SUNK (6 page)

When I get home I go up to my bedroom. Some kind of hurricane must have hit it. And then I decide it must be a rabid dog. Or rats. Or a giant squirrel. Chunks of my duvet are missing. My pillow has a hole burrowed right through it. The lampshade is dangling, tattered and torn, and the window, which I closed before I left this morning, has a broken pane of glass.

‘What?’ I say aloud.

At first I think it must be something that’s come in from the outside. An invasion of
giant hornets – or birds, or radioactive snakes.

Then I remember the deckchairs.

Frantically I search out the pirate tin. I find it under my bed. It’s been torn open from the inside, the metal lid curled back and savaged like a sardine tin. There are no deckchairs inside.

In fact, there are no deckchairs anywhere to be seen. I imagine them marauding and pillaging. Three vicious mousetraps pinching and snapping and tearing. I wonder what kind of damage they’d do.

It would look very much like this.

Eric’s dad opens the door. I rush past and race up the stairs to find Eric playing himself at chess.

‘What?’ he says.

‘The deckchairs,’ I say, and I explain what’s happened.

‘Oh, Tom,’ he says. He refrains from saying ‘You idiot’, but I know that’s what he means.

‘So I’ve no idea where they are,’ I say. ‘We need to find them before they get any bigger.’

‘How big do you suppose they are now?’ he asks.

I hold my hands out, measuring imaginary tiny deckchairs. ‘I guess they must be about a credit-card big.’

‘Really easy to find then,’ he says. ‘In a whole town.’

We start in the model village. I know if I was a miniature deckchair that’s exactly where I’d hide and I check for the first one I left by the cricket green. It’s not there any more. There’s no sign of it, not even any damage, and there’s
no sign of the small ones either. Next, we try the crazy golf. I check all the holes. Eric checks all the Dingly Dell gnomes.

There are no actual deckchairs but something’s taken a bite out of one or two of the greens.

‘They’ve been here,’ I say.

‘But they’re not here any more,’ says Eric.

We drop down to the sea wall.

Today the sea is glassy and families have come out to enjoy the end of the afternoon sun. The mayor’s daughters are pedalling back and forth across the bay. Everything looks calm and lovely.

I lean on the railings and study the beach. ‘I suppose they might have tried to get home,’ I say.

‘Where is home?’ says Eric.

‘In a sort of cave at the end of the beach,’ I say, a sudden thought coming to me. ‘Do you
suppose there’s nothing actually wrong with the beach itself?’

‘What do you mean?’ asks Eric, catching a wild curl of hair and jamming it under the hook of his glasses.

‘Well, I know everything that’s happened so far has been on the beach, and we assumed that it must be the sand or the sea or something. But supposing it isn’t?’

Eric rubs his chin in a thinking way. ‘Where’s the cave?’ he says in the end.

There are masses of people on the beach. We’re weaving our way through the family encampments when a shriek comes from above us on the sea wall.

‘AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH!’ It’s about four million decibels and it comes from a woman and her daughter who race straight
down the steps onto the sand and hop about as if they’ve been stung by something.

‘Get off!’ screams the girl. ‘Beastly thing!’

The mother stares in horror at her daughter and we run over. The child has a smallish deckchair clamped to her piggy nose, much like a large peg. ‘Ow! Ow!’ squeals the girl.

‘Stay still,’ says her mother, sticking her fingers into the deckchair and pulling.

‘OW! It hurts!’ The girl can’t stay still and the mother can’t get it off.

‘Try this,’ says Eric, pulling his Field Craft penknife from his pocket. ‘We might be able to force it open.’ He jams it into the deckchair mechanism and, oyster-like, forces it open.

‘Help!’ comes a shout from above us on the sea wall.

‘Go,’ Eric says to me, his fingers dangerously
close to the deckchair’s snapping jaws. ‘We’re good here.’

‘Help!’

The cries seem to be coming from the amusement arcade. Amongst all the flashing lights and gurgling games, the owner is standing with his back to the wall, his eyes fixed on the dark space under the machines. I move closer but it’s not the space under the machines where the problem lies, it’s inside the machine. I press my nose to the glass and see two tiny deckchairs having fun dancing in the tuppence waterfall. They’re kicking the coins off the ledges and snip-snapping at the prizes, while the bigger one – the one Eric put under the microscope – is dancing inside the claw machine and throwing itself at the cuddly toys.

I could shrink them, but what good would that do? They’d still be inside the machines,
still capable of pinching and biting. I need to get them out.

I rush to the change machine, stuff a pound coin in the top and it spews 2ps into a plastic tub at the bottom. I grab another plastic tub and stick it underneath the machine and then start feeding the coins into the top of the machine. It takes twenty-three coins to get the first cascade, and twelve to get the next, and on the third one of the deckchairs that was teetering on the edge slips over and shoots down into the tub. Before it can even stand up I grab another tub and jam it inside, pinning the chair to the bottom of the first tub.

