The Seahorse

by Anthony Masters

  Their parents–or relations–meanwhile regarded the pockets of industry with condoning suspicion or sustained embarrassment. Prepared questions were met with preoccupied replies, and their interest was rendered illogical by their offsprings’ lack of communication. The parents seemed quite unable to orientate themselves in this atmosphere of complacent application and they soon drifted out, thankful to avoid their sons’ baleful eyes as they mouthed desperate irrelevancies. Meg only just managed to stave off a wild attack of giggles when Albert turned to his father and desperately whispered:

  ‘Father–everyone’s staring at you.’

  It was true–the other Mums and Dads were regarding him with great interest as he poured forth a torrent of questions, determined to do his son proud in his display of fervid interest over the intricate structure of test tubes, bubbling liquid and bunsen burner that his son manipulated apathetically. The remark was a bit too much for him and he lowered his voice to a furtive whisper as he peered indecisively at his son’s acne-riddled face through a barrier of test tubes.

  Alexander and Adrian, sharing a purloined internal combustion engine, gloomily watched the former’s parents drift vaguely up to them. They saw him and both began at once.

  ‘What on earth have you got there, darling?’

  ‘What are you up to, old man?’

  Alexander attempted a smile and said:

  ‘This is my friend, Adrian.’

  Casey and Lettie had reached the pier. Her shoes and stockings were soaked and even the rough tweed of her skirt had not prevented the original wet patch from seeping into her underclothes. Although she was aware of this she paid no attention to what would normally be a dreadful predicament. They paused and looked down at the dark trough of water that ran around the piles of the ramrod structure. Perhaps because of some stirring underneath its clouded surface, or because of the wind or the tide, there was movement in its oily depths and the dark substance rhythmically lapped at the stained sloping banks of hard sand around it.

  ‘Crabs live in there,’ said Casey proudly.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ she replied, shivering. ‘It looks horrible.’

  ‘There’s a cave over there,’ said Casey non-committally.

  ‘Where?’ asked Lettie meekly.

  He gestured towards the cliffs rather impatiently, as if he was dealing with someone of limited intelligence.

  ‘There–look–can’t you see? They all go there.’

  Lettie didn’t dare ask who, but he abruptly supplied the answer for her.

  ‘Alexander and Adrian and all the others. It’s a nice cave–I’d like it–when they’ve got fed up with it, I’m going to have it.’

  ‘I expect they’ll soon get tired of it,’ said Lettie comfortingly.

  There was a long silence and then Casey remarked:

  ‘You’re awfully wet–won’t you get into trouble?’

  Suddenly she realised that he was talking to her as if she was almost an equal. His reticence had disappeared and she had proved herself, very obviously, by her actions which were irretrievably divorced from grown-up standards.

  ‘I don’t care if I’m wet,’ she said.

  Another pause as they both looked at the pool under the pier.

  ‘I bet there’s hundreds of crabs in there.’

  ‘I hate them,’ she replied.

  There was a fisherman at the very end of the pier, smothered in a huge sou’wester, bent low over his line; a shapeless figure that could have been a dummy–quite lifeless–he hardly moved.

  Casey looked up at her, his face expressionless.

  ‘I like the beach–when it’s like this–don’t you?’

  ‘When it’s like what?’

  ‘Empty–no people to–ask you things all the time.’

  ‘Shall I go–would you like me to go?’ She spoke like a child, pathetically anxious not to go.

  ‘You can stay,’ he said patronisingly, ‘you don’t ask things–so it doesn’t matter.’ Then abruptly, ‘Have you seen my seahorse?’

  He drew something out of his pocket and handed it to her. She looked down at the parchment brittle of the dried animal.

  ‘Goodness me–I’ve never seen anything like this before. Where did you get it?’

  ‘I found it–I found it on the beach.’

  ‘I never thought–’ she wondered if she was going to say the wrong thing–‘I never thought there were such things.’

  Casey regarded her seriously.

  ‘Of course there are,’ he said sternly. ‘There’s lots and lots of them–but only one here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lettie, looking down at the withered skeleton.

  ‘Not that one–he’s dead,’ said Casey scornfully. ‘There’s a real one that lives here.’

  ‘Where does the real one live?’

