfume tea.’
‘You get used to it. It’s nice.’
She shrugged, as though to say, whatever …
They sat for a while, drinking their perfume tea. Then she said, ‘Earl Grey; Reform Bill. 1834. Right?’
‘1832.’
‘Yeah, well. We did that in general studies. There’s a big statue of him somewhere. On a plinth somewhere. Who was he?’
‘I dunno. Some robber baron, probably.’
She smiled wryly, ‘Statue, tea, title, must have been a right chav.’ Then she started to cry again, softly, he went to sit beside her, arm around her shoulders. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she told him, between sobs. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘You can change,’ he told her, and he went to get her a tissue. She blew her nose, told him, ‘I’m not sure I can.’
‘I did,’ he said.
He said, ‘About eighteen months ago, my best friend died, and I took a job working as security for a major dealer called Tom Berj. It was wild.'
It was wild.
‘Tom said that if you have a bad dog, you kick it. That's all it understands, being kicked. Junkies, he said they were only worth treating like shit. You have to tax them. It's a natural law. You have to abuse them, because not to would go against nature. And if they weren't quite junkies then you got them smacked up, for Tom.'
‘Did you do bad things?' she asked him, quietly, ‘Really bad?'
He paused for a few moments, ‘I did a lot of bad things. I have, I had, a facility for violence. ‘
‘Not now, though?’
He shook his head. ‘Not now. I'm telling you this because I want someone to know,' he said.
And then he said, ‘I beat a man to death, with these,’ he held up his hands, as though surprised by the sight of them. Then he looked away, into the blue of the sky, and he didn't look at her for some time.
She sat and looked at him, comparing grief. Then he said, ‘And I did other stuff. But after a while, despite working for Tom Berj, I started to empathise. I thought that if I hurt a person, hurt anyone, then I was hurting everyone, hurting my family, hurting my children who aren't even born yet.
‘I’d killed a man, and that meant I killed someone I loved; killed everyone I loved.'
He struggled to try and explain, ‘So then, I couldn't hurt anyone anymore. It was like I shared their pain, their disappointment. I'd see them as they really were; I'd get flashes of insight into their being, their lives, their interests and friends. They started to mean something to me as human beings. I had to leave.
He smiled at some memory, ‘So I quit, I changed, and I came here.'
She said, ‘You came here to be good again?'
‘To do right things,’ he told her, ‘even if that meant doing nothing'.
She nodded.
‘So I think you can change too,’ he said, smiling gently. He nodded to himself, like he was only beginning to understand. ‘I like the sea, and I thought it would bring peace of mind. And it did,' he told her, ‘But it's never peaceful; the wind blows all day and all night, the waves never stop, and if I go into the village there are more people to talk to than I ever knew in my life.'
‘They like you.'
He nodded. 
She said, ‘ Dunbar told me some of what you said. I was worried for you, worried someone would come looking for you. But he told me not to, and that round here, if they don't like people, strangers, they end up…’
‘I know, I know,’ he grinned, ‘wrapped in chicken wire hanging from the boom of some trawler three miles out over the continental shelf.' He sat back, ‘Don’t worry about that. No one’s after me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I have it on good authority.’
Then she smiled at him, ‘Well, we’d protect you if we had to,' she told him, ‘We want to. You're one of us now.'
‘Am I?’
‘Sure.’
She looked down at her sketch pad, then back up at him, then glanced past him out through the window. ‘Look,’ she said, and he turned to see a three-masted Brig sailing up the coast. ‘Look at that,' she whispered again, awed by its grace.
‘Didn't know they still built them like that,' he said.
‘Just a few, I suppose' she said; the brig was tacking into the wind, leaning, sails billowing. They watched it until it was out of sight, beyond the headland.
He remembered something. He said, ‘I've got something you might like.'
She wrinkled her nose, ‘Don't flatter yourself.'
He said, ‘No really. Something you can use.'
*           *

On the examination form that she had to fill in prior to her exhibition, under the word genre, Annie wrote display: mixed media. Where the form asked for a title she wrote the word; evidence.  She told her art teacher that it was a composite work, part photography, part installation. He said, ‘When can I see it?’ and she told him that it would be ready later in the morning, in time for the final exhibition.
‘I need to see it before then, to confirm the grade.’
‘No.’ she said.
He said, ‘Alright,’ because he trusted her skill and her honesty and her talent.

