Sea Change (5 page)

Chapter
Five

When John woke
in the morning the events of the night before seemed less
frightening, and John wondered how he had let himself get into such
a state. He was spooked by the atmosphere of the village, so
different to the boxy houses and ordered streets of home, and when
he ran into the local nutter, an unpleasant old man who enjoyed
scaring children. His sister must have told someone in the village
about why he was coming to stay with her, about what had happened
at school, about Alex. John knew how villages worked, they were
just like a school: one person told another something, in
confidence, and then before the sun had gone down there were only a
handful of people left who didn't know about it.

The old man had
heard the story. There would have been no problem identifying John
as a stranger, just look how Simon had immediately done the same
thing. One of the drawbacks of living somewhere like this, John
thought. It is beautiful, and I can feel apart from the world here,
but everyone will know everyone else's business.

When he thought
about how he had curled in bed, terrified, John felt embarrassed.
With the brilliant light of morning streaming through the gap in
the curtains and making the dust dance golden in the air, the
events of the night before seemed distant, from another time, about
another person. Maybe he should speak to his sister about the old
man, John thought. Trying to scare a child like that, there must be
something wrong with him. What else might he want? Could he be
dangerous? But John knew that telling Laura about the old man would
involve pointing the finger of blame at her—how else could the old
man know about what had happened at the school if it hadn't been
for her talking out of turn? Although John hated the idea of his
past being spread all around the village, he didn't have the heart
to say so to Laura, and he knew that she would realise, knew that
her face would crumple in pain and embarrassment for him, and he
didn't want to see that.

As he got out
of bed and stumbled down to the kitchen, John decided to just put
it behind him. He was finishing off his second bowl of crunchy nut
cornflakes when there was a knock at the door. Laura dried her
hands on a tea towel and went to answer it.

"Someone for
you," she said as she walked back into the kitchen. John stood up,
but for a moment he could not move at all, paralysed by the thought
of walking to the door and seeing the old man there, his face
radiating menace in the way that some people do body odour.

Then he said to
himself: John, stop it, stop it now. He walked to the front door
and there was Simon, this time without his bike, leaning against
the door frame and staring out into the street and singing softly
to himself.

"All right,"
Simon said, without bothering to turn around. "Thought you might
want to come out with me and Sal, you not knowing anyone like."

Sal? thought
John. "How—I mean yeah, love to. Now? And how did you know where I
live?"

"Aye, now, if
you like. Thought we could go down the beach, see what there is to
find. Tide's out. Always fossils and that down there."

"And what the
sea brings in," a girl's voice said, and John stuck his head out of
the front door to see her. She was leaning on the front wall, hands
in the pockets of her jeans, trying to outdo Simon for nonchalance.
She must have been a couple of years older than Simon, but one look
told John that she was his sister. She had the same narrow face,
the same green eyes, the same way of looking at John with her head
tilted to one side, like a bird. "Sea brings all sorts in."

"Our Sal,"
Simon said, nodding at her. "Sal, John." John nodded at her, and
she returned the same nod, the universal greeting of late
childhood, non-committal, studied in its deliberate casual
coolness. John ducked back into the house, grabbed his coat, a
fierce feeling of happiness inside him. Simon wasn't a relative,
charged with cheering John up; he wasn't a friend of the family
suffocating him with well intentioned pity. Simon had called round
just because he thought—well, John didn't know what he thought, but
he didn't care, after what the last few months had been like, he
didn't much care at all. And there wasn't just Simon. There was
Sal, and that sideways look from under her hair.

"I'm going out
with my friends," he said, and he couldn't help but grin when he
said it.

"Cool. You have
a good time, yeah?"

"Yeah", John
said. When he came out of the front door, Simon and Sal fell in on
either side of him.

"We'll go down
the steps on the side of the harbour wall," Simon said. "Then round
the headland and onto the beach. Bit slippy that way, not supposed
to, but it's quicker than climbing all the way up the cliff path,
then all the way down again."