  ‘In the pool–here–look–in the deep part there.’

  Lettie looked vaguely towards his gesticulations. ‘Is he fierce, dear?’ she asked absentmindedly, sitting down again and taking off her shoes. They were saturated and her lisle stockings were torn and spattered with sand and mud.

  ‘Only if he doesn’t like you–but he’ll like you though,’ said Casey reassuringly.

  His belief disturbed her. She longed to shatter his illusion–abruptly and brutally. Yet she knew that if she was openly sceptical at all the slight tenacity of their relationship would break.

  ‘Don’t you like–people very much?’ she asked nervously.

  Casey looked directly at her. ‘I like you–you aren’t full of silly questions. You don’t act like a grown-up–they hate getting wet like you.’

  Lettie bit back her next question. It didn’t matter–she didn’t really want to know.

  ‘I like Sir too,’ announced Casey suddenly.

  ‘Which Sir?’ she permitted herself.

  ‘Storm,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think he’d like you to call him Storm?’

  ‘Oh yes–he doesn’t mind at all. He asked me to call him Storm in the holidays.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘He’s a very, very nice person indeed.’ ‘Oh yes, indeed he is.’

  ‘No one is as nice as Storm–he looks after me and takes me out.’

  ‘How lovely–but don’t forget I know him well too–he’s a very wonderful person.’

  ‘Don’t you love him?’

  ‘Oh yes, very much indeed.’

  ‘People aren’t always nice.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘People–like people you’ve been with–they say they love you and they don’t. They go away–very quickly after they’ve looked after you for ages and ages–and you don’t see them again–ever. They don’t come back–’

  Lettie could think of nothing to say in response to his misery and instead looked deep into the smut-black pool.

  ‘I’m sure there’s some fish in here or something. Look at all the tiny ripples on the surface.’

  Casey bent over with her and they both watched the dark surface seem to swell with animation as if it was the liquid tissue of some soft-skinned animal. Almost absent-mindedly Lettie put her bony arm around Casey’s shoulders.

  ‘Here be dragons,’ she said, gazing into the murk.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Casey mildly, ‘only a seahorse. He’s tethered right at the bottom. If you look carefully you can see his eyes winking in there–looking up at you–they’re always open.’

  Lettie craned forward over the water and peered into the centre of the pool. Although it was black with scum and reeked horribly of crab and seaweed there were other colours in it too. The reflection of the sun through the slats in the boards of the pier above them was completely absorbed in the ebony surface and there seemed to be dull topaz, faded emerald and pale cobalt caught up in the oily meshes of the still water. They were far below the surface and glowed dully, their colours muffled amidst the cloying pitch around them.

  ‘Can’t you see?’ said Casey. ‘Can’t you see his eyes looking u
p at you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s down there all right.’

  ‘If anyone hurts me at all,’ said Casey proudly, ‘he’ll come out of there and get them.’

  A thin rush of water soaked their feet and poured into the pool; the dead surface received it and seemed to open for it as if somewhere in the depths salt-fresh seawater was required.

  ‘The tide’s coming in,’ said Casey, as more cold water slewed over their feet and they both turned back towards the beach. This time Casey held her hand as they slithered over the wet slime of the baked weed. Lettie realised she was still clutching the tiny framework and she stopped and gave it back to him. She watched the tide sweep slowly over the rocks, covering them with a balm of dark jade.

  ‘I like beaches,’ said Lettie. ‘Thank you for letting me come.’

  ‘You can come again if you like,’ said Casey benignly, ‘as long as you don’t mind doing the things I do.’

  ‘Oh no–if you don’t mind my being silly.’

  ‘You’re not silly,’ said Casey shortly. ‘I think you’re very clever on beaches.’

  ‘What do you do on the beach?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh–well there’s the Seahorse to see for a start, then he’s got to be fed. I collect plankton, and bits of seaweed, you know–those bits that look like broccoli. He likes fish too, but I can only find dead ones. I’m not very good at finding food for him but, of course, he’s got a very large larder. He stores a lot down there and every now and again he comes up and does a bit of fishing.’

  Lettie looked back at the humped, macintoshed figure at the end of the pier. For a moment it looked as if instead of a head there was a mane and a tail was curled flat on the boards. But the light was fading as the sky darkened and the clouds looked as if they would burst any moment.