Then she showed him the letter from the newspaper, and asked him for advice. He read it, ‘When did you send a portfolio?’
‘Last year.’
‘You’ve improved since then.’
She nodded and he said, ‘Being a newspaper photographer isn’t always glamorous. And you’ll be barely sixteen. Will you have somewhere to live?’
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘What do your parents think? Your mother.’
She shrugged, ‘She’s fine.’
‘I hoped you’d go to University to study art.’
‘I know.’
He tilted his head, like a shrug, ‘Don’t forget your talent,’ he said. ‘I did.’
‘Why don’t you paint more?’
‘I teach. I have a family. You need time to paint, and you need to sacrifice other things.’
He laughed softly, ‘If I left my job, my wife and kids, I could paint.’ Then he said, ‘But I’m not that good. You’re better.
‘Anyway the University course might be stifle you.’
‘What would you do if you were me?’
He said, ‘You have a gift as a painter, and a talent as a photographer that stems directly from your painters eye. Whatever you do, make sure you give it everything. That’s how you learn.’
‘What would you do?’
‘I don’t have your talent.’
‘If you did?’
‘I’d live to paint; work to paint; spend the rest of my life painting.’ Then he said, with a sad smile, ‘But I never had your talent, not even close.’
She said, ‘What does that mean, Sir? What does that mean?’
He shook his head, ‘I can’t even tell you. Spend a decade or two finding out, that’s my advice.
He added, ‘Get the installation set up before nine. OK?’
She nodded.
She was there with four other students: two painters, a photographic display and hers.
‘What’s it called?’ Paul, one of the students, asked.
‘May Fair,’ she said. ‘Yours?’
‘Self-portraits. They’re of my parents and grandparents and they’re what went together to make me.’
‘Good,’ she said, ‘I like that. It’s grabby.’
She watched him pin up the various sketches and paintings. She set up the board and the table. She pinned up a screen print of the beach, with a derelict boat in the foreground, and then next to it a print of a photograph she had taken of the group she was with on the evening of her attack. Then a self-portrait, taken in the mirror the day after the May Fair. She set them up randomly; people would make something of that, she knew, and it was nothing, really. Paul looked at her display with some curiosity, she pinned up a torn sheet with the word evidence hand written in felt-tip. She pinned a plastic bag of sand to the board. Beside it she put a note saying venue.
She took out the combat jacket from a carrier and laid it on the table, then took out her skirt, the one she had worn the night of the attack, and laid it next to it the jacket. Then her top. Then she took the bloodstained knickers from the pocket of the combat jacket. She pinned these to the board. Next to them she pinned a scrawled note with the words dressed to impress.
From the carrier bag she pulled an empty wine bottle and a packet of tac, and set them on top of the skirt. A stubby note said ‘refreshments’.
Paul and the other GCSE students had stopped their work to watched her.
‘How does it scan,’ she asked.
‘Huh?’
‘The display, is it balanced. Is it pretty on the eye.’
‘If you’re a bit crazy. Yes.’ Paul told her. Sharn, one of the other students told her, ‘Annie, we know what happened to you, you don’t have to do this.’
She took another sheet from her pocket and unfurled it, ‘I do,’ she said; it had the word soundtrack written on it and she pinned this on the board and then blu-tacked her iPod to the board. Then she took a photocopy of a print she had done, of the gang on the night before the attack, each face on the print had been covered with a small scissor cut photocopy of her own face, taken from the mirror self-portrait print on the board. Next to it she pinned a sheet with the phrase the usual suspect.
The other students watched her in silence as she continued to set up her display.
She pinned up the packaging that the morning-after pill came in and next to this she pinned up the preliminary results of her STD tests. Next to this she put a sheet with the phrase Safe Sex written on.

