Death at the Seaside

by F. R. Jameson

  He grinned at his spoiled little princess. The process of getting dressed had started for him, but since she was clearly going to be an age, he was crashed the full length of the bed enjoying a Marlboro. Lying there in his underpants and vest, his suit hung neat and crisp on the wardrobe door.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love,” he told her. From some other man’s lips that might have sounded rueful or regretful – but they were saps.

  “So?” she snapped. The bedroom was so poky it had an echo, as she stared at the mirror she so obviously enjoyed her own voice coming back at her.

  “So, I don’t know what it feels to love, do I? I don’t know whether I love you or not, how could I tell?”

  She sighed loudly and hit the brush to her knee – an eight year old on the precipice of a tantrum.

  “Love is wanting me around the entire time.” Her voice took a dramatic pitch. “It’s always wanting to be near me, it’s always thinking of me, it’s whenever you do something wondering – before anything else – how it will affect me.”

  He smirked and stubbed out the cigarette. “That seems a bloody lot to ask. What’s in it for me?”

  This time she did throw the hairbrush at him, it bounced off his belly. He glared at her for just a second, but then couldn’t help breaking out some laughter.

  She laughed too. Her laugh nervous compared to his.

  Christ, this chalet was small! All it took was a lunge and he reached over and grabbed her wrist, yanking her towards him. She didn’t resist, instead landing awkwardly next to him on the bed. Doing his impression of a pit bull on heat, he nuzzled her through her petticoat.

  “What’s all this about, Betty?” he asked.

  “I was just wondering.”

  “You never normally wonder.”

  With a gentle force she pushed his head away, standing up slowly and smoothing out the lines in her petticoat. “A girl’s allowed to wonder, isn’t she? And I’ve been thinking about it in terms of my career. I know that doesn’t sound right. I know I should have more romantic reasons – and I do. I care for you a lot, Castle, I think I am falling in love with you – but I can’t help thinking that a progression in my personal life will be good for my career.

  “Please, don’t smile – I’m being serious. Think of me now, think of all the boring roles I get. That could be because I’m seen as a boring person. You know, I’m married to Geoffrey, at home in Knightsbridge, never in the papers. Well that’s maybe why I don’t get roles with sex appeal, the roles that are dangerous. But what if I leave him? What if I take up with a bloke a bit wilder? A bit interesting? One who isn’t your safe doctor? What if that gets reported in the papers? Sure, I’ll be a scarlet woman for a while, but I can use that, I can turn around my career. I wouldn’t just be the boring friend anymore, I’d have a little danger. What do you think, Castle? What do you think?”

  He blinked, startled as much as anything else by the fact that he didn’t think she had it in her to surprise him. “Are you asking me to marry you?” he asked finally.

  “What’s wrong with that?” she snapped. “Other people do it.”

  “We’re not other people.”

  “But other people will look at me differently. Don’t you see that, Castle? They’ll suddenly pay proper attention to me. Don’t you see why it’ll be a good thing?”

  He smiled at her, or half smiled. Lord knows whether he was managing it, but he wanted his face to say no, yet still say maybe.

  Nearly all of him didn’t want to marry her. Happy bachelor that he was, he didn’t want to sign a contract which pretty much guaranteed whining and moaning. Didn’t want to be there as she got older and even more disappointed. However, he could see there might be advantages. Business lines and opportunities had appeared simply through his being her bit of rough – what would happen if he had a shiny certificate with both their names on it?

  What’s more, other women were interested now. It was a feather in their pretty caps to tempt him away from the actress, Elizabeth Franklin. If he hitched himself to her properly, maybe he’d travel to Hollywood and meet an Elizabeth Taylor or a Marilyn Monroe – what fun that would be!

  But then, was it worth it? Were any of those daydreams worth it? After all, by the end of the honeymoon he’d want to bloody wring her skinny neck.

  So Castle tried that smile on her – a smile that balanced precariously between “maybe” and “maybe not”.

  In response she gave him a long pout.

  Not knowing what else to do, he lay on the bed, stared at the ceiling and reached for another fag.

  Betty possibly said something extra to him, but he didn’t really listen. Instead through expelled smoke, he thought back.