  ‘Doesn’t he come out of his pool very much?’ asked Lettie, as she placed a foot firmly in a crevice full of rainwater. It was bitingly cold and she withdrew it, hanging on to Casey as she only just avoided abruptly sitting down. Her wiry hair tumbled down her shoulders and great white salt patches suddenly appeared on her skirt and shoes. Yet, once again, these hardly registered as she wallowed in the temporarily sufficient release she had found.

  ‘Well–in the early morning or the evening,’ said Casey knowledgeably. He sounded as if he was talking about a much loved but troublesome friend. ‘There aren’t many left of his sort now and he has to be careful in case anyone sees him. They might want him for a zoo, you see, or something. You won’t tell, will you? He’s very shy anyway, and he doesn’t like anyone but me. But he’s fierce too and can be very dangerous. Sometimes he makes mistakes and frightens people who have just come to look at him. But that’s because he’s not used to people–not many of them, anyway. He always says he’d like to get away from the sea–he’s tired of it and he’s been in the same pool for hundreds of years.’

  ‘Oh, so he’s very old, is he?’

  ‘Oh yes, hundreds and hundreds of years old. There aren’t any young seahorses–they’re all extremely old and rather tired of the sea. They want to go inland–into the downs.’

  ‘Is that the only seahorse you’ve ever seen?’

  ‘Oh yes, the others live far out to sea–in the very deepest part.’ They were nearing the pebbles now and her shoes, full of water, slopped up and down.

  ‘Why doesn’t he live with them?’

  ‘Oh, he got bored with them all. They just sit around in a green palace all the time eating and dozing off after lunch. He’s the youngest seahorse–they’re all much older–millions and millions of years old. He thought they were dull and they wouldn’t play with him and they kept nagging at him to sing better.’

  ‘Sing? Does he sing then?’

  ‘Oh yes–that’s the one thing that seahorses can do rather well.’

  ‘What do they sing–what kind of songs?’ She sat down heavily on the beach and began to shake the water out of her shoes.

  ‘Oh–just songs–anything they can think of–that’s what they do in the evenings. There’s a big shell in the very deepest part of the sea. They all stand around and sing into it–and the Seahorse can hear them from his pool. If you come down here one night and listen very carefully, you can hear them all. It comes all the way over the sea so the Seahorse can sing back. But he’s not very good at singing–he’s got a croaky voice sometimes and then it goes too high. He just can’t sing–it upsets him very much. But the others can just hear him and they sing all the louder to drown his voice. It’s not very kind, is it? He cries and cries when they sing so loud so I have to go and cheer him up.’

  ‘How do you do that?’ She was standing up now, trying to do something about her hair.

  ‘Oh, I throw him lumps of sugar usually. He soon gobbles them up–it takes his mind off things–specially the singing.’

  ‘Can I hear them singing?’

  ‘Well,’ Casey considered, ‘it’s very faint and sometimes it gets mixed up with the sound of the sea. But if you listen very carefully in the evening just before it gets dark, you can hear. But you must stand quite still.’

  Lettie turned for a last look at the sea as they neared the bank of tufted grass and pebble that bordered the road. So convincing was Casey’s fantasy that as she looked far out to sea she could almost imagine that she could hear the mysterious anthem sounding over the water towards the recipient in the pool under the pier. The tide had covered it now and there was only a dark stain in the grey-green water to show its position–and that was only the shadow cast by the worn slats of the rickety structure above it.

  Angus Clarke fidgeted with his loosely knotted plaid tie and tried not to catch Virginia’s eye as he immersed himself in conversation with Harold Rice’s mother, a tall bespectacled woman with a suggestion of a moustache. She was broad-shouldered and her hair was close cropped to her head. She wore a nondescript, slightly shabby suit and an extraordinary pair of coloured stockings. A scarf, mauve and black, was wound round her neck, and she wore a pair of winged spectacles that gave her a permanently startled expression. They were standing in the kitchen garden where he had found her inspecting the blight on a row of cabbages. She had an intensity of eager speed that even Angus found hard to respond to. She was saying:

  ‘What impresses me most of all is that you grow the produce–you’re so completely self-contained–a self-sufficient little community–what a wonderful idea and how marvellous for Harold to be so involved. I’ve always wanted him to be involved with a community–he’s such a lone wolf and obviously here there’s so little chance of being uninvolved, is there–I mean, is there?’