Her art teacher came to look at the displays at about ten minutes to nine. There were quite a few pupils standing around looking at the displays, at one display in particular. He went over to look.
He looked.
Then he looked around for Annie and saw her watching him from an open fire door. He nodded to her, then walked over. He said, ‘You got an A-star. Now take it down.’
She shook her head.
‘Take it down, or I’ll fail you.’
She looked at him, beyond calm now, and walked away.’
He said, ‘You could do better than this.’
‘That’s just it. I couldn’t.’
‘You’ve got a folder full of exceptional work!’
‘This is exceptional. Take it down whenever you want. The commentary and the paperwork is on your desk.’
*           *
At the turn of high tide Joe had revved the Claudie up to full power and ran her up onto the sand; jumping over the side, into waist deep water, with Sonny heaving at the other side, he pushed Claudie further onto the sand. A couple of village men ran down onto the sand to help. Within five minutes the Claudie was almost clear of the now retreating water.
Joe stood back.
He said, ‘I’ve got rum in the cabin, might as well finish it off.’
One of the men patted Joe’s shoulder, ‘Thanks, you want a hand stripping her down?’
Joe nodded, ‘Yeah, I do,’
They clambered onto Claudie, one asked, ‘What’re you going to do after today?’
‘Drink more rum.’
‘Right then,’ the other said.
At about half two Joe was standing by an oil-drum brazier, drinking tea from an enamel mug, surrounded by piles of machinery and engine parts. He loked up as Dunbar brought his van down onto the sand.
‘You’ll get it stuck,’ Joe told him.
‘Look,’ Dunbar said, opening the back doors of the van. Inside were a dozen small fir trees. Hanging from the back door was a bow saw. ‘I got these from the Nursery, up past the Mill.’
Joe nodded, stroking the bark of one of the trees. ‘These’ll be full of sap. They’ll go up like matches.’
‘Where do you want them?’
Joe stroked the stubble on his chin, scratched his neck. ‘Inside the cabin, you think?’
‘Maybe right inside, douse them in petrol,’ Dunbar mused.
‘They’ll explode.’
‘Maybe. Will the boat go up without help?’
Joe shook his head, ‘It’d need three or four days sitting here to dry out.’
‘Well, we’ll need a boost to get it going.’
Joe nodded, ‘You’re right. Once it’s going it’ll dry from the inside out.’ He picked up his tea flask from where it sat on Claudie’s prow, shook it, ‘Out of tea. Want a rum?’
‘No, got to work in the shop. Tell you what, let’s get the fir trees packed inside and then you can come up for a bite to eat.’
‘I’ve got to make Nan’s tea, about four.’
‘Ok. No probs.’
Dunbar pulled on a pair of heavy gloves and grabbed the trunk of a tree, pulled it from the van. Then he dragged it over to Claudie. ‘You get on top, Joe. I’ll hand them up.’
Joe climbed nimbly onto the deck of Claudie, grabbed the tree trunk.
 
