by Tom Anderson
It did no good, anyway.
Just before his feet hit the high-tide mark, and he reconnected with the slowly brightening sea, he turned. That face, which I’d only ever seen looking blankly ahead, changed slightly.
The eyes shifted slowly, and picked me out.
His feet kept pointing forward as he leant his body gradually around, head tilting and hair slipping across his cheek. Those white, motionless eyes held mine, and his arm went up. Using his whole hand, cupped and bent at the wrist, he beckoned. He was scooping the last of the night air towards him, repeating the gentle raising of his palm upwards. Like every other movement that each of them had made, it was careful, steady and repetitive. It was clear too. He was beckoning as if he wanted to be followed.
But I stayed put. All I could do was watch.
He held his position for a few lappings of the shoreline, then started moving out to sea. As he sunk from sight, the hand kept rocking gently up and down, as if trying to haul the air, as well as me, in his direction. Only once his arm was under to the shoulder did he turn square to the horizon once more, and take the last few steps under the ocean and away to wherever he had come from.
The sky had two different ends, now. Off to the east the black had washed into yellowy grey, with streaks of red lining the strips of low cloud. Only one of the stars above was still out – a thick, violent one that had been flashing overhead all night whenever the clouds weren’t in its way. Night was still strong in the west, but it was going to lose out soon.
The surface of the ocean was gaining its colour. The patch where the moonlight had been, where the men’s heads had finally sunk from view, had lost its importance. As the east end of Chapel Shores crept into view, the sounds of the sea seemed to grow dull in my ears. Any time now would come motors and people and daytime.
The tide was pulling. More of the sand out front was appearing, wet and dark, with each wave that drew away. Sunrise was seconds away. A seagull bleated hard, and I headed for home.
Chapter 6
‘Doing the boot sale, in’t I! You coming?’
Crap! I’d managed to get back into the house with the stealth of an elephant. I spotted the lights in the kitchen and slipped in quiet, but he saw me in seconds. When I got in, my dad wasn’t only off the couch, but awake, showered, dressed and getting ready to go out.
No bollocking though – not a single word about it. I’m serious. Gaby’s dad would kill her, ban her from having certain friends, stop her going out for months if she came in like an hour late. Me, though? I could come through the front door at six-thirty a.m. and he’d barely notice.
‘Market is on, up in the Marshes,’ he went on. ‘They’re gonna be busy today, too.’ He’d stacked about forty pairs of trainers, in their boxes, against the back door. I yawned, deliberate and long, and made like I was going to speak.
‘You might as well come, if you’re awake, Luca.’ Then he paused, like he’d only just realised. ‘Why are you up, anyway?’
‘Homework,’ I told him. ‘Got to measure the time the sun takes to rise.’
He laughed. ‘And you’re bothering? You can look that stuff up online, buddy!’
‘I wanted to do it, anyway.’
‘Okay. Fine. Don’t tell your mum, though. She’ll just think you’re not sleeping again.’
‘I won’t tell her, don’t worry.’ She’d also probably have the brainpower to realise no teacher in Chapel Shores Community Comprehensive School would ever show enough imagination to suggest kids watch a sunrise for homework.
‘So you coming, then?’ he asked, again.
‘No.’
‘Aw, come on. I’ll pay you commish.’
‘You won’t sell anything to give me commission from,’ I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t. He looked, just for a second, like his mind had stopped whirring, as if it needed to be reset. The usual look came back in no time, though – my mum called it his ‘invincible smile’.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll manage, anyway. You can still help me load up, though.’
And so I was roped in for this bit of his plan at least. I lifted his tatty ‘Licence to Sell Goods at Chapel Marshes Open Air Trade-a-thon’ off the top of the shoe stack, and started moving boxes to the boot of his Fiat van. Like all his other routines, I knew the pattern. I’d been through it before, too many times. On a sunny day there would be loads of people who’d take the short little drive off the motorway to the Marshes to pick and sneer at the stuff being sold by people like my dad, people from a town twenty years behind the rest of Wales. The only guys who’d shift anything, though, even in good weather, were the pros who came in from Cardiff, Swansea, Bridgend, Bristol and other places to sell the stuff that genuinely needed a bit of brains to choose. Mobile phones, computer games, clothes, sunglasses, onesies.
