SUNK

by Fleur Hitchcock

  ‘Perhaps it was the combination of fire and water – like steam-cleaning.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ says Eric. ‘So what shall we do about it? We can’t leave it like it is. Poor Mr Fogg, he wants to win the contest, but he’s having a terrible time and the beach is downright dangerous.’

  ‘We could move all the chairs, steam-clean them, seal up the hole and solve it …’

  ‘But that would mean that the mayor could sell it all off and Bywater-by-Sea just wouldn’t be Bywater-by-Sea any more.’

  We stand in the darkness listening to the sand fleas hopping all over the beach in the dark.

  ‘It’s the mayor – we need a new one – properly elected. I think it’s time we got your dad and my mum to join forces.’

  ‘Really?’ says Eric. ‘You’d do that?’

  I think of the combined embarrassment factor and then I think about Bywater-by-Sea and the whole town sold to a plastic corporation and say, ‘Really.’

  ‘So we thought that perhaps you might like to work together,’ I say to Mum who is combing nits from Tilly’s hair into a salad bowl full of shampoo and frantically paddling head lice.

  ‘OW!’ screams Tilly. ‘What? Mum team up with Colin Threepwood? Per-leaze. That is not happening.’

  ‘Tilly!’ barks Mum. ‘That’s none of your business.’ She yanks the comb through Tilly’s hair. ‘Although – I’m not sure I think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Because you’ve given up all hope of becoming mayor?’ says Tilly hopefully.

  Mum pulls extra hard on Tilly’s hair. ‘No – that’s not it.’ But she doesn’t say why.

  I suspect that, in spite of Mum and Dad’s bravado, Tilly’s little trick with the baby photos and the karaoke has sort of worked. Mum is feeling dented.

  ‘You see,’ says Eric, ‘we think that together you could pool your voters and get enough people on board to defeat the current mayor.’

  Tilly swings round. ‘You are not serious! Surely. I can’t think of anything, anything at all, that would be worse for my image at school.’

  We all stare at Tilly. She goes bright red.

  ‘Because the current mayor is not good for the town. We overheard –’ I look at Eric, who nods – ‘we sort of overheard that he’s selling off the beach, the Royal Hotel and probably some other places.’

  Mum puts down the nit comb. ‘Who to?’

  ‘Global conglomerates,’ says Eric.

  ‘Sofa companies,’ I say.

  She looks at Eric, her mouth hanging open. ‘Does your dad know this?’

  ‘No,’ says Eric. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Mum rushes to the sink to wash the nit gloop from her fingers. ‘I think we’d better tell him.’

  ‘What about me?’ says Tilly plaintively from underneath her louse-infested conditioner. ‘I’m only half done – I’ve still got nits.’

  ‘What about you?’ says Mum, grabbing my and Eric’s arms. ‘Come on, boys, let’s go.’

  ‘Don’t mention anything about the crazed deckchairs,’ I mutter to Eric as we scuttle up the hill to his house. ‘Because, you know, it’s just easier if she doesn’t know.’

  ‘Mum’s the word,’ he says, zipping his lips.

  * * *

  Eric and I pretend to eat alfalfa and peanut falafels in the kitchen while Mum talks earnestly to Eric’s dad over the table and drinks quinoa juice.

  Eric’s dad nods wisely as Mum outlines her attack. ‘Mayor and vice mayor, Colin,’ she says. ‘You can be the front man – everyone loves you. I’ll be the administrator – how does that sound?’

  ‘You mean we run together? We enter this bold new part of our lives in tandem?’

  Mum raises her eyebrows. ‘Sort of,’ she says.

  ‘It seems to be working,’ says Eric. ‘They’re getting on. But what are we going to do about the chairs? The election isn’t until next week. Someone’ll be killed between now and then.’

  ‘But the Best Beach contest is this weekend, on Saturday.’ I try to swallow a particularly solid piece of falafel. ‘We have to keep the chairs in order so they don’t kill anyone, but let them be just uncomfortable enough to make the beach a less lovely spot. I suppose after that we can try to cure them.’

  ‘Let’s hope it rains so that no one goes onto the beach until we do.’

  Mum and I go home and she spends the evening printing Eric’s dad’s name alongside hers on all the dayglo posters. When she tells Dad and Grandma about the mayor’s plans they’re horrified.

  ‘But that’s awful!’ says Dad.

  ‘It explains a lot of things,’ says Grandma. ‘All those people with clipboards, and the sudden price hike in the Curl Up and Dye hairdressers – and other things.’ She stares at me.

  Dad makes soup and Grandma and Mum line up loads of posters. The only person who doesn’t help is Tilly, who sticks her tongue out, says she’d never eat Dad’s soup even if he paid her, looks murderously at Mum, and goes off scratching her head to torture her Woodland Friends.

  Grandma offers to stick the new posters all over town in the dark.

  ‘Tom, dear, you can help,’ she says, grabbing a handful of posters and a load of tape.

  ‘Can I?’ I say.

  ‘Oh yes, we’ll do a better job together.’

  ‘So,’ says Grandma when we’re outside. ‘Can you shrink those two there?’

  ‘Shrink?’ Grandma hates me shrinking things.

  ‘Yup,’ she says. ‘We can paste them up on the model village houses. We’re open this weekend and people will see them.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ I say, making an O with my thumb and forefinger round the posters.

  Click.

  The two posters shrink to about the size of a matchbox and I hand one to Grandma and we tape them to the front of the tiny church.

  There’s a huge desert of silence while we leave the model village and walk out into the empty high street. I hold the posters while she tapes one to a telegraph pole.

  ‘So how’s poor Mr Fogg?’ she says in the end.

  ‘Fine, fine – I imagine.’

  ‘Just that I gathered from Cheerful Charlie in the café that you’d been in with him and he seemed quite shaken.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yes.’ Grandma knows everything in this town. Everything. So there’s no point in lying. ‘He’s struggling.’

  ‘With the beach furniture?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. Trying to keep it minimal.

  ‘Right,’ says Grandma. ‘And what are you doing about it?’

  ‘It’s all under control,’ I say.

  ‘Good,’ she says, sticking the last poster on the village horse trough. ‘So long as you’ve got it under control we’ll be fine. But if you need help, Tom, dear, do let me know.’

  23

  No Problem

  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 w
atch. 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.

  24

  Jacob vs Deckchairs

  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.’

  25

  Scrambled Egg (1)

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