By four, a crowd of fifty or more people had gathered around the boat. The tide had turned but was still a long way out, the sand was dry and crisp underfoot. The wind was blowing from the north and Claudie was garlanded with wood; fir trees, scrap wood, trimmed wood, strips of coloured paper and tinsel. Her name was on a sash draped across her bow.
‘Are we using tyres?’ Sonny asked, Joe shook his head, ‘Aren’t supposed to. The EU won’t allow it ‘cos of the pollution. It’d invalidate my compensation claim.’ He looked at the tyres stripped from Claudie’s waist, piled up against the pier wall. ‘Someone might want them,’ he said, doubtfully. Then he looked around for Brother Gavin, who was to conduct the ceremony. Gavin saw him and came over, holding a sheet of paper.
‘That the speech, Gav?’
Gavin nodded, asked, ‘Ready?’ and Joe nodded. Gavin shouted to the crowd, ‘Can we have quiet please!’ and the gathering grew silent, save for the odd noise from a child.
Gavin spoke. He spoke of Joe and of Claudie and of the history of fishing in Murton Beach. He spoke of how some of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen amongst them. Then he talked of the environment and fish stocks and the greed of men. At this he looked around at the crowd but no one would look him in the eye.
He wound up by telling the crowd that Joe was a good man, doing the right thing. And that the government was paying Joe to burn his boat and that the money would go toward Joe being retrained, the mention of which made someone in the crowd snort, and to Nan’s medical bills, at which the crowd murmured support, and finally, that Joe was laying on a band and food at the Big Club, which, in turn, was reducing the price of all of its drinks to cost plus 5p. ‘Well aye!’ someone said, disbelieving. But they all knew this anyway, Gavin said, because Joe’s was one of the last three working boats left in Murton harbour and, sadly, they’d been through this ceremony a number of times previously.
Perhaps, Gavin ended, and the crowd became silent, perhaps in the future we’ll see more men fishing from Murton, more boats tied up on stormy days, perhaps the quayside will become busy with fish traders. But that is for the future. Today we are saying goodbye to Claudie.
Gavin picked up a branch wrapped in petrol doused linen. He handed it to Joe but Joe said, ‘No, I can’t do it, Gavin,’ his eyes glittering.
‘She’s your boat Joe.’
Joe looked away.
Not one to miss a piece of theatre Gavin looked at the crowd and then motioned to a small child, of perhaps four or five years old, who came and took hold of the torch, attended by his mother. ‘Right, mother,’ Gavin said, ‘We’ll have the little one put the torch on the boat, don’t worry, he’ll be alright.’
Dubiously, the mother told the boy to hold out the torch and Gavin guarded the flame from his zippo as he lit the end. With a small whuumff the torch burst into flame and the kid jumped back, still holding on too it, hypnotised by the flame licking toward him.
‘Go on, Stan,’ mother said and together they walked over to the boat. ‘Swing it up, onto the top of the boat,’ she instructed him and the crowd watched. Stan swung the torch in a short curve and let go, it flew through the air in a high arc dropped behind him, sputtering on the sand. ‘Sorry mam. I’m not used to it,’ Stan said. Joe strode over, picked up the torch, held it out to Stan, ‘We’ll do it together, huh?’
Stan nodded, tried to wrap his hand around Joe’s and, failing to manage this, gripped his wrist, ‘Ready?’ Joe asked, swinging their arms as he counted down, ‘Uh one, uh two, uh threeee!’, and together they swung the torch and it swung through the air and landed on the boat deck. Within moments a blue flame licked over the edge of the boat, no smoke yet but a heat shimmer.
Joe and Stan stepped back and Joe dropped to one knee to explain to Stan what was going to happen. The crowd closed in as the smoke began to plume, then billow from the centre of the boat.
Steam gasped from the seams and caulking. Joe took his television spectacles from the case in his pocket, the better to see. Someone in the crowd shouted, and a ragged cheer sounded. Looking round, Joe saw two members of the Big Club Committee rolling a beer barrel from the back of a white van and onto the sand.
One of the men came over to Joe, put his arm around his shoulder, ‘Hey, old guy.’
‘Hey, Terry. What’s this?’
‘What’s a wake without a beer?’ Terry asked, squeezing Joe harder.
More cheers rang out as plastic mugs of ale were handed to the crowd. Someone handed Joe a mug and he raised it high.
‘Cheers!’ he shouted.
Cheers the crowd shouted back at him.
*           *
The Big Club was packed.
St. Claire had arrived late; he found an empty seat near the fire exit and was drinking quietly when Dunbar announced, ‘This is our last song for the moment,’ and as he paused to breathe someone cheered, ‘Thankyou very much,’ he muttered in his best Murton Elvis voice, looking round and grinning as the drummer dropped a roll. He looked back at the audience, ‘This is for Joe, and for all the fishermen’, he paused, ‘and ex-fisherman,’ this raised a cheer from one corner, ‘in the Big Club tonight’. Looking back at the band he shouted , ‘A one, two, three …’ and the band launched into the chorus, with Dunbar screaming, ‘I FELL INTO A BURNING RING OF FIRE!’  the audience joined in ‘I WENT DOWN DOWN DOWN AS THE FLAMES GREW HIGHER!’ The noise was so loud it was decorated with aural tinsel that left the ears ringing, ‘RING OF FIRE! RING OF FUCKING FIRE!’

By eleven St. Claire was very drunk. He sat on a chair near the back, soaking in the merriment and the chaos. He thought that people around here had probably been partying like this for thousands of years.
It was getting toward the end of the final set and Dunbar paused between songs, ‘Hey, Listen! We’re supposed to stop playing at eleven, which is about now.’
The revellers, and drinkers groaned. Some cheered. Dancers paused.
‘But this is Joe’s boat night, and we haven’t run out of beer yet. So we’ve blocked the roads, and anyhow there’s no polis within fifty miles.’
He grinned, ‘and you need a fucking passport to get into Murton tonight!’ He strummed a chord, gently, pensively, before looking at the mic, opening his mouth and screaming out, ‘I FOUGHT THE LAW AN’ THE LAW WON!’
The crowd bellowed along with the rest of song. 

St. Claire rose unsteadily from his chair, staggered to the Gents, so drunk now that he took a moment to rest his head against the door, then when he reached the urinal and unzipped himself, he rested his head against the wall, relief flowing through him as he emptied his bladder. How do these people drink so much?, he thought.