  The two of them – he and Lestrade – had come into their fortune together. He’d worked hard for his money, both when he had none and later when he had the lot. Every deal he did now he researched thoroughly, he always knew precisely what he was doing. Of course, he made it look easy, always made sure to burst into any negotiation smiling and carefree like he was the happiest and most easy-going geezer in the world. But if anyone tried to con him out of so much as a shilling, he was on it in seconds. He sometimes said there was no luck, only sheer bloody hard work. Except there was a lot of luck; he wouldn’t be anywhere if serendipity hadn’t graced his path.

  It was a sunny day, he always remembered that. Lestrade and he were guarding payroll on its way across the countryside. They sat in a jeep at the front of a convoy – behind was an anti-aircraft gun, then the truck with the money, then another jeep with two guards more and their driver. The day held a peacefulness that echoed. So cheerful an afternoon was it that he and Lestrade even sang songs, changing the lyrics to make the verses filthy. Tommy – the spotty, barely shaving yet driver – punctuated their verses with guffaws of laughter

  It was clear blue skies as far as any of them could see that day, perfect visibility for miles around. Green everywhere. Idyllic. They should have seen any danger coming from miles off. Yet the Focke was on them so quickly. A black demon appearing snarling over their heads, there was no roar of engines, no spot in the distance – it was just suddenly above them.

  Amidst the roar of the German engines, he could hear the screams and panic behind them. The blokes with the large, bloody anti-aircraft gun seemingly turning bloodless white and soiling themselves as they tried to turn the barrel to hit something directly above.

  The seconds seemed to be hours. Castle could remember being midway through a particularly scurrilous rhyme and then seeing the plane big, grey and terrifying over him, so close it was as if he could practically raise his arms and grab it. He could remember the words still coming from his mouth, his brain not working fast enough to acknowledge the danger – and then Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Three bombs. The detonation of the first somersaulted their jeep over. Their entire world spinning around in a kaleidoscope of light and colour, that looked like heaven and the other place all mixed together. The air seemed to whizz by him a grey mist, as if trying to forcibly suck the life out of his shaking bones.

  They sounded like echoes at first, but then there were couple of extra explosions from the ground. It was the engines of the vehicles blowing skywards. Then there was silence.

  It was eerily still, deathly silence. He didn’t even hear the plane fly away. It was just on them, there an instant, causing bloody havoc and leaving as if a ghost.

  Still not quite sure if he was a goner or not, Castle reached his hand to the door sill of their turned over and wrecked jeep, and pulled himself up. He spat acrid, burning soil from his mouth as he did. No bones broken, but bruised, badly bruised.

  In front of him, the view remained green. It was ethereally beautiful. The only blemish was the utterly vile smell.

  Slowly, more scared than he had ever been before, he turned and stared over his shoulder. He choked when he saw it, gagged and spluttered as his insides rushed to his throat. Everyone was gone, everything was gone
. The anti-aircraft gun was now a smoking shell, the men with it were scattered – blackened limbs separated from pulverised torsos. The truck was gone, now just a crater in the ground. The other jeep was crushed and smoking.

  His ears were ringing, his head so dizzy he could barely stand, but from the side of him suddenly there was coughing.

  Turning terrified to his right he saw that, incredibly, there was Lestrade – his own eyes getting used to it. Both of them stained by smoke, shaking with shock, but alive. Amazingly and incredibly alive.

  They hugged. The only time in his life he’d clasped another bloke.

  With tears in their eyes, they moved slowly on trembling and unsteady feet, examining their own jeep. It had just been hurled forward, no more resilient that some cheap die-cast toy. Lestrade had been hurled out, while the metal had crumpled in just the right way to cushion the impact for Castle. Sadly, young Tommy hadn’t been so lucky, his neck had snapped on impact. They closed his frightened eyes for him.

  The two friends staggered through the wreckage, to check if anyone else was left alive. A glance told them it was hopeless. Their other senses too – there was no screaming in pain, no whimpering, just the smell of burning flesh. Nobody was there to be saved, apart from them.

  And boy, could they be saved!

  It was Lestrade who spotted it. He who noticed that although the truck had been destroyed, the cash box had amazingly been thrown clear in the explosion. It lay on the grass, gleaming almost, unharmed. Neither broken nor burnt.

  They weren’t even supposed to know it was there. Tommy had told them – who knows why? Probably just to impress with a little bit of illicit knowledge. But the documented fact of it was that they weren’t supposed to know of its existence. So if it vanished, who was going to suspect them? The assumption would be that it been destroyed along with everything else.

