Max Gilbert

by Simon Clark

  It took another five minutes of prising and swearing before it released its embrace on the sink. With a crisp snapping sound it came loose suddenly, throwing him off balance. "Jesus ... That's heavy." He heaved the monster plant into the wheelbarrow.

  "Just a minute." She snapped some of the smaller stalks from the heart of the plant. "I'll make lunch."

  "Resourceful. Now if you can knock together a few four-poster beds out of those old doors and ammo boxes, we've got it made."

  He wheeled the barrow out to the skip. Without the sides of the sink holding it tightly in place, the plant had flopped outward in a spray of white rubbery stalks that moved in the breeze. Now, for all the world, it looked like some species of huge albino spider. He covered the monster plant with the doors, then went back to move the last piece of junk from the room-a wooden straightbacked chair. It stood in the damp dirt by the sink. When he tried to move it, it wouldn't budge. When he forced it, it gave with the same crisp crack he had heard earlier when he prised the celery from the sink.

  Instinctively, he knew what he would find when he looked more closely at the raw glistening feet of the chair.

  It had taken root in the floor. He ran his fingers across the four snapped roots in the dirt which corresponded to where the four legs of the chair had stood. The wood of the chair was alive. The frame had warped, or grown rather, making the leather seat too small for the frame. He felt the arms. They were beginning to bud with new growths. From touch alone he could feel that the legs had swollen. Another ten years and he would have found something between a chair and a tree. Not quite one thing or the other. It would slowly have filled the room, vying for space with the swollen celery plant.

  Feeling suddenly cold, he broke the chair against the stone wall, then dropped the pieces into the wheelbarrow. When Ruth called him for lunch he did not mention the chair to her.

  Chapter Twelve

  "Celery boats?"

  Chris smiled. "No thanks, Ruth. I'll stick with the sandwiches. Has David eaten?"

  "All he wanted was a Pot Noodle." She read his expression. "It's okay. He didn't come into the caravan."

  "Did you get rid of the goldfish?"

  "That's your job, loving husband."

  "Thanks a million. Just check your pants drawer tonight." He grinned. "Make sure I haven't slipped it into one of your stockings."

  "Pig." Playfully, she kicked him on the shin.

  "Ah ... But I'm your very own loving pig."

  They were sat on chairs on the walkway that ran around the top of the sea-fort wall. Overhead, spring was doing a superb new paint-job on the sky, a deep, flawless blue. Twenty feet beneath him on the beach, David crouched over a pile of toys. He had drawn huge faces in the sand with a stick. They had grins and squint eyes.

  "Perfect." Ruth wriggled lower into her chair, resting her feet on his legs. "The celery wants eating up before it wilts."

  Below in the courtyard were the two skips, now full and awaiting collection. In one lay the celery monster spider, its long white, rubbery legs no doubt splayed out and crushed beneath thirteen heavy timber doors and five wheelbarrowsful of concrete rubble.

  Get out of that one and I'll call you Houdini, he thought.

  "As there's more junk to shift," said Ruth, "maybe we should get help."

  "Any ideas?"

  "There's a lad in the village who seems to do odd jobs for people. You've probably seen him. Long, straggly hair and a scruffy beard. Looks like a wild man from the backwoods. I think he's a bit simple."

  "He'll fit in well here, then."

  "Perhaps he could give us a hand."

  "It's an idea. I'll ask him."

  While she shut her eyes and basked in the sun, he settled down to watch David playing on the beach. David had balanced three of his toys on a boulder that rose out of the sand to knee height. The toys were his favorites-a Maddog Bigfoot, a blue stunt car, and a Star Wars stormtrooper figure. He then placed a Superman comic next to those on the boulder. He leaned forward, resting his hands on the smooth boulder and intently studying the toys as if they were about to perform a neat trick.

  After that he began to look from the toys to the sea then back again. The sea was creeping in. After a few minutes the first waves hit the boulder. They rolled slowly around it.

  David ran a few paces up the beach then turned to watch the boulder with an intensity that made Chris's own neck ache.

  Why on earth had he done that? His son had deliberately marooned some of his most precious toys on the boulder. By now the sea had completely encircled the boulder.

  When David used a swear word or made some observation on life that would have been impressive coming from an adult's lips, it always caught Chris by surprise. He would shoot David a look, half wondering if some forty-year-old dwarf had switched identities with his son. He felt that way now.