He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them what seemed like a moment but could have been ten minutes later, zipped himself up and rolled toward the door.
Someone next to him asked, ‘Having a good night?’ and even as he went to answer, a sucker punch to the head sent him reeling to the floor, and a kick to the ribs knocked the wind out of him, cracking something. Then someone burst in through the door shouting, ‘Not him! Not him!’
It was Grebby.
St. Claire was sitting against the wall, stunned, a vacant smile on his face, as Grebby leaned down to help him up, ‘Come on, man. Up.’ he said, ‘Mistaken identity,’ he explained, dragging St. Claire to his feet. He brushed him down, checked the bruise above his temple, ‘You ok?’
St. Claire nodded, still smiling, eyes unfocussed, ‘Just took a cheap shot.’.
Grebby turned to the assailant, ‘It wasn’t him, Barry. He’s the guy saved me.’
‘How the fuck did I know?’
‘I told you.’
Barry turned and vented his fury by punching a hole in the cubicle door. Ignoring him, Grebby turned back to St. Claire, who was now wearing a broad grin.  ‘You ok?’ Grebby asked.
‘Think I broke a rib,’ St. Claire said, ‘I need another beer,’ and he began to laugh.
Grebby laughed too, ‘You’re a pure mentalist, man.’
They staggered toward the door, arm in arm.
‘What’s so funny?’ Barry asked, to no one in particular. ‘What’s he smiling about?’ When no-one answered him, he shouted, ‘What you all laughing at?’ as the door swung shut in his face.
*           *
The abbey had been torn apart during the reformation and the ruins had been  moldering for four hundred years; large parts of the stonework had been ransacked for farm buildings and, later, the early mine works. The National Trust had rescued what was left; the decaying sandstone walls had been dressed, the surrounding fields turfed, the cobbled paths uncovered and patched. The Abbey had seen Saint Cuthbert and Venerable Bede, murdering Viking and Normans and rampaging Scots. It had seen Jutes and Saxons and border Reivers.

Now it had Dunbar, sitting on what remained of the repaired Southern Wall of the main chapel. He was wearing sunglasses, drinking cheap wine from a tumbler and reclining against the empty stone arch of a window frame. He smiled down at St. Claire and the two girls.
‘He’s just showing off,’ Maddy said.
Dunbar dropped his empty bottle with a thump onto the soft, cropped lawn, ‘Throw me another bottle,’ he asked.
‘He can’t get down,’ St. Claire smiled and lobbed a bottle toward Dunbar, who caught it.
‘Bottle opener,’ he asked.
Kendra threw up the bottle opener and Dunbar uncorked the bottle, dropping the corkscrew onto the grass where it stuck firmly into the grass.
Maddy moved along the wall, into the sun, where St. Claire sat. ‘It’s warmer here,’ she said, shading her eyes to look into his. He smiled.
‘Dunbar said that you’re going to stop being a hermit.’
He nodded, ‘I might move into the Old Mill. Become a property owner.’
‘Dunbar said that you’re a retired stockbroker, worth millions.’
‘He said that?’
‘He said that you were a smuggler too. But I know that he’s the smuggler, not you.’
She leaned across and stroked the hair from his eyes. He took a long drink from his can and let her fingers fuss his hair. Then he kissed her.
‘Look at you two!’ Kendra said.
‘You get the guy on the roof,’ Maddy laughed.
‘Of course,’ Dunbar said, ‘We’re contractually obligated.’
‘No we’re not,’ Kendra said.
‘We’ve been together seven years, Kends,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the equivalent of squatter’s rights.’
She looked at St. Claire, ‘He’s got all the charm.’
Dunbar dropped his t-shirt onto St. Claire’s head. His shorts followed, landing on the turf. Then he stood up on the chapel wall, naked apart from his trainers. ‘Fancy a swim?’ he asked, looking down at St. Claire, before clambering down onto the grass.
St. Claire shrugged and followed him down to the short beach where he stripped off his own clothes. His tattoo  Φ  was dark against his skin, marred by a scar running from his neck to his shoulder.
They ran across the sand, sprinting the last twenty metres and leapt into the water almost side by side. Even though it was almost summer, the water was barely above freezing and they surfaced shouting and gasping for air. The girls followed them down to the waters edge and sat on the white sand watching them.
‘It’s kind of a mating ritual, isn’t it?’ Kendra giggled as the two men grappled with each other, ducking and splashing.
‘Why bother?’ Maddy said. ‘He got me that first day, in the market, when I looked in his eyes. He’s like a fallen angel.’
Kendra shoved her shoulder against Maddy, giggling.
They watched impassively as Dunbar and St. Claire staggered out of the sea, hair dripping, hands cupping their manhoods.
‘Get the wine,’ Kendra instructed Dunbar, as they walked past.