Eric appears beside me, his hands clasped together, real tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. ‘This thing’s vicious,’ he says, gasping.

‘Quick,’ I say, picking up another tub, ‘drop it in here. It’ll work for a few minutes.’

Once we have both the chairs imprisoned we feed more 2ps into the machine. The last tiny deckchair is dancing and leaping and kicking the coins around inside. It seems oblivious to the disappearance of its companion. Just as the man who runs the amusement arcade seems totally ignorant of what has really happened and is still thumping a broom around underneath the machines. He obviously thinks he’s looking for an insect.

It takes two more pounds to catch the last deckchair, which tumbles into the tub in a shower of coins, and we jam it under the other two. Then I hold all three together in a quivering sandwich.

‘Now that one,’ I say, pointing to the claw machine.

The slightly larger chair has fastened itself round a fluffy dragon and is squeezing hard.

‘Those things are impossible,’ says Eric. ‘They never work.’

‘Hold this.’ I hand him the pile of twitching tubs and grab another pound coin from my pocket.

‘Have you only got one left?’ asks Eric.

I nod, slot the pound coin in and focus on the claw controls.

‘Are you any good at this?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I lie.

I’ve never actually managed to get anything before, but the deckchair has released the dragon and is flipping around inside the machine and the moment I lower the claw it clamps on to one of the open jaws.

‘Quick,’ says Eric.

Holding my breath I raise the claw and
steer it over the tray.

It dangles there, still inside the machine, swinging and snapping.

‘Give it a shove,’ I say.

Eric thumps the machine, and the chair sways, swings and gives up its hold. It falls, wriggling and squeaking, until it wedges itself in the slot.

I grab it, pinching it shut while it flexes and squeals.

I feel 88% good, because I’m 12% worried about what to do with it next.

We step out of the arcade. ‘Now what?’ says Eric. ‘We can’t drown them – they’ll float.’

‘No – and I can’t shrink them either, there’s no point.’

‘Jacob,’ we say to each other at the same time.

Going begging to Jacob doesn’t come naturally.

‘Do you mean you need me?’ he says, standing in his front doorway in pants and a vest, rubbing his enormous stomach.

‘Yup,’ I say. ‘We do.’

The deckchairs in the tubs are wibbling and squirming under Eric’s fingers. The bigger one is trying hard to escape.

‘We need you to destroy these,’ says Eric, nodding at the tubs.

‘How badly do you need me?’ asks Jacob.

Eric and I look at each other. ‘Quite badly,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ says Eric. ‘Quite badly.’

‘Badly enough to be really nice to me?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘What were you thinking of?’

‘Nice words, perhaps?’

There’s a massive kick from the deckchair I’m holding that I only just manage to hang on to.

‘You’re fantastic, marvellous, extraordinary,’ I say.

‘Talented, gifted, fairly remarkable,’ says Eric.

‘Fairly remarkable?’ says Jacob. ‘Only
fairly
?’

‘Utterly remarkable,’ I say.

‘Hmm,’ says Jacob. He rubs his stomach and it moves under his hand in a rolling wave. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it.’

I’ve never been in Jacob’s house before. It’s not how I expected. Because his mum is big and pink and marshmallowy, I thought that the house would be the same. A grown-up version of the kind of thing Tilly would like.

But it’s not like that at all. It’s modern and white and clean-lined and really quite nice. Or it would be if the sitting room wasn’t basically just a huge TV set.

We go up to Jacob’s bedroom, which is exactly what I expected, crammed full of technology and old crisp packets. Jacob empties a load of sweet wrappers from a tin onto the floor.

‘You can’t do that,’ says Eric.

‘S’all right, Mum’ll tidy it up later.’

‘But …’ Eric begins.

I hold my hand up. Eric sighs and takes the top tub out of the column of tubs.

The little deckchair snaps upright and tries to get out, Eric tips the tub and the deckchair falls into the steep-sided metal tin.

‘Coo,’ says Jacob. ‘It’s like a little animal.’

‘Very like,’ says Eric, taking the next tub from the stack and dropping the next deckchair in.

We watch the two deckchairs lying down, standing up, snapping and trying to get out.

‘They’re like little tigers,’ I say.

‘Or crocodiles,’ says Eric, dropping the third one in.

I drop my bigger one in and it chases the other three round. Much like a sheepdog.

‘So what next?’ says Jacob.

‘We burn them,’ I say.

We all look down at the little deckchairs thumping and throwing themselves about.

‘Really?’ says Jacob. ‘Burn them – like they are just ordinary deckchairs or something?’

