SUNK (8 page)

For two days, while Mum and Colin Threepwood bombard the town with contradictory but well-meaning slogans, like
SMALL IS WHERE THE HEART IS
and
LONG LIVE THE BIG PRIVATELY OWNED HOTEL
, it rains.

But on Wednesday the sun comes out.

I leave really early.

‘Don’t you want breakfast, Tom?’ asks Dad, waving a saucepan.

‘Er – no. I’ll grab some on the way,’ I say, leaving Dad in his pyjamas, making toast.

I race down the street, passing the milkman and the postman, aware that I have almost never seen the town this early in the morning.

I get to the beach at about the same time as Mr Fogg who is standing outside his store jangling his keys and looking anxious. ‘Ah, Tom,’ he says. ‘Just plucking up the courage.’

‘Could we leave the deckchairs off the beach?’ I say.

He shakes his head. ‘The beach inspectors are already in town. The chairs have to be out.’

‘But if the beach is wrong, then they’ll think we’re no good. We won’t win the contest and it won’t be sold off.’

Mr Fogg looks out through the tiny gap in his face behind which his eyes lurk. ‘No – not on my watch. So long as it’s still my job, I’ll do it properly,’ he says. ‘And besides – I want to win it.’

‘Really?’ I ask.

He scratches his bottom in reply.

‘Well, in that case, we’ll try to run a rota, so that one of us is here with you at all times. We’ll try to help you win it.’

‘Would you do that?’ he says, sounding almost hopeful.

‘Yes – er – no problem,’ I say.

It’s not ‘no problem’. It’s practically impossible. Even with my bike, coming and going from school is tricky.

‘So, class,’ says Mr Bell, ‘we’re going to look at another aspect of empathetic behaviour. Today we’re going to try to imagine what someone else is thinking. And I’ve brought someone small to help.’

He opens the door, and picks up a basket from outside. The basket quivers and then immediately starts wailing.

A baby?

‘Yes, I’ve brought Gemma with me. Cootchy, cootchy, little bubble baby.’

Mr Bell blows bubbles at the baby and the baby smiles and blows bubbles back. ‘Snoodly, snoodly, snoodly.’ Mr Bell rubs noses with the baby.

At the back of the class, Jacob makes retching noises.

‘So,’ says Mr Bell, clearing his throat. ‘So, I’d like you to look into Gemma’s eyes and tell me what you think she’s thinking. How you think she’s feeling. Oh – where’s Eric Threepwood? He’d be good at this.’

‘Just gone to the toilet, Mr Bell, sir,’ I lie. ‘I’ll go and find him if you like.’

‘Or I will,’ says Jacob, glancing at the baby and her adoring fans and backing towards the door.

‘No, no, I’ll go,’ I say, lunging through it. I practically throw myself into the pasta maps of the London Underground and race out of the school and onto my bike.

I freewheel round the front of the castle and down to the beach. ‘Hi!’ I shout to Eric. He’s sitting outside Mr Fogg’s cave under a huge beach umbrella. ‘All quiet?’

Eric grabs his school bag and takes the bike off me. ‘Small moment with an inflatable dolphin and a granny but we won and it’s safely back in the cave.’

The rest of Wednesday passes quietly.

Thursday starts with drizzle.

All three of us go to school.

First we do art.

Miss Mawes looks at my ‘Woman in Blue’, turns it round, examines it upside down
and says, ‘Very interesting to see you using Picasso’s mask techniques. Have you been reading up on them?’

I look at my biro scrawl. I couldn’t have made it worse if I’d tried.

‘Brilliant,’ says Miss Mawes, sailing off to examine Jacob’s masterpiece, ‘Woman in Red’.

Today there’s no baby, and we’re doing physics, but the cardigan’s back. Mr Bell has a kettle, a bowl of ice and a glass. He’s discussing thermal shock. It’s all fine, and then somehow he brings it round to empathy.

He pulls on yellow rubber gloves and safety goggles. ‘Stand back, everyone,’ he bellows, and then, as if he remembers himself: ‘Please.’