‘So what kind of name is St. Claire?’ Maddy asked, ‘It’s a bit weird, more like a title than a name.’
‘It’s my surname. My family name.’
‘What’s your first name?’
‘Haven’t got one.’
‘Liar. What is it?’
‘Forgot it. Maybe my parents didn’t give me one.’
She pondered this for a moment, then she said, ‘That’s dreadful.’
‘Well, thankyou.’
She linked her arm into his, ‘You know what I mean.’ Then she asked, ‘You got weird parents?’
He shrugged.
‘What do they do?’
‘They left home.’
She giggled, ‘Where are they now?’
‘I don’t know. They ran off together. Like teenagers.’
She shook her head at this, rubbed his hair fondly.  Then she leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘I’m drunk, St. Claire, but I’m not drunk,’ she told him. ‘I’m summer drunk.’
They sat on the grass in the sheltered lee of a sandstone Abbey wall and the sun was reaching toward the west. Dunbar and Kendra had disappeared into the dunes.
‘Dunbar told me you’re a tough guy.’
‘Dunbar talks far too much. I think he sometimes believes his own words.’
‘I believe him. I believe that you are a tough, strong man.’
‘Why?’
She kissed his cheek, ‘Because it makes me feel safer.’
He put his arm around her waist.
‘Am I safe with you?’ she asked.
He looked at her, ‘You’re very safe with me.’
She nodded, and then asked, ‘Can I stay with you tonight? Can we go to your beach home, in a little while? I’m a bit too drunk to drive home.’

Dunbar gave them a lift as far as the gap in the rotting fence stood. They got out and Dunbar revved the van, crunched it into reverse and shot away.
‘He’s drunk.’ Maddy said. ‘He’ll crash into the sea.’
They kissed, ‘No he won’t,’ St. Claire told her.
They walked hand in hand to his caravan. In the fading light they sat facing each other, drinking wine, talking. She sat and watched as he built a campfire. Then they drank a second bottle of wine, sitting together on the step and listened to music on his radio. They washed down the wine with chunks of bread torn from a loaf.

Later they went inside and he shut the door. They undressed and got beneath the covers of his small bed. She ran her hands across his shoulders and her fingertips the length of his spine; she pushed his hair from his face and looked at him closely.
‘Why,’ she said, running her fingertips against his smooth skin, ‘You’re just a boy.’
They kissed. Her hand reached down to his penis, and then cupped his balls, she whispered in his ear, ‘In me.’

In the morning they laughed and talked and made love some more. He made them both a breakfast of tea and toast. Then he watched her as she walked alone back along the coastal path, barefoot, keeping to the soft grass verge, swinging her bag. He spent an hour raking the ashes of the fire before setting about rekindling it.
Dunbar came to see him later he had a blaze going.
‘I could see that a mile away,’ he said.
They sat on the deckchairs, drinking and talking.
‘Hungry?’ St. Claire asked.
Dunbar nodded.
‘I think I’ve got some bread left.

An hour later St. Claire was standing alone at the cliff edge, watching the sky go black. Beneath his feet the rock was undercut by churning waves. The wind licked at his hair and the spray dampened the air. Millie trotted up to his feet and looked over the edge; she whimpered and edged backwards to more secure ground.
I could just step forward, he thought. And this thought repeated itself, fading to a vague urge.
Then he shuddered, But No. He stepped back, and walked off the lip of land to his plot of mown grass and his Caravan. The sun was below the horizon and it would be dark in fifteen minutes.
Millie was trotting alongside him so close that she kept tripping him as he walked, ‘Stupid dog,' he muttered, as she tripped him again, but she wanted to be close to him and apart from a sad roll of her round eyes she took no notice of his foot as he shoved her away. He thought about what Dunbar had said about the old mill; if he bought it and moved in, would that mean he was here forever?
*           *

Journal #557
I was concerned that if I stripped away everything I was, at the core of me I’d discover a void. A black emptiness. Nothing.
I was scared to look.
But I was wrong. There’s life in here after all. Hunger. Fear. Joy. Kindness. Everything. All of it.
Life.
But when I came here, I think maybe I was grieving.
For Benson.
For Bayley.
For myself.
For the road to hell that is wide and smooth.
*           *