However, like all the other people we knew from Chapel Shores, my dad would go up there with no plan other than to make a fool of himself begging city slickers or motorway breakers to buy things they didn’t want or need.
It was only me and Mum who could see it, too. So here he was, not put off in any way, and loading all the crap I’d seen him fail to sell in the past few weeks – into the boot of a van that got clamped by the local courts about once every six months when he forgot to pay one of its bills.
In it all went, carefully pushed in until there was no room for anything else. After the shoes – which, like my mum had said, were all the massive sizes that only NBA basketball players might want – came the rest: Diving flippers and water-proof wading trousers for river fishing. Plated guitar strings and ink cartridges that were the one colour which never ran out. Faulty selfie-sticks and fifty of something called a ‘julienne’ for peeling vegetables really thin. Plus there was the ten-year old metal detector he’d tried to make me sell Gaby last month.
‘You got all that buried war stuff, plus silver from shipwrecks on the low-tide mark and lost coins in all the mud-flats! Someone will buy that thing off us in a week.’ That week could easily turn to years knowing him though.
The swelling clouds I’d seen blocking out the stars overnight were spreading in thick. As he fired up the engine to reverse off the drive, the day was well on its way to being properly gloomy. It was definitely Chapel Marshes Trade-a-thon weather at its finest. He must be getting desperate.
I went upstairs, trying to make as little noise as possible, and tugged on my door to make sure the latch had clicked. Then I shut the curtains. The grey-white of daylight was only getting in through a little crack in the middle, and my head started swimming down into my pillow. Sometime between sleep and deep sleep I might have heard my mum getting up, but it didn’t put me off being properly zonked out for the count.
I closed my eyes and saw the only thing that really had my interest right then. There he was, in the blackness of my eyelids. That man, the figure. The first one up the beach and the last one off it. Their leader, their guide – or spirit, even – the one who’d lagged a minute behind the others before stopping and beckoning to me directly.
There was his hand, coaxing me off the rock, towards the shoreline – towards his shoreline. I saw the frozen stillness in his eyes, the way they slid, slowly, towards whatever they were looking at next. My duvet was getting warmer and the room felt darker. As my heart slowed and my breath smoothed, I saw his pupils fix on me. Still, the hand kept beckoning. The sounds of the sea were replaced by my own breathing. Air coming heavily through my nose, I fell further away from the world.
It was nearly tea-time when I woke up.
* * *
Still tired, for some reason, I headed downstairs, to where voices, loud and excited, were carrying themselves over thick layers of ska music. I opened the door to the living room, and it was like turning a volume meter. Up everything went, decibel after decibel, and the attention was shifted right onto me.
‘Here he is!’
‘Lukeeee!’
It was my mum’s two best friends, Rachel and Amy – the pair who claimed to have set her up with my dad, and loved telling the story all the time, seventeen years later. ‘Only thing we did right on that whole trip,’ Rachel would joke. ‘Apart from that, the whole of India was a disaster for all three of us!’
The rum bottle was out again, but with the lid on, still waiting for some love. A bottle of that creamy stuff they liked to drink had been opened in its place, though, and they each had a nearly empty glass.
Dad never seemed especially grateful for whatever favour they claimed to have done him in India, either, because he was almost always out when these two came around. I walked to the window and looked at the drive. The van was missing, sure enough.
‘How’s life then, Lukee?’ Rachel asked, and I looked at her in a way that said, ‘As if I’d tell you’.
‘Ah, don’t be rude to them now,’ said my mum, semi-sternly, before turning to reply on my behalf. ‘He’s doing just fine, girls. Sleeping better than ever, and he’s been to school every day this term.’
‘Ooh, nice work,’ said Amy, swigging from her glass of what looked like gone-off milk. I’d tried red wine, vodka and beer a few times with Gaby, but anything either of my parents or their mates liked to drink was forever going to seem rank to me, and I wouldn’t even need a sip to know it.
