Sea Change (8 page)

"With you in a
second," the desk said, and John took a step backwards. There was a
groan and a man rose from behind the desk clutching yet another
sheet of paper. "Hello, sorry about that."

"Hello," John
said.

The man
squinted at him for a moment. "You must be John."

John must have
looked surprised, because the man laughed. "Stand with your sister
in front of a mirror, and tell me you don't see it too." He walked
over, and held his hand out. "Plus, I'm cheating. Laura's got a
picture of you on the wall in her kitchen. I'm Alan, good to meet
you, John, heard a lot about you, all good." John shook hands with
the man, liking him from the start.

"Excuse the
chaos in here, I really should buy a filing cabinet, one of these
days. Bloody letters always come off, float down under the desk and
hide there." Alan's explosion of brown hair waved in the air when
he moved, like the tentacles of a sea-anemone, slowly drifting in
the current. And he moved a lot, nodding his head vigorously at the
end of every sentence. "But I know where everything is, see? Been
like this for years. Might look a mess but I know where every last
thing is. Apart from that last damn water rates bill. Can't find
that anywhere. Anyway, what can I do for you, my lad?"

"Um, sorry,"
John said, "I was just looking really. Didn't mean to disturb
you."

"You're not
disturbing me at all, my lad, place has been like a mortuary all
day, nice to see a human face. How's Laura, she okay? And are you
enjoying yourself here?"

"She's fine,
thank you. And yes, yes I am, very much."

"Not surprised.
She's good company is Laura. Very good. "

John smiled,
not really sure what to say next, and Alan looked a little
embarrassed, as if he had maybe said too much. "You looking for
anything in particular?" Alan swept past John and into the aisles,
gesturing from side to side. "We've got all sorts in, as you've
seen, may look a mess but there is an order to it all, well I can
find what I want anyway. Usually."

"Best thing
about a bookshop is just looking, I think," John said. "Having a
browse around, not looking for anything in particular, just finding
whatever turns up."

Alan stopped,
turned, did an excited little jig on the spot. "Excellent!
Excellent! My father would like you, you'll have to come and meet
him. He adores Laura, you know, and she's always popping around
with little bits and pieces for him, very thoughtful, very kind of
her. Have to be another day though, I'm afraid, he's not too
chipper today. He has his good days and bad days. All this used to
be his, you know, but it got a bit much for him to manage. Couldn't
stand the thought of the place closing down, I grew up in here,
everything I know—which admittedly, is not a lot—I learnt from the
books in here. So I gave up teaching and came back. Wondered if I
made the right move. But think, maybe I have." He smiled and looked
into the distance for a moment, and John resisted the temptation to
roll his eyes. I've got to get you two together, he thought. A
perfect match.

"Anyway,
fiction mostly over this side, non-fiction over that, labels on the
shelves that tell you your ghost stories from your romances, your
local history from your sports. Browse away my boy, and take all
the time you want over doing it. I must sort this paperwork, find
this bill. I only saw it yesterday. One of the reasons I was glad
to pack in being a teacher, paperwork was drowning me, and then I
come back here and find out that it's nearly as bad. Give me a
shout if you want anything."

Alan bustled
back down the shop and squeezed behind his desk again, setting all
the papers astir another time, grabbing at those around the edges
so that they did not float away into chaos. The desk reminded John
of one of those games he liked in amusement arcades, where you
dropped two pence down to see if it would push any of the avalanche
of coins off the shelf and into the winner's tray.

For the next
half hour John lost himself in the stacks, pulling out anything
that looked interesting, dipping in to some books and putting them
straight back onto the shelf, dipping in to others and standing
there for the next five minutes, lost in the middle of some
interesting trivia. He browsed a how-to book on skiing that had
been written in the nineteen-twenties and featured line drawings of
men smoking pipes while in the middle of skiing, he flicked through
a book called Advice To Captains that dispensed pearls of wisdom to
turn of the century merchant ship captains about which foreign
ports were not to be trusted—which, as far as John could make out,
was just about all of them.