 

A memory: ‘Look everybody! Annie has designed the Christmas cards this year.’
‘Dad. They’re nothing to do with Christmas.’
‘Well, they’re brilliant; she’s done them, and they’re done.’
‘We’ll be the laughing stock,’ mam had argued.
‘Annie’s an artist,’ he told her.
She shut the door behind her, the sound of the TV and the last faint smells of breakfast following her as she walked along the street; Murton Tip was already becoming a memory:

‘Look at the cards everybody! Annie designed the Christmas cards this year.'
‘Dad! They're not very good.'
‘They're really good. You have a gift.'

She waited an hour for the bus, and it took another two hours to reach the city. She was carrying everything she owed in her habelsac . She took a Metro to the river, feeling tired. She walked past clubs and restaurants, mid-afternoon and already open for business. This was St. Claire's world, she thought. And now it's mine. We’ve swapped.
She got lost for a while and sat down on a wall, opened the envelope that St. Claire had given her, double-checked the address, made sure the keys were still inside. Then she looked at her A-Z. Looking up and around, getting her bearings, she guessed that it should be just around the next corner.
She found it.
Both fearful and relieved, she stood outside, looking at it. I've already jumped, she thought, I've only got to worry about landing.  Then she put the key in the lock and let herself in through broad double doors.
 
The building had been a garage, before it was anything else, and was still divided between an open central area with office units on both sides that had been converted into apartments, he’d told her. Hers was on the left. Someone called Steven occupied the right side and he was renovating the place in lieu of rent.
She looked at the broad open area where large canvas theatre flats, newly painted, were hanging up to dry. She looked at the grubby whitewashed walls, and she saw the sunlight streaming through grimy skylights, splitting the dusty air.
‘Honey,' she said quietly, unhooking the straps of her backpack and dropping it onto the concrete floor, ‘I'm home’.

 

Epilogue...

Annie walked along the coastal path shortly before dawn; the February sky was lightening out to sea.  She walked on past the cowlick of cliff-top, where his caravan had once stood, marked now only by bare earth and a low wall. She continued along, following the path through the dunes, where she’d lost her camera, where she’d lost her old life like a shedding skin. The sky lightened so that she could see the shadow of the new forest on the horizon, marking the Heaven Field and the hills around it.

She arrived, and knocked at the door of the Old Mill, there was no answer so she let herself in with the key he had posted to her.  The rooms were empty and cold, she looked upstairs, found his bedroom, his bed unslept in. Went down into the kitchen, checked the kettle, which was cold against her fingertips. She heard a snuffling and turned to see Millie peering in through the doorway curiously.
‘Hey, girl.  Where’s your man?’
Millie’s head withdrew and she followed her outside.  Millie danced around her; paws and legs climbing at her, face a flurry of darting eyes and wet tongue and panting breath, ‘You’re too big, now, you’ve grown,’ she chided, pushing her back down, ignoring the soft whining noises Millie made. Then Millie turned and trotted toward the coastal path and waited; Annie smiled to herself thinking that this could end up like one of those Hollywood Lassie movies, but Millie wasn’t trying to lead her anywhere, she just lay down and rolled over for a stroke.
She bent over and petted her for a while and then went to the brook to fill the dog’s water bowl.  Millie drank greedily, even as she put the bowl onto the ground, water splashing onto her shoes. She left the dog drinking and walked back along the path.

An offshore wind made her zip up her jacket and she dipped her head, against the constant feathery sand blown into her face.  Her hair whipped around her face and she stopped for a moment to tie it back, and then walked on. 

She found him back at the cove, sitting on top of the cannonball rock, and she wondered how he’d climbed up its smooth sides.  She stood at the edge of the path, looking down across the dunes to where he sat, dawn breaking behind him. He was sitting curled up, facing out to sea but asleep; his arms hugging his knees, his head leaning forward and resting against his thighs. 

The tide was almost fully out; perhaps even on its way back again, she wasn’t quite sure, and the sand was quite dry now, the gusts flicking sand-dancers across the beach.  She looked back to St. Claire and watched the wind blow at his thick, grown-out hair, ruffling it.  She watched the breeze suck at his jacket, outlining the thin, hard body beneath. 
He was barefoot.

She called out, ‘St. Claire!’
The wind stole the voice from her throat so she had to call his name again.