  God alone knew why. The boy was only playing what six-year-olds no doubt played. But it had the air of- Chris struggled for the description-a ritual. Or a ceremony.

  The waves had swollen in size now. What happened next was inevitable.

  One hit the Maddog car and it disappeared into the sea with a splash; the receding wave sucked it away out of sight.

  David's reaction was odd.

  He slapped his hands over his eyes as if the loss had upset him. But a second later he yanked his hands away.

  The boy was forcing himself to watch the toys being washed away by the waves. The comics went next, then the blue car. The Star Wars trooper seemed to hang on the longest, until a splash of water knocked it to the edge of the boulder and it hung over the edge like a drunken diver, arms outstretched.

  The next wave claimed it for the sea.

  Chris looked back at David. He had retreated up the beach from the incoming tide and sat cross-legged, staring out to sea. He looked drained, as if the act of losing some of his favorite toys had exhausted him.

  Losing them?

  No. He had given them away.

  "Ruth, do you think he's happy here? I mean, moving house, losing his old friends."

  She opened her eyes. "What makes you ask that?"

  He told her what David had done.

  "David! Hey, David!"

  No reaction.

  He hadn't heard. Or, more likely, he pretended not to hear. David seemed to be rolled up in his own personal misery at the moment. He stared at the sea which had taken his favorite toys.

  "Don't worry, Chris. I'll go down and talk to him." Ruth ran lightly down the steps to the courtyard while he watched his son. Something must be troubling the boy.

  He turned to go down the steps but was surprised to see Ruth hurrying back up toward him.

  "Come on," she said quickly. "We've got a visitor."

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the courtyard he found a small man-in his sixties, black-rimmed glasses, white hair combed over a bald patch. He was gazing up at the sea-fort walls as if they had just fallen from the Land of Oz. Ruth and David stood a little way off, watching him. Ruth caught Chris's eye. She gave a puzzled shrug when the little man's back was turned.

  "Magic," the man was saying to himself. "Just magic." Chris coughed. "Hello? Can I help you?" The man turned. His most striking feature was his nose. Long, thin, and with a bony look to it which managed to seem almost aristocratic without being beaky.

  Whoever he was, he could go. And quickly. The trucks were due for the skips.

  "Mr. Stainforth. Mrs. Stainforth. And little David." This little man had done his homework. "I'm Tony Gateman. Good afternoon." He shook hands with Chris and Ruth. "The times I've passed this place over the last fifteen years and never once have I seen inside. This courtyard is bloody enormous." He looked longingly toward the door into the main part of the sea-fort. "Like a museum in there, I shouldn't wonder."

  "At the moment it's more of a junkyard. Most of the original fittings were ripped out when a builder began to convert it into a hotel. Never got off the ground, though. He went bust."<
br />
  "But we don't intend to." Ruth moved nearer. "We've a sound financial plan and the bank's backing."

  Tony Gateman peered at her through the thick lenses of his glasses. "Actually, Fox and Barnett didn't go bust. Barnett had retired by then, but old Jack Fox ran the firm sweet as a nut. It was liquid all right."

  Chris's interest was stirred. "What happened?"

  "Ahh ... " It was more than an expression of remembering; Mr. Gateman was thinking hard. "He just decided it wasn't really his line of work. Pulled the plug on the project and went back to building semis ... I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Stainforth, you'll still be wondering who the hell I am. Poking my nose in."

  Bored, David had drifted back to the caravan.

  "I call myself Out-Butterwick's local historian, but that's just a flimsy excuse. The truth is I like sticking my nose into things." He rubbed the long aristocratic nose. "So tell me to clear off if you like." He laughed, and Chris felt himself beginning to like the little man.

  He continued: "A couple of years ago I published a little book, a history of Out-Butterwick. The church, pub, shipwrecks; the interesting characters of yesteryear, that kind of thing. Trouble is this sea-fort is the most interesting place; up to bloody here in history, and I could never get access."

  "Well, feel free to look around," said Chris. Ruth shot him a look.

  "Oh, I'll snatch your hand off for that invitation. I'll give you notice, though I can see you're up to your ears in crap today. But fascinating place. Manshead here was mentioned by the Romans in 97 AD. A Roman tax collector wrote about it in a letter to his wife in Rome. I managed to get a stat of the thing from the British Museum. It also gets a fair bit of press in ecclesiastical chronicles of the sixth and seventh centuries."

  "Manshead," said Ruth. "It's just a lump of rock they built the sea-fort on."