"Can't go this
way most times," Sal chimed in. "Would get a bit wet."

"Bit drowned
more like," Simon said. "Only do it when the tide's right out, like
now. Time we're finished we won't be able to go back that way,
it'll be under again, we'll have to go back the cliff path. You
been down on the beach yet?"

"No," John
said, "I've only been here one full day, really. I went up on the
cliffs yesterday, walked right along around the bay, right on the
cliff edge." He regretted saying this straight away. Simon and Sal
would know where the path ran, and saying 'right on the cliff edge'
made it sound like he was trying too hard, trying to impress. But
they didn't say anything, no look passed between the two of
them.

"You seen much
of the village, then?" Simon asked.

"Got lost a
couple of times in it yesterday, must have seen some bits of it
half a dozen times over," John said, and they all laughed.

"Bit of a maze
if you're not used to it," Simon said.

"Bit of a maze
if you are," his sister added.

"Got rescued by
a dog," John said. "Not a St Bernard, though. Big black dog, like a
Labrador only bigger, something like that, don't really know dogs.
Thought it was going to bite a chunk out of me, but it was kind
enough to show me the way home. Should buy it some biscuits or
something really."

"Black dog?"
said Simon. "Big one?" He drew breath in through his teeth.

"What?" John
said.

"Ghost dog of
Saltcliff, that is. Bad omen."

John felt a hot
twist in his stomach, but then he saw Simon laughing, felt Sal lean
across behind him and take a swipe at her brother. "Si, stop
it."

"Sorry mate,"
Simon said, still laughing, "couldn't resist. Probably Becky, from
the sound of it, she's a big old mutt belongs to Alan who runs the
Ship Inn, always wandering about. Daft as a brush, but
harmless."

"Oh." John
said. "Right. Does Becky have glowing red eyes then, like this one
did?" and they all laughed and shoved at each other and started
running down the street together, towards the harbour, alternating
barks and ghostly whoops.

#

They scrambled
down the slippery iron rungs of a rusting ladder that clung to the
wet stone of the harbour wall, and onto something that was not
quite beach, not quite mud, not quite sea.

"Walk along the
big stones, out of the mud," Simon said, "or your trainers'll be
wrecked."

They hopped
from stone to stone through the slush of sand and water and mud,
concentrating hard, trying not to slip. John could smell rotting
seaweed and the old damp smell of the harbour wall. They reached
the jutting cliff of the headland, and John wondered if they would
be able to get round, as the waves raced in towards it, leaving
only a few metres of visible sand. But the tide was on its way out,
and the gap widened as they neared it, and as they made their way
around the headland the coast seemed to drop away inland. There in
front of them was the great arc of the bay, sand and pools and
rocks shimmering in the morning sun as it kissed the wetness left
behind by the receding tide. John squatted down low on his heels,
and looked across the expanse of the beach. It seemed to go on for
ever.

"Brilliant,
eh," Simon said. "Best in the world."

Sal was already
away, moving fast off across the beach. As she walked her
footprints changed. At first they left holes, which sucked at her
foot and then filled with water, and then they left just the
outline of her trainers raised upon the sand, and then she hit the
firmer sand and there was nothing there at all to mark her passing.
They began to spread out as the going became better, running and
jumping along the beach, each lost in their own private world of
freedom, yet still together. Sal walked along the tide line out
ahead of them, eyes fixed to the ground, Simon hopped from rock to
rock over pools of water so clear that it was almost not there at
all, John walked between the two of them, kicking at stones,
happier than he had been for days.

Simon came
leaping over towards him, arms outstretched for balance, hair
whipped one way and then the other by the breeze that raced in from
the sea and made everything clean, everything fresh. Above him, the
curve of the sky went on forever.

"All right?" he
said, breathless, when he reached John.

"Yeah. This is
amazing. And there's no-one else here, it's like it's all for
us."