With great concentration he boils the kettle. ‘So if we were being kind to our glass, we’d warm it up slowly – but if we want to shatter
it – we plunge it from hot to cold.’ Which is exactly what he does, and the glass pings apart in a not terribly interesting way, mixing shards of glass with blocks of ice.

‘Anyway,’ says Mr Bell, staring into the bowl hopefully as if something spectacular could happen at this late stage. ‘Anyway.’ He sighs, peeling off the rubber gloves and sitting sideways on the desk. One leg just touching the floor. ‘I’ve managed to get my hands on this wonderful computer game.’

Jacob, who has been staring into the bowl of ice waiting for something to happen, wakes and looks around. ‘Did he say computer game?’

‘Yes, young Jacob. Computer game. It’s called
Cuddle or Destroy
, and it’s designed to help you make the right choices in life. So who’s first on the computers then?’

Jacob gets in first, of course. ‘What do I do here then?’ he says, as a small green lizard-alien thing races towards him.

‘Presumably you have to decide whether to cuddle or –’ starts Eric, but before he’s even finished the sentence, Jacob has annihilated the alien, leaving a green smear on the virtual landscape and losing a life.

‘I get it,’ says Jacob. ‘I should have killed him the moment I saw him.’

I glance out of the window. The drizzle has dried up and there’s an ominous patch of blue sky over the playground. ‘I’d better go,’ I say to Eric.

He nods and patiently explains to Jacob the meaning of the word ‘cuddle’.

The beach is quiet. Full of holidaymakers, and one or two people with clipboards, but no sign of marauding beach furniture.

Friday dawns sunny and threatens to be hot.

‘Expecting a high of seventy-six degrees in the Bywater Regis area, clear skies and light winds …’ says the weatherman on the radio.

Grandma looks at me over her specs. ‘Still OK there, Tom? Managing to stay in school every day?’

‘Yes,’ I reply, my voice strangled by the lie.

I race to school on my bike. Jacob’s taken the first shift.

‘He’s not well, the poor little mite,’ says
Mr Bell. ‘Let’s spare a moment to send him good thoughts.’

I imagine Jacob sitting on the beach eating ice cream and think dark thoughts. I only hope he’s taking the job seriously.

We limp through to lunchtime, gazing into each other’s eyes and imagining each other’s feelings.

‘Tom looks really weird, sir,’ says Petra Boyle. Which is a bit much coming from someone wearing dental braces obviously designed by a concrete engineer.

At lunch, Eric and I hang out at the bins waiting for Jacob. But he doesn’t come.

‘Do you think he’s run into trouble?’ asks Eric.

‘I think we should check,’ I say.

Getting past Dad in the playground is easy. He’s asked for the reasons behind a fight and
two girls are shouting and pointing at each other and Dad’s looking confused and trying to get them to talk quietly and slowly.

It’s not worth asking. I could have told him that.

We aren’t even at the beach when the noise hits us.

Yowls and yells and screams.

‘It’s happening!’ shouts Eric as we pick up speed past the harbour and onto the sea wall.

I stall for a moment at the top of the steps and look down.

The deckchairs have mutinied. It’s mayhem. All the families are running around in circles trying to reclaim their possessions from the snapping jaws of the chairs. Right through the middle races a small child pursued by a single beach umbrella, both of them skipping
over the sandcastles, clearing everyone to the sides.

Everyone, that is, except Jacob. He’s standing in the centre, red-faced and sweaty, sending bolts of flame at the rebellious chairs. Sparks are rising, but the chairs don’t seem to be bothered. They tramp and stamp and kick sand into the air, and then finally, when he sends out a fireball, they notice him, turning their attention to him rather than the holidaymakers. There’s a moment’s pause while the chairs form ranks and lines and all swing to face the same way.

Jacob suddenly looks very small.

‘Oh dear,’ say Eric. ‘We’d better help.’

I’m about to run with him to join Jacob, when I hear a muffled cry. I look round to see who’s in trouble. It’s Mr Fogg trapped inside his giant parasol, cursing and shouting.

‘Mr Fogg,’ I cry, peeling back the layers of the parasol. ‘Are you all right?’