A few rows down
from this, John found the local history section. It was only two
shelves, and mostly dull books about the fishing trade in the
seventeen-eighties, or rambling accounts of one particular family
of some minor celebrity. John was about to move on, but pulled out
one last book from the shelf to have a look at it. The spine was
tattered and faded, and he could not read the title, so he opened
the book. It was a guide to the legends of the area, and wasn't a
mass-published book, but rather looked as if it had been put
together by some local expert, a few hundred copies printed off to
press on to relatives at Christmas or sell to the odd tourist. He
flicked idly through it, and was about to put it back, but one last
page escaped his thumb and he found himself looking down at the
picture of a large black dog. John stared at the picture of the
dog. The dog stared back at him. It was rather like the one that he
had seen. He thought about putting the book back on the shelf but
couldn't resist reading the entry first.

'The Saltcliff
Shuck differs from most of the other spectral dog traditions in the
region. The vision of such a black dog brings omens of disaster,
premonitions of death, or even the death of those unlucky enough to
see it.' Oh terrific, thought John, just what I needed to know.
'The Shuck is rarely seen, and reputedly only then by those that
have a certain gift of seeing.' Well, thought John, I'm lucky then.
I have a certain gift of seeing—whatever that is, I suppose I've
never needed glasses—but apparently I'm special. Beginning to wish
I wasn't, given what it says.

He turned to
the end of the book to see if there was an index, but if there was,
the pages had long ago fallen out. John's curiosity was piqued
though, so he held on to the book while he moved on to local
history, where he became absorbed in an account of smugglers who
used the narrow coves of the coast to cover them while they ghosted
across moonlit seas in small boats. He ended up leaving the
bookshop with an armful of books. Alan had carefully totted up the
prices in an account book and then applied what he had called
"special discount" which ended up making the total price just under
what John had expected to pay for one of the books on its own.

On his way back
to the cottage he thought he heard the scuffle of paws on the road,
and he turned around, but did not see anything there. Not that
special then, he thought to himself. Perhaps I've lost my gift.
When he got back to the cottage, he found a note on the doormat
addressed to "That Townie". Already smiling he opened it up and
found a note from Simon, scrawled in pencil.

"Half eight
tomorrow. Boat trip out with Uncle Davey. Bring a clothes peg for
your nose (fish stink) and a carrier bag to throw up in if he lets
Sal steer. Will knock for you if you haven't fallen down any holes
by then. Si.”

John had a
bath, and then foraged in the fridge and put together spaghetti
bolognaise as a surprise for when Laura got in from closing the
shop. When she did, she first sniffed the air appreciatively and
said, "Wonderful, I could eat a scabby horse," and then she said,
"What are you grinning so widely for then?" and John just shrugged,
and said, "I'm happy," and he meant it.

Chapter
Eight

John hit the
button as soon as the alarm went off, and crept out of his bedroom
and down the stairs, clothes and trainers clutched in his hand. He
got dressed in the front room, and made himself a slice of toast
and a cup of tea. He ate the toast looking out of the cottage
window, keeping an eye out for Simon, not wanting him the doorbell
to wake Laura up early. She had told him that she wouldn't be back
until late that evening; she had promised a friend in the next
village that she would baby sit, so the friend and her husband
could go out for an anniversary meal. John had told her that he was
a big boy now, and he would look after himself, and probably be in
bed by the time she got back.

The sky was
blue in that way that said that it was going to stay blue the whole
day, and John paced up and down by the window. Finally he saw Simon
ambling down the street, as if he were in no hurry to get anywhere,
and John had dumped his cup in the sink and was out of the door
before Simon got two steps closer to the house.

"You're keen.
Mind, Sal's down there already, she's getting the boat all set.
Loves messing round with it, she's desperate to learn to do it all
herself. I've had a go, mind. It's all right, nothing special. Not
like driving a car, that's what I can't wait to do. You ever driven
a car?"

"Nah." John
laughed, embarrassed. "I've sat in the seat of my dad's car,
pretending, when I was a kid. Hands on the steering wheel, going
vrrrm, vrrrm, that's about it. You?"