‘Want a slice of pizza?’ Amy added, lifting the lid on their Domino’s box.
‘Nah, I’m alright.’
‘Oh, come on! We’re not going to have any more ourselves. You’ve got to eat! Growing boy an’ all…’
I moved over to the couch and picked one of the cold slabs of pizza up.
‘That’s it! Get it down you. So how are you doing then, Lukee? Haven’t seen you in a while?’
It’s not as if they were going to get much anyway, but before I could even begin to formulate replies, my mum was answering for me:
‘He’s doing brilliant!’ she said. ‘GCSEs well under way. He’s good at them all. Got Bs for effort in every subject.’
‘Good…er… effort,’ said Rachel, before all three started laughing. I looked across the room.
‘And he’s got a really nice “friend” now, too,’ my mum went on. ‘Gabrielle.’
My gaze flashed at her, and I tried to sharpen a blazing squint, but it was too late.
‘Ooooh,’ said Amy. ‘Is she fit?’
My mum laughed. ‘They’re just friends. He wants it to be more, though.’
‘No I don’t!’
‘It’s cool, Luca,’ said my mum, her hands making a calming gesture. ‘That’s perfectly normal, anyway. Yes, Aim, she is gorgeous. Gabrielle’s a stunner. She’s really, really bright too. She’s the daughter of… You know, that family that owns the Carranero hotel. You know, the one with the gym and the spa – on the motorway junction… Out by the Marshes?’
‘I thought that was owned by some businessman with those tall headquarters in Swansea?’
‘Yes, same people! Her mum runs it all while he’s away looking to their other places. Well, “runs” on the treadmills, anyway, while some manager looks after all the work for hardly any money. That’s what I heard. Anyway, their daughter – she’s the youngest, I think – goes to Chapel Shores Comp. Her and Luca are always down the beach. You should see her artwork, too! Collects all these bits of flotsam and jetsam off the beach, the girl does.’
Amy thought for a moment, and then asked, ‘Hey isn’t that the girl who got…’
Immediately Rachel elbowed her, and hard. Leaning back in the sofa, I kept my head still but turned my eyes to look at the pair of them. Go on, Amy, I thought – the girl who got what?
‘Shut up,’ whispered Rachel, about twenty decibels loud enough for me to hear.
‘Why?’ said Amy. ‘It’s true though, isn’t it? Come on. As if a family like that can be allowed a secret. Didn’t they take her…’
Rachel hit her again.
‘OUCH!’ laughed Amy. ‘He’ll probably know all about it anyway. It was her, wasn’t it! They thought she was…’ and then, rolling her eyes, Amy spun her index finder around her temple in a circle, as if to say mental.
Before I could do or say anything, though, my mum claimed the conversation back.
‘Dunno what you two are bitching about,’ she said. ‘Gabrielle is lovely. Like I said, she’s gifted. Makes these little sculptures and collages with the stuff her and Lukee find on the beaches. Really, really talented young lady.’
Amy and Rachel both took another drink, while I went for a second slice of pizza because there was nowhere else to go. Amy looked like she was hiding a laugh.
Then my mum put her hand sideways across her face, palm facing out as if that would suddenly stop me hearing, and whispered loudly to them: ‘She’s probably not that interested back, but he can try, can’t he?’
Rachel and Amy both looked at me with this horrid mixture of both pride and pity. They both didn’t have kids themselves and changed boyfriends three times a year. Did I really need to be taking any advice from a pair of party girls my mother’s age?
It would come, though, anyway. You could be sure of that.
‘Buy her a present, Luca,’ said Amy before Rachel blasted in and shut her up for me:
‘Oi, how’s he gonna buy a present for the girl whose folks own Carraneros?’
‘Dunno. Maybe he could score her some Prozac,’ Amy giggled, before Rachel hit her again, the hardest yet. ‘OW! Leave it out!’
‘You are a nasty piece of work,’ Rachel said, smiling.
My mum stood up and walked to the freezer for more ice.