  Angus nodded miserably. Bugger the silly bitch, he thought. His unaccustomed best suit hung uncomfortably on him and he wanted to go to the lavatory.

  ‘But I do admire–I really do admire Mr. Langham-Green. I mean–he’s just a wonderful headmaster. It must be tremendous to have his leadership in what surely is one of the–one of the most progressive schools in the country.’ She dwelt on the word progressive, savouring it as long as she could.

  ‘Yes–yes, he’s an inspiration to us all,’ said Angus flatly.

  ‘And what has particularly struck me is that you are all absolutely a hundred per cent behind him–a united, dedicated little band following a genius. Yes, I really do believe he’s a genius, you know. I mean, Harold’s been so different at home in the holidays–he’s so companionable and he always used to be so surly and unhelpful.’

  Angus, now in acute pain, remembered Harold as a particularly slow and miserable child–one of the backwards and difficults combined. He had been to various schools where he had remained for only a short time, largely because of his sheer laziness. Angus bullied him unmercifully and enjoyed it. Oh God–if I don’t have a pee soon she’ll get the shock of her life, he thought desperately. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Lancing trapped with an elderly man who seemed to be laughing either at him or with him. Meanwhile Mrs. Rice continued relentlessly.

&
nbsp; ‘It’s all so free, that’s the point–it’s all so gloriously free. Harold’s letters are ecstatic–all this outdoor life and nature study–’ she waved her gloves at him vaguely–’it’s so character-building.’

  That’s what Harry needs all right, considered Angus wryly–he thought of running water.

  ‘They get so much more out of it than they would at the ordinary school–They can really express themselves here–It’s such a great adventure. Looking back on my own schooldays I can recall sheer torture. If only I’d had the opportunity to come here I could have looked back to my childhood with so much more happiness. I was a terribly highly-strung child, you see–I was ridiculously sensitive–I felt everything and I was so wounded by the discipline and the brutality. But here it’s a paradise for them–they’ll never realise how lucky they are. You’re doing a wonderful job here–all of you–a wonderful job. Young minds–moulding young minds. They’re so receptive, you know, at this age–’

  But Angus could contain himself no longer. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Rice–I really must disappear for a moment. Incidentally, tea is being served in the dining-room–I wonder if you would care to step over there–I will join you in a matter of seconds–Then we can continue our–er–discussion.’

  ‘Why certainly, Mr. Clarke,’ and she gazed after him in mild astonishment as he leapt the rows of cabbages with sudden vigour. He disappeared round the back of the building rapidly leaving her to murmur:

  ‘What an athletic young man–a wonderful example for Harold.’ She stared vaguely around and began to amble gently towards the front of the building. Taking an overgrown path beside the school she came across Angus peeing in the hollyhocks. She turned away abruptly, leaving Angus puce and fumbling at his fly buttons.

  Tea was chaos. The boys waited upon their parents whilst the staff, headed by Storm, talked to select groups. There was a buzz of conversation and the clattering of tea cups. Alexander and two other luckless children went up and down the tables refuelling tea pots whilst their seniors drank cup after cup of the milky brew, consumed limp mounds of bread and butter and chewed at fancy pink-coated cakes. Their appetites were terrific and Paul, immersed in conversation with a very deaf old man, watched them with amusement. He was not looking forward to Storm’s announcement but he had at least succeeded in telling Casey. Paul had been shattered by the way the news was received. He had expected to have hurt him, to have dealt him the most dreadful blow–to have reduced him to tears and then to have comforted and reassured him, promising to do everything he could to still see him. But Casey’s attitude had been remarkably negative and he had looked at Paul with an expression that was undefinable. He could only presume, and it was with this that he began to convince himself, that Casey’s feelings were, once more, too introverted to show any outward response at all. Paul smiled complacently, and then wiped the smile off his face at once when he realised its cause–that he was pleased that Casey was bottling up his supposed misery as the love of his life threatened to disappear. Although he no longer smiled, Paul was furtively content to imagine the boy’s grief, for here was someone, at least, to regret his departure.