"Once. Uncle
Davey's van, but just on a bit of driveway, not on the roads. He
said when I'm a few years older, he'll take me out properly, some
of the back lanes, get loads of experience in so when I'm old
enough to take my test it'll be a doddle. Sal's welcome to the
boat, it doesn't go fast enough for me."

"Boy racer,"
John said, and Simon laughed and said, "One day," and they walked
on together down to the harbour. Two or three boats were heading
through the breakwater and out into the open sea, and one was tied
up next to the harbour wall, its engine idling. An elderly man sat
on a bollard on the harbour, smoking a cigarette and leafing
through a newspaper.

"There's
Davey," Simon said. "Checking the racing pages." Then the boat
engine revved loudly, a cloud of black smoke shot out from behind
it, and John and Simon laughed as Davey dropped his paper and
hurried down into the boat. "See, told you Sal liked to play around
with it."

They reached
the harbour wall just as Davey came back out of the small cabin. He
looked as if he had spent his entire life outside, and made John
think of a standing stone, tilted to one side, weathered until it
looked as old as forever, but possessed of great strength to have
lasted all those years. Davey wore faded cord trousers, and a
thick, padded checked shirt worn like a jacket over a thin jumper
that was so faded it was hard to tell what colour it had once been.
His head was bare, and this disappointed John, because Davey struck
him as the sort of man who should never ever be without a battered
old cap, that he would probably wear to bed.

"Mornin'," he
said. "You must be John. Good to meet you son, I'm Davey. You—"
this now to Simon, "—thought you were never comin'. Sister's been
here for ages, what you been doing, falling asleep on a park bench
on the way to pick your friend up?"

"We're not all
used to getting up at the crack of dawn, you know."

"Dawn? Nearly
bloody midday. Anyway, let's have you on board, because I've got to
drive over to Pickering this afternoon, see a man about a new
engine for the van. And weather's going to turn this afternoon, I
reckon."

Simon climbed
over the harbour wall and down the iron ladder that clung to the
weathered stone until it disappeared into the dark swell of the
water. When he was three rungs above the boat he waited for a
moment, until the gentle swell moved the boat closer, and then
jumped, landing on the deck.

"Need a hand
down, lad?" Davey said to John, but in a way that was helpful
rather than patronising. John grinned, liking the man already. His
jumper smelt of pipe smoke, and it reminded John of being little,
of his granddad.

"Nah, thanks."
Not to be outdone, he swung himself over the harbour wall just as
fast as Simon, and climbed down the ladder, being careful not to
look down into the water. The back of the boat seemed a long way
away, and John waited for the swell to bring it in closer, but then
it started to move even further away and he realised that this was
as close as it got. Rather than make himself look stupid by hanging
on the ladder like a monkey, waiting for the boat to drift back in,
he jumped anyway, his body moving through the air with nothing
beneath it for a moment other than the water. Then he landed on the
wooden decking with a clatter, but kept his balance, and
straightened up nonchalantly, sticking his hands into his
pockets.

"Morning Sal,"
he shouted in to the cabin. She had her back to him, looking down
at the instruments, and she raised her hand in greeting but did not
turn around. He wondered if Greg had come calling for her the day
before.

"So lad, you
been out on a boat before?"

"Not really,"
John said. "Not like this one. Been on a ferry across to France,
but I don't suppose it's really the same."

"No restaurant
on this one," Davey said, "but the crew's a damn sight more
pleasant." Davey grinned, and his whole face wrinkled up like a
crumpled piece of paper. "Right," he shouted, "you going to start
her up again Sally? But remember what I said this time."

Down under
John's feet the engine shook and growled into life.

"You can take
her for a bit son, if you like, when we're out. If you can prise
Sally away from the wheel, that is. We'll just go out, give you a
taste of what it's like being out of sight of land, potter along
the coast a little bit and then it's back, I'm afraid. Sorry it
can't be longer, it's a beautiful morning for it, but like I said,
I've got to see a man through Pickering. If what he says on the
phone is true, with a bit of luck I'm coming back with a new engine
for the van."