"This early in
the year you don’t get many," Simon said. "Even in season, they all
stop down near where the path down from the cliff comes out, stop
on the sandy bits. Keep walking down this way towards Hob's Hole
and there's never more than one or two, they can't be bothered to
walk this far."

"What's Hob's
Hole?" John asked. Simon pointed down the beach to a shadow in the
cliff, a darkness in the rock.

"See there?
Opening in the cliff? There's a cave in there, not deep, but
there's a hole in the floor goes down forever, supposedly. Where
folk from the village used to bring their babies when they were
ill, throw summat down, hope the Hob would take the whooping cough
off of the little 'uns. Supposed to bring luck if you walk around
the hole clockwise, too, Hob gives you his blessing."

"Who's the Hob?
A giant biscuit that lives in a cave? I am the Hob Nob, and I will
cure you." John boomed, making them both laugh.

"You know what
a Hob is," Simon said, looking a little embarrassed and not
explaining further.

"Er...something
you cook on?"

Simon snorted.
"Southerners."

"Well go on
then, don't keep me in the dark." John knew that Simon was
reluctant to tell, and was enjoying pushing him. He had a fair idea
what a hob would be, but wanted to make Simon explain. Revenge for
the tourist jokes.

"You mean you
don't know?"

"Would I be
asking if I did?"

"It's...you
know. A
hob
. Like a goblin."

"A goblin."

"Yeah, stuff in
legends, you know, like, like—"

"A fairy?"

"Nah, sort of
more like, ah—"

"A pixie? A wee
little pixie with bells on its boots?" John broke away laughing, as
Simon kicked up a great cloud of wet sand, trying to hit him with
it, and then they tore down the beach towards Sal, John shouting,
"Help, help, there's a pixie after me". They reached her and
collapsed in a giggling heap on the sand.

"You sod,"
Simon said. "You knew all along, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but it
was fun making you try and explain it."

"Sal, you tell
him. Tell him what a hob is."

"One of the old
things," she said. "Part of the place. S'what folk really believe
round here."

Had she said
believe, John thought? Or believed?

"A spirit of
the land, people thought it was. Back before science explained
everything, back before there was a why and a how for everything,
there was what people had believed in for centuries, longer, more
than just what they talked about in church. Think about it, you've
got a baby, dying, and there's no such thing as antibiotics and no
such thing as the health service, you're going to take your chances
with wise women and their herbs, or a hob in a never-ending hole
that you
know
cured your neighbour's baby only two harvests
before."

Simon stooped
down and shifted some of the rounded pebbles to one side, making
them clack together.

"Nah," he
said.

"What?" John
asked, but Simon did not answer, just moved around the pool,
sifting through the stones, searching.

"Yeah!" Simon
straightened up with a stone in his hand, held it out towards John.
At first John didn't think much of it. It was a dull grey pebble.
Some of the other stones had shone amber or blue, still varnished
by the wetness of the retreating sea that would be back to claim
them in just a few hours. Others had been interesting shapes,
curved, like a pistol with a handle, flat, saucer-shaped, perfect
for skipping out over the tops of the waves in a series of white
splashes. But then Simon brought it closer still and John saw the
delicate shadows, the curves that bent in on themselves like a
maze, the fingerprints of time.

"Wow!" he said.
"That's really cool. Lets have a look."

Simon dropped
it into his hand. "Keep it. Millions of them on the beach, find 'em
every time. Ammonite, that one is. Lived millions of years ago.
Swam about, happy as anything, eating whatever they ate—"

"Kentucky Fried
Chicken, I heard," John said.

"That or
McDonalds—and then one day it snuffs it, drops to the bottom of the
sea, gets covered in mud, and more mud and more mud, and millions
of years pass and—"

"Some scruffy
kid picks it up off the beach."

"And gives it
to a thick tourist who wouldn't know a fossil from car park gravel.
Keep it. Got millions."

"Ta," John
said. "Let's see what else we can find."