  "Just a piece of rock, my dear? This is a rock and a half. Have you noticed there're no shellfish stuck to it; not a ruddy one. The rock's a freak. Look at the geology around here, it's boulder clay with a few bits of sandstone. Manshead is igneous, probably volcanic. If you could make the sea and sand and stuff around here all invisible, the picture you would get would be of the seafort standing on a big black pillar-what?-maybe two, three miles high, a bit like Nelson's Column."

  "But people from centuries ago wouldn't have known that. Why did they make all the fuss about it?" said Ruth.

  "Magic, my dear. Place is soaked in it." He gave a wheezing laugh. "That's what they believed yonks ago anyway. You know, ley-lines and geomantric forces and that kind of crap. They believed this was one of the focal points. Where they could get closer to their god."

  "We'll put that in the advertisements when the hotel opens."

  "Anything to get the punters in is a good thing," agreed Tony Gateman. "Ah ... must get on." He glanced at his watch. "I was just passing so I thought I'd call in. Cheerio."

  Just passing? thought Chris. In those shoes? They were highly polished brogues. And just passing to where? Apart from the beach and the marshes there was nothing for miles.

  Tony began to walk across the cobbled yard and then stopped abruptly. "I'm having a barbecue at my place tomorrow evening. It'd be lovely if you could come."

  To Chris's surprise Ruth said: "We'd love to."

  "Six o'clock. Make use of the daylight. The name of the house is "The New Bungalow." On Main Street. You can't miss it. See ya, folks."

  Tony hurried away with that amazingly fast stride that only small men seem able to manage.

  "A barbecue, eh?" said Chris. "With the natives. I only hope we're not on the menu."

  "Ungrateful sod," said Ruth good-naturedly. "If we're going to become part of the community, we might as well make a start. If we can ... Chris ..."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Look."

  Through the window of the caravan he could see the flicker of the television.

  "Jesus ... I'd forgotten all about the bloody goldfish."

  They ran to the caravan.

  David stood with his back to them, a drum of fishfood in his hand, while he sprinkled ants' eggs onto the surface of the water.

  "Don't worry, kidda. We'll get a new one."

  "A new what, Dad?"

  "Well, a new ... "

  His voice dried.

  Instead of lying lifeless on the surface, its big eye pressed to the underside of the water like a fishy peeping tom, the fish was racing around the bowl with powerful flicks of its tail.

  "A new what, Dad?"

  "Oh ... I... just thought a bigger bowl ... Give Clark Kent a bit more room."

  "Thanks, Dad."

  Chris crouched down beside him so he could see the fish more closely. The shrunken look had gone; its scales blazed with a healthy gold color.

  Shaking his head, he rose and ruffled David's hair. "Back to work." As he passed Ruth he kissed her on the back of the neck and whispered, "I think I'll keep you on the payroll."

  "Why?"

  "For quick thinking in the face of adversity."

  "You've lost me, lover."

  "For buying another goldfish and switching it for poor old Clark Kent when we were out."

  "I did nothing of the sort. That is Clark Kent."

  "But it was dead."

  "It looked like that."

  "But-"

  "But nothing. Let sleeping dogs lie. It's alive. David's happy. Now"-she pecked him on the lips-"forget all about it."

  The UFO, trailing smoke and flames, crashed into the gray lunar landscape. With a fanfare of thin electronic notes the score on the left-hand corner of the screen flickered up to 1600.

  David pressed the button marked START. He had one life left. The next invading UFO began to float down toward his lunar base.

  "Are you getting the hang of it now, David?"

  "Yes."

  He felt his mum's arm around him tighten into an affectionate squeeze.

  They sat side by side on the sand, their legs outstretched in front of them. Down the beach the tide was slipping in over the dry sand; each wave brought the sea a little closer. Above their heads, seagulls floated like scraps of white paper.

  "Do you miss your old friends? Chrissie Fawley and Matthew?"

  He concentrated on the UFO, his thumb hitting the fire button.

  "No, not really."

  "We think it's really nice here, don't we? Living in a caravan by the sea. It's like being on holiday, isn't it?"

  "Will I still have to go to school?"

  "Yes, you'll go to a new school in Munby-near where we stayed in the hotel."

  "I'll make new friends."

  "Of course you will. There will be lots and lots of children your age. We can invite them across to the seafort to play on the beach. And when the building work's all done, Nan and Grandad can come across to stay. It won't be as quiet as it is now; there'll be lots of people about. Look ... Well done, David.",