Max Gilbert

by Simon Clark

  As he watched he heard a bang; a light shone from the window of the caravan.

  Swiftly, he climbed to his feet. Two figures ran from the caravan toward the gates.

  Jesus, one of the figures was as naked as the day they were born. They were too far away for him to be certain, but he got the impression it was the woman. She ran like an athlete across the stone cobbles-in her bare feet.

  Why on earth? ...

  Then the American saw what she was running toward.

  The little kid. For some reason he stood ankle-deep in the surf on the causeway. Like a little blond statue.

  He saw the boy's mother grab hold of him and clutch him to her bare chest. She held him like that for a moment. The husband, wearing a dressing gown, stood a little distance away. Mark saw that they were speaking to one another-at first agitated; he could not tell what they said. They soon appeared calmer. The little boy rubbed his eyes as if he had woken from a deep sleep, yawning.

  Then all three returned to the caravan, the naked woman carrying her son. The man shut the door. More lights came on behind curtains.

  He waited another ten minutes until it became clear that nothing else was going to happen tonight, then he walked away into the dunes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "David, stop doing that while I'm driving. It's distracting."

  "Okay."

  David didn't seem any the worse for wear after what had happened the night before. Nor did he seem bothered by the experience. They had asked him why he had left the caravan. "Just a little walk," he'd replied. They had decided to leave it at that, although Chris still wondered if moving away from his friends might have had a disturbing effect on him. In future the caravan door would get locked at night and the key put where David couldn't reach it.

  "Where we going, Mum?"

  "I've told you a hundred times. To Mr. Gateman's in the village. He's invited us to a barbecue."

  "Why?"

  "Because he's a cannibal, David. He's going to eat us for his supper."

  "Chris, you'll give him nightmares."

  "Dad, what's a sacrifice?"

  Chris had thought he was going to ask, "What's a cannibal?" The question tripped him. "A sacrifice? What makes you ask that?"

  "Enough." Ruth raised her finger-both father and son knew it meant change the subject. "We're going to have a good time tonight. David, you're having a treat because you're stopping up late. Your dad's having a treat because I'll drive home so that means he can drink beer and get all squinty-eyed."

  Chris turned the car into Main Street.

  "Chris, there he is. Quick. Stop."

  He pulled over. "Who?"

  "The man who does odd jobs around the village."

  Chris saw a man chopping at a privet hedge with some shears.

  "You said we needed some help at the sea-fort-go ask him."

  "Are you sure? He looks a bit wild."

  "It won't hurt to ask, Chris."

  His arms, legs, and most of his body ached. Some help shifting the rubble mountains, he had to admit, would be welcome.

  Stiffly, he walked along the pavement to where the man was cutting the hedge. With every snap of the shears his hair and wild-man-of-the-woods beard shook.

  "Excuse me. I'm-"

  The man continued cutting.

  "Excuse me."

  The words sunk in. The man stopped abruptly and looked up. The face was expressionless but the eyes had an odd cast to them. Chris pressed on. You don't need Einstein to shift concrete slabs.

  "Excuse me. My name's Chris Stainforth. I've just moved into the sea-fort up on Manshead."

  No response. Just an empty stare.

  "There's a lot of rubbish to shift and I wondered if you'd be interested in some work."

  "Uh ..." the man held the shears in front of him frozen in mid-cut.

  Then understanding hit him like a lump of concrete dropping out of the sky. The empty eyes blinked. Suddenly a fierce look blazed from them.

  "Manshead ... Sea-fort ..." the wild man shuddered as if he'd found a severed hand in his sandwich box.

  "No ... No. Mans ... head." The voice, thin and cracking, sounded as if it hadn't been used for weeks. "No. I don't go. You don't make me go. I live here. You say ... you say, go there, go do this, go do that. I'm here, I'm here. You want this, you want that. Go to the seafort. Go to Manshead. Do that in that place. That bad place."

  Chris's polite smile dried. "It's okay. Forget it... Don't worry. Just a suggestion."

  The wild man pointed at Chris with the shears. They were stained green with the blood of the privet. "It's not right. They say: Do this, do that. I wash cutlery, you know. There's so much of the bloody things. Knives, forks, spoons. More than anyone needs. It's just not right ... No ... no. I'm not-"

  "Easy, there, old son."

  The big American who ran the village store ambled casually along the road, an easy smile on his face. "You got work to do, Brinley?"

  "Cutting this blasted hedge."

  "Hey, watch the language," said the man soothingly. "Lady and kid present."

  "I've got lots to do before hometime. Hedge. Watering."

  "Plenty of time, old son. Take it easy. You got your flask? Have a drink."

  It took five whole seconds for the penny to drop.

  "I want a cup of tea."