‘Yes,’ I say, holding the tin firmly to my stomach.

We stare for the longest while.

‘They’re kind of cute,’ says Jacob.

‘In a vicious snappy way,’ says Eric, rubbing a red patch on his palm. ‘But yes, they are.’

I look up at the other two. ‘We can’t, can we? We can’t burn them.’ They both stare at me. ‘Let’s give it another day. Think about it for a while.’

‘Yes.’ Eric nods.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘I just need somewhere safe to leave them overnight.’

I can hear the tiny deckchairs dancing around inside the tin and I’d really like to take them straight to the little town lock-up, which we agreed would be the safest place for them. It’s not a prison any more, it’s a tourist attraction, but it does have iron bars and a letter box and nothing inside. And Grandma has a key.

But we need to wait until dark, and we need to take a look inside the cave at the end of the beach.

The last of the holidaymakers are leaving, and Eric, Jacob and I try to look as if we’re beachcombing.

I don’t really get beachcombing – it’s all rubbish, some of it’s bone rubbish and some of it’s plastic rubbish – but I try to be convincing.

The mayor’s daughters climb out of the pedalo, rubbing their legs. He greets them on the shore and the larger one shouts something at him and waves her arms violently, which I imagine means something like
I’m not doing that any more
.

With a miserable face, the mayor drags the pedalo back up the beach and leaves it chained to the wall. He doesn’t put it in the cave.

The remains of some of the sculptures are still visible on the beach. A sand dragon that has lost its head and half a mermaid, between
all the flattened patches and new sandcastles. Jacob kicks the head from the mermaid, tramples the dragon flat and knocks down the largest castle. He’s very similar to a windbreak at times.

Albert Fogg drags the last deckchairs towards the cave and I pretend to examine a really interesting pile of bladderwrack. Eric joins me. ‘See,’ I say. ‘Over there.’ I point towards the door in the side of the sea wall.

We crouch on the beach, watching and waiting. Albert Fogg rummages in his overalls for a key.

‘What’s he doing?’ asks Jacob, arriving panting behind us.

‘Quick,’ I say, ‘let’s get a look inside.’

We stroll and then gallop until we’re close enough to see, but far enough away for Mr Fogg not to notice us.

The door swings open and he shines a torch through the opening. I can’t see exactly what’s going on, but things are moving inside.

‘Did you see that?’ I say to Eric.

He nods.

Albert Fogg arms himself with a broom and goes in bellowing. ‘Get back, you nasty things, you. Get BACK!’ There’s a crack and bang and Mr Fogg rushes out clutching his elbow. He tries to shut the door but a windbreak jams itself in the hinge and he can’t.

‘You beastly things, get back – or I’ll destroy the lot of you.’ The beach equipment inside his store doesn’t seem to be able to hear and starts to stagger onto the beach.

‘Help!’ he yells, slipping backwards as a huge deckchair with an extra leg-rest topples towards him.

I get there just as the cloth of the deckchair starts to smother his face. ‘Pull,’ I shout to Eric, and we both grab the leg-rest end and tug violently until Mr Fogg struggles free from underneath.

The deckchair joins its brothers stamping out of the cave and standing on their ends on the beach.

Jacob dances back and forth in front of them looking big, his eyes flashing dangerously red.

More and more of the chairs march out of the store, until they’re five deep on the beach, and then the first one finds the steps at the back and tries to climb them.

We watch in horror as it manages to get halfway up towards the promenade.

‘Oh no,’ says Mr Fogg, sinking his face into his hands and moaning. ‘I’m done for,’ he says,
collapsing onto the beach and pulling his coat up over his head.

I check the beach – it’s empty – and Mr Fogg can’t see, so I wave at Jacob and he lets loose a long tongue of flame, which bounces across the deckchairs, crackling, singeing and sparking, but not really burning.

The chair on the steps pauses.

‘Again,’ shouts Eric, already beginning to drip from his fingertips.

The heat is immense as Jacob sends lightning bolt after lightning bolt at the chairs, and then Eric counters this by sprinkling them with water. A wall of steam rises from the beach and the chairs stop, evidently confused and hopefully intimidated.

‘I can shrink them,’ I say. ‘But it won’t really help.’

‘We can burn them this time,’ says Jacob.
‘They’re not a bit cute.’

‘They’re still living beings, and they’re Mr Fogg’s deckchairs,’ says Eric. ‘They’re his livelihood.’

The deckchairs stand facing us. Shuffling. Waiting.

Mr Fogg is still sitting on the beach, his face hidden. Waiting as well.

And then, as if someone switched them off, the deckchairs sag to the sand, tumbling, flopping, leaning and ultimately lying just as deckchairs should, awkward and floppy.