‘Just keep going the way you are, Luca,’ she said. ‘They’ll be falling for you all over the place. Don’t you worry.’
The other two laughed.
‘And anyway, you’ve got bigger, more important stuff to sort out first. He’s got to get to school on time tomorrow.’ She turned to both her friends and raised her eyebrows. ‘No more late marks for the rest of the spring is our target, isn’t it? They phoned on Tuesday.’
‘Who was that then?’ asked Rachel.
‘Kleener,’ said my mum.
‘No way! He was there when we went! He must be ancient by now! Luca? Is he… ancient?’
‘Dunno,’ I said.
‘He was younger than we thought,’ said my mum.
‘Now he was fit,’ said Amy. ‘Well, in a sort of… teacher way, at least.’
They laughed again, and my mum dropped more ice into their drinks.
‘He’s gonna be fine for being on time, as long as he keeps sleeping well,’ she said, her tone a little more serious again.
‘Give him a glass of Baileys then’ said Amy. ‘That’ll knock him out!’
‘And it will impress GABRIELLE,’ added Rachel.
She leaned over the coffee table and chinked her glass against Amy’s, which had been set down while Amy and my Mum flicked through a stack of CDs.
‘Oh my GOD!’ shouted Amy, arriving on one she liked the look of. ‘You’ve got this! The Bodysnatchers! This needs to be on, now, and LOUD!’
Amy choosing music and trying to make my mum and Rachel dance with her in my living room meant things could only get worse from here. I’d seen this before enough times and it wasn’t going to be my idea of how to spend the next hour. I had two options to distract myself. Take another slice of pizza, or leave the room. I went for both.
The ska shifted into some sort of hideous electronica as darkness fell outside and the evening grew cold. So I pulled out my headphones and went chasing after my own version of the world. Sitting back on my bed, I thumbed my iTunes looking for the release. Bunny Wailer was loaded and paused, ready for tomorrow, just where I needed him. Whatever went on downstairs, he’d get me through that gate okay in the morning. Storing Coo
l Runnings and Toots’s 45-56 as my backups, I flicked back through my other favourites, slipped the repeat mode on and went for my evening track instead. Next album along. Bunny again. Song number five: Dreamland. In kicked the off-beat and my little Luca head succumbed straight away to the wiggling, whistling patterns of soothing noise. Out went the anger, before it even knew it was there.
I lay back and looked at the ceiling. My chest sunk back, and my shoulders loosened. Awake less than two hours today, but that would do. There was a whole night to catch up on anyway. I closed my eyes, and rolled them in the top of my head, as the music made its way through the gap between my ears and met somewhere in the middle. Where it did, there was this warming, tingling buzz that began to trickle down my spine until it made its way out to my fingers and toes. I slipped and floated around in Bunny’s harmonies as his voice told me, and all the millions like me who were out there somewhere, about that place in his head, where food came from the trees and water was warm and life was easy and where nobody ever, ever died.
And d’you know what? As long as I kept that message on repeat… As long as it was on loud enough and was all my ears could pick up… then… then that place of his existed. Who needed to worry about how to go there one day? I was there right now, and could stay as long as I wanted.
Which was, of course, forever.
Chapter 7
Forever never comes, moans some ancient singer in the title and chorus of one of my mum’s favourite songs – unless, of course, you go to Chapel Shores Comp and your alarm clock marks Mondays.
Not even Toots can save you from those facts, but with my little bit of musical assistance I was up and out and keen to avoid the Kleen. Dad had come back some time after I turned in for the night. He’d been to the pub with Jeff, the same idiot who’d been trying to tune him to part with some cash in a jewellery deal. He’d fallen asleep on the couch again, and under orders from my mum was downing his breakfast of Sugar Puffs and offering me a lift.
During the tiny distance to the school entrance, now made even quicker by Dad’s Fiat-powered van, I was desperately trying to adjust my timings on the Bunny song so that I could still pass the gates as he sung the ‘dawning’ line like always. Dad, meanwhile, was trying to tune me into coming to the market with him when they went, later in the week.