  "Sure ... No point wearing yourself out. Grab yourself a break."

  The wild man abruptly walked away.

  "Thanks," said Chris. "I think I upset him."

  "Ah, don't bother yourself. He gets like that. Hey, how's David? Still got the Superman stuff?"

  David, leaning out of the car window, beamed shyly and nodded.

  "That's great. 'Cos I found some Superman comics in my old magazine store." He handed a carrier bag full of glossy comics to David.

  "That's great. Thank you."

  "That saves on introductions." Tony Gateman had appeared and was swinging open an iron gate. "You met my other guest."

  "Sure, we've met before in the shop."

  "This way, folks. The barbecue's lit, the drinks are cold. I don't know if anyone's thirsty, but I am."

  They followed Tony into the back garden.

  "There you go, David, old son. I've rigged something up for you."

  "A rope swing!" David ran down to the bottom of the garden where a mature willow stood. From a branch a rope dangled with a piece of wood pushed through a knot at the bottom.

  "You shouldn't have gone to all this trouble, Mr. Gateman."

  "Tony," he corrected gently. "No trouble. The little chap'd be bored with my old-fogey talk anyway." He led them onto a paved barbecue area. A large purpose-built barbecue smoked in a business-like way. Two tables stood side by side, one laid out with foil-covered plates and bowls; the other with bottles.

  "White wine, Ruth? Or am I being a sexist pig?"

  "I'm sure you're not, Tony. But I'll have a lager if you've got one."

  "Ah, working up a thirst on that sea-fort of yours, eh? Beer, Chris?"

  Mark Faust spoke in his bass rumble. "Chris and Ruth had a taste of Fox just now. I should have warned them."

  "Ah." Tony handed Chris a pint topped with a foam as white as ice-cream. "Every village has a Brinley Fox. Harmless, though. But you'll have met his father?"

  "No. Should I have?"

  "Fox and Barnett. The builders you bought the sea-fort from. That's old Mr. Fox's son."

  "I always dealt with the agent. I never met Mr. Fox himself."

  "That's hardly surprising, I suppose."

  Why? Chris was tempted to probe deeper. The excuse that Fox had simply pulled out of converting the sea-fort because he had had a change of heart was pretty light on authenticity in Chris's eyes. And he suspected Tony Gateman knew the real reason.

  Tony poured Mark a Guinness and himself a generous Scotch and ginger while effortlessly engaging the three of them in small-talk. Eventually, Mark excused himself, saying he was going to talk to David.
/>   Tony topped up the drinks. "Smashing place, Out-Butterwick, you're going to love it."

  "What brought you here?" asked Ruth. "You're not local."

  "Ah, you spotted the lad from the East End accent. A dead give-away. To tell you the truth, my dear, you won't find many true locals. As far as I know, only the Hodgson brothers, the chaps who farm all these meadows at the back here, are original Out-Butterwickers. No ..." Tony leaned forward as if sharing a secret. "Truth is we're all flaming outsiders. You know Mark Faust is. Came here in '62. I followed in '69. Before that I was a partner in a film production company." Chuckling, he pulled a cigar from his pocket. He didn't light it but turned it over and over in his long, thin pianist's fingers as he spoke in his soft, eager, secrets-to-be-told manner. "Film production sounds a bit grand. In fact we made training films and promos for the big corporations. I was the East End lad done good. Flash Jag, apartment in Mayfair, a leggy wife. That's when it got stupid. We had more work than we could handle. I'd find myself in the office at midnight; the night before you've got to present a sure-fire hit to the client. And you know, you've not got a ruddy idea in your head. That's when you reach for the white powders." He tapped the cigar on the side of his nose.

  "With me going flakey on forty fags a day and a lot of white powder up my tubes I came here. We were doing a location shoot for a new lawnmower; up on the dunes. You know, it looks like twenty miles of overgrown lawn." Anyway, I came. Did the shoot, feeling like a slice of death warmed up, coke up my nose, pains in my arms and chest; God, was I in a mess ... Then I walked along the beach to Manshead. I just stood there and looked ... The sea, the fresh air, the dunes, miles of beach, seagulls shooting this way and that ... And- bang!" He poured himself another drink. "It hit me."

  He paused. Then smiled. "God knows what. But something did. It's okay, folks, I'm not going to get religious on you. But I walked out on that causeway. And I chucked my fags and coke into the drink. Gone." He shrugged. "I went back to London. And all I did was think about this place. It was like seeing an enchanting woman. I fell in love. That's when I sold my share in the company and came to live up here." He sipped his drink. "What do you make of that, then? A dozy old bugger? Mid-life crisis?"

  "No," said Ruth, "it sounds as though Out-Butterwick saved your life."

  "I think it did, Ruth ... Ah, enough of me. Tell me your plans. Another beer, Chris?"