The parasol fights me, tightening itself round him until all I can see are his wellington boots sticking out of the bottom.

The whole thing is still upright but wriggling, and I can’t tell if it’s him moving or the parasol itself. I turn to see if Eric might be able to help but all I can make out is steam rising from the middle of the beach, until a figure emerges from the smoke.

It’s not Eric or Jacob, it’s the mayor, and he’s shouting at the escaping tourists. ‘But it’s a great place. Don’t go! Stay. We’re so much better than Bywater Regis.’

‘Stop!’ he shouts, waving his arms at a small child, who shrieks and runs faster.

‘Come back.’ The mayor struggles up the steps onto the sea wall and pleads with a family
who rush straight for the bus stop, pushing him away.

‘Stay,’ he says to a woman dragging her weeping child along the pavement.

I turn back to the parasol. Mr Fogg is making choking sounds, and the parasol has closed so tightly on him that I can see his face quite clearly through the cloth. His mouth is open, pressed against the fabric.

‘Wait a sec,’ I shout, fumbling through my pockets until I find a biro. ‘Open your mouth as wide as possible,’ I say and I wriggle the pen into the cloth. The point pierces between the threads, pushing them to the sides and making an airway for Mr Fogg. As I do so, the cloth of the parasol bunches, and as if he was an irritation the parasol shoots Albert Fogg from its tasselled bottom onto the sand.

‘Oh my!’ he coughs. ‘That was close.’ Next
to him the parasol billows, flaps and furls itself tight. It appears to be sulking.

I glance over to the dissipating cloud of steam.

A heap of beach furniture lies motionless. Eric and Jacob are circling it and watching it carefully, the occasional jet of either fire or water dousing the steaming mass of wood and stripy cloth and plastic.

‘Oh lumme,’ says Mr Fogg, scratching his bottom. ‘That’s done it. We’ll never win anything now.’

We have to work really hard to get the beach cleaned up. All night, in fact.

And I have to tell Grandma.

Who tells Eric’s dad, who, it turns out, is really good at scrubbing deckchairs.

‘Remind me why we’re doing this,’ says Jacob, managing a steady warm hand-dryer heat over the parasols that Eric and his dad have scrubbed ready for steaming.

‘Because we want to win the Best Beach contest,’ says Eric.

‘But I thought we didn’t want to win.’ Jacob’s eyes flash red as he adds heat to Eric’s fine spray of water and steams another pile of parasols.

‘Mr Fogg wants to win,’ says Eric patiently, ‘but we don’t want the big businesses to take over the town. We need to make the beach inspectors think that everything’s perfect, but make life uncomfortable for the international conglomerates.’

Which gives me a brilliant idea.

‘Have we washed everything?’ I say.

‘Well, apart from that lot over there.’ Eric points at a last pile of chairs, flexing under a large tarpaulin.

‘Fine, job well done,’ says Grandma, opening up a thermos and pouring everyone a slightly blobby paper cup of hot chocolate. ‘Almost there, chaps.’

‘I’ll clean up the last few,’ I say, ‘if Eric will stay. You take Mr Fogg home, Grandma – we’ll finish up.’

Grandma gives me a hard stare. ‘If you’re sure, Tom.’

‘I’m sure,’ I say.

‘I’m sure too,’ says Jacob. ‘Beddy-byes for meeeeee. Night, all.’ And he wanders off the beach up towards the town, sending little sparks from his feet as he walks.

Grandma takes Mr Fogg by the elbow. ‘Come on, Albert, get yourself a few hours’ sleep before the crowds arrive.’

‘What crowds?’ says Mr Fogg. ‘No one’ll come after all this chaos – will they?’

‘They’ll come,’ says Grandma reassuringly. ‘Don’t you worry.’

‘If you think so.’ Mr Fogg shakes his head. ‘And I can’t believe all that steam – how did
we get all that steam?’ He looks puzzled.

‘Well, Albert …’ I hear Grandma making up stories to explain Jacob’s and Eric’s powers as she and Mr Fogg stagger over the sands towards the steps. ‘It’s like this …’

‘What are we doing with these, Tom?’ asks Eric, pointing at the chairs left in the heap.