  "Thanks. Tony ... You said Fox just pulled out of the sea-fort conversion. To be honest, the idea of someone pulling out after sinking all that money into a project is insane."

  "Look, I'll tell you the truth," said Tony, leaning forward in his chair. "If you don't get it from me, you'll get some cock and bull story from one of the villagers. Want a drink, Ruth?"

  "Not for me, thanks. I'm driving."

  "Right ... Old Fox worked on the sea-fort for about six months. His only employees were his two sons. Twin lads in their late teens."

  The penny dropped; Ruth got there first. "The Fox who cuts hedges was one of the twins, right?"

  "Right."

  "The other Fox twin. Was he? ... "

  "A full shilling? He was perfectly normal. As was Brinley Fox in those days. Two bright twin lads all set to follow in old dad's footsteps as master builders."

  "So what happened?"

  "So, work went at a cracking rate. No problems. Brinley Fox liked it here. Sometimes he'd camp out on the dunes and go night fishing from Manshead itself-you know, there's a rock ledge that runs around the bottom of the fort. He did that for a couple of weeks. Then packed it in all of a sudden. In fact he got in a fight in the pub with a couple of lads. He accused them of playing tricks on him. Trying to frighten him at the dead of night."

  "And were they?"

  "They said they weren't. But lads are lads. Who knows?" He glanced at his watch and then shot a look across at the setting sun. "Then one day all three Foxes were working on the sea-fort. The tide was coming in, just starting to lap over the causeway, when Jim Fox, Brinley's brother, remembers they've left their sandwiches in the van on the beach. It's a warm day, so he tells his brother he's going to take off his shoes and socks and nip back to the van. He won't be gone two minutes. Anyway, old Fox is doing some work on the doors, young Brinley's sitting by the gate grabbing a nicotine break. By all accounts Jim Fox set off across the causeway in bare feet, ankle-deep in water, and phutt ..." He shrugged.

  "What happened?"

  "What happened is, Jim Fox set off on one side to walk the fifty yards across the causeway to the beach; but he never arrived."

  There was a silence. Midges danced above their heads.

  Chris rubbed his cheek. "But Brinley Fox saw what happened?"

  "Therein lies the mystery. His sanity disappeared with his brother."

  "It's certainly a good mystery." Chris took a swallow of beer. "Good enough for the tabloids. So what happened? Abducted by flying saucers or mermaids?"

  "Neither. Old Fox says he saw nothing. He saw his son set off, walking ankle-deep through the surf. He went back to his work. Five seconds later he heard Brinley scream. He turned around to see that Jim had vanished. Brinley yelled, 'It's got him, its got him.' Then he shut up and said nothing for more than a year. When he started talking again he was just how you see him now." Tony tapped the side of his head.

  "Well, what did happen to Jim Fox?"

  "No one knows. He'd disappeared. No body-nothing."

  Logic glared Chris in the face. "An accident, you'd suppose. I've seen it myself on the causeway. The tide comes in, and although it's only a few inches deep on the roadway you can't see the stones because they're a dark color. You only need to wander off course a yard or so and you'd fall in the sea."

  "Even so," said Tony, "at high tide you would only be about chest-deep if you stood on the beach at the side of the causeway."

  Ruth lifted her eyebrows. "So, he cracked his head on the side of the causeway when he fell. He wouldn't cry out, and the tide just carried him away. It was an accident."

  "Of course it was." Tony chuckled, the jolly host again. "Tell me to shut my trap if I get boring. I just wanted to give you the facts before you heard any halfbaked tales. Right, I'm starving. Shall we get started?" He ripped the foil from the plates. "These burgers I made myself. I like experimenting. Some are plain, those are with barbecue sauce, those with garlic, and I went crazy with those and soaked them in red wine." Using a metal fish slice, he began arranging the burgers on the barbecue grill; morsels of meat fell into the flames to sizzle against the coals. "Fancy some celery dip, Chris?"

  Chris rose. "In a minute, thanks. I'll get David."

  He strolled down the rolling lawn. He wrote off Tony Gateman's disappearing Fox twin story as the minor eccentricity of one living alone too long in a place like this. He liked the man; he was just trying perhaps a bit too hard to be friendly-and interesting.

  As he sat on the swing, David told Mark everything. About the elephant slide at the hotel the previous week. About the strange feelings and dreams he'd had at the sea-fort. Grown-ups sometimes treat you like a little kid when you tell them serious things. They laugh like you're telling them a joke or say "That's interesting." But Mark listened. He understood when David struggled to tell him that he was making swaps. David couldn't explain it properly. But he did know that if he gave away the toys and comics he liked to the sea, he would be given something back, just as you give money in a shop for a comic.