‘This,’ I say, forming an O with my finger and thumb, and taking a sighting on them.

Click.

The tiny chairs and tarpaulin lie in the palm of my hand, snapping and wriggling.

Eric peers over my shoulder, looks up at me and raises an eyebrow. ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’

The first strip of dawn light hovers in the east as we scuttle along the promenade towards the Royal Hotel.

‘It was what you said about making life uncomfortable for the international conglomerates.’

‘Yes?’

We stop at the back of the hotel. ‘You were absolutely right. That’s what we need to do, so that’s what we are doing. Open the door.’

Eric tugs at the door handle as if he’s expecting it to bite him and we stand in the opening looking in at the kitchen. The lights are on, and pots and pans are simmering, but it appears to be empty.

‘Go on,’ I say, gripping the deckchairs tightly in my hands.

‘But aren’t we trespassing?’

‘This is an emergency. We’re allowed to trespass,’ I say, tiptoeing past him into the kitchen. We pause, listening by spitting pans full of bacon. ‘I can’t hear anyone – let’s go on to the hall.’

‘Really?’ Eric’s gone snot-pale.

The huge hallway is empty except for a vacuum cleaner and a radio playing quietly in the corner. There’s another sound, a kind of whispering, rubbing sound and I realise it’s Eric shaking, his springs of hair trembling against each other.

‘Bung one over there somewhere,’ I say, nodding towards the receptionist’s desk.

In the same way that you would pick up a crab, Eric takes a single deckchair from my hand and places it in the desk drawer.

He lets out a silly little giggle and clamps his fingers over his mouth. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Where next?’

We slip into the housekeeping room and drop three more in the trolleys that chambermaids use to clean up rooms.

‘And one in here,’ says Eric, dropping one in the umbrella stand.

Finally, as we sneak out of the kitchen, we slip one more in the scrambled eggs and another in the cereal.

Eric beams as we step out into the street. ‘That’s the naughtiest thing I’ve ever done,’ he says, grinning and clapping his hands. ‘I loved it.’

I open my hand. ‘We’ve still got these,’ I say, looking at six more deckchairs and a parasol. ‘If you want to do some more?’

‘Marigold’s,’ he says. ‘Didn’t Mr Fogg say there was a burger chain interested?’

The streets are still empty and the seagulls are setting out for a day’s squawking as we head down the quay towards the boat-booking kiosk.

A fisherman nods to us as we saunter along the harbour wall. He doesn’t look at us for long – he’s too busy mending his nets – so
we’re able to get really close to the Marigold Tours boats.

It takes no more than a minute to drop three deckchairs on each boat and the parasol into a cabin and then step away.

‘Right,’ says Eric. ‘Is that it then?’

‘Yes – let’s go home, get some sleep and meet again in a few hours.’

I don’t get anything like as much sleep as I need.

‘You are failing in your duty as a brother!’ Tilly bellows, slamming my bedroom door open and kicking my carefully constructed model of the International Space Station out of the window.

‘Hey!’ I shout, trying to wake up and protect myself against more damage.

‘Well, you are – you’re pathetic.’ Six months’ collection of bottle tops follows
the ISS into the garden. ‘You haven’t made them stop!’

She stares at me, her hair wild, her hands on hips.

I can’t summon the words, so Tilly goes on.

‘They’re compounding it. They’re making it worse – she’s running with HIM!’ She points in the general direction of Eric’s house. ‘And Dad –’ Tilly pinches her face into a dismal on-the-edge-of-tears frown – ‘I can’t bear another day at school with him there.’ She sits on my bed and does a long drawn-out sob.

I think she’s forgotten that it’s me – that I don’t fall for this stuff.

‘Um,’ I say in the end.

‘Tom,’ she says pitifully. ‘Save me.’ She melts towards me, laying her head very close to mine. Snuggling up, her hair lying across my pillow. Our cheeks touch.

I open my mouth to say something profound and comforting, nearly say something mean and from the heart, and decide that probably the best policy is to say nothing at all.

Only then do I remember she still has head lice.