  They didn’t consider long; the beauty of it just struck them. It took a little while to move the box – it was both heavy and hot – but eventually they got it away from the site and opened it. Those wartime notes were big and lovely. Saint George almost winking up at them.

  They had a quick count to get an idea and then buried it, like boys playing pirates. Then they went to the wreckage and sat there waiting, to all the world as if they were shell-shocked.

  Eventually another unit arrived and they were taken in. Sympathetic ears heard their story and they were thanked for their efforts, even wrapped in cotton wool for a little while.

  Seven

  He took Betty out for dinner in an attempt to remove the sullen pout from her face. It was a French place, and he was reliably assured that it was the fanciest restaurant the town had to offer.

  Of course there was part of him tempted to just escort her to the camp dining room. If she wanted to see real married life, he’d show it to her. Faces and faces of boredom, all linked together by stupid gold rings. Proper marriage wasn’t being married to the good doctor and being able to flounce out of the house in her best underwear with no questions asked. Real marriage was humdrum and dull and made its participants humdrum and dull. But she was already in a bad mood, and having to mix with the hoi polloi – and hoi-polloi who might not even recognise her – was bound to sink her further. He wanted her that night, and didn’t want to go through one of her games where she withheld sex. As amusing as the thought of dining with the other campers might have been, he knew the reality would be far from pleasurable. So he treated her, splashing out for a taxi cab and everything.

  It had the desired effect, at least initially. Betty snuggled erotically close to him on the backseat.

  “You only want the best for me don’t you, darling?” she whispered in her sultry voice. “You want me to be super and successful and a big star, don’t you? Don’t you? Imagine I’m in a film with Cary Grant or Montgomery Clift. Imagine I have a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, looking over and seeing Marlon Brando in the next swimming pool. Imagine me walking the red carpet on the way to the Oscars. Imagine me winning an Oscar. Imagine me paid a fortune to do films. Proper roles, real movie star roles. Not the parochial nonsense I currently do. They never capture my looks properly in this country. Never exploit them the way they should be. Hollywood would do that. Of course, Hollywood could do that.

  “Wouldn’t it be good, Castle? Wouldn’t it be great? Think of the people you’d meet. You’re always talking about tapping new markets – well, Hollywood is completely new for you. There’s loads of people there who haven’t had the Larry Castle experience. They wouldn’t be able to palm you off, muck you about – there’d be none of that. They wouldn’t have a clue what to do with you, my darling. You could rule them all. We could rule them all. Use our looks and talents to wow them over.”

  The restaurant was plush and had the feel of being exclusive. The waiter even bowed his head a little, an obsequious touch that Castle greatly appreciated. Still splashing out, he let the genuine Frenchman recommend him a ridiculously expensive bottle of red wine “exclusively from the vineyards of Bordeaux.” Such was his charmed mood that Castle didn’t even make a frog joke.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m tempted, Betty, I won’t lie to you, there is temptation in what you say. But the thing is, I’m a London boy. I’ve no idea how things operate in America, no idea at all how I’d go about doing what I do. And it might be exactly the same, or it might be completely different. And if it’s completely different, what do I do then? It’ll take me a couple of months of being in America to work out if I’m going to fit in, and if I spend a couple of months away then some other Brian or Keith will move into my patch here. You see what I mean? I might be really successful, things might work out grand – but if they don’t, what happens then? I’ll be buggered from all sides, that’s what happens then.”

  “But if I’m successful it doesn’t matter.” There was a smile on her lips which already glistened with her own inevitable success.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’d take care of you, silly, you know that.” Her grin got wider. She knew how beautiful she was, and when she wanted to she could wield it like a Bowie knife to devastating effect.

  Paul Lestrade had used his laugh in much the same way. Something that was supposed to be pleasant, but instead became a weapon.

  When he and Lestrade returned to base, they didn’t speak as much anymore. The other lads around thought it a consequence of the incident, that they now shared too many bad memories. But the reality was much baser. Brothers of a kind they might have been, but they didn’t really trust each other.

  Both of them knew where the money now resided, and they’d probably both had the same thought with regards to it: that whereas one could live the life of a king, two would still have to work on it.

  So even though they didn’t speak so often, they always kept an eye on one another. Castle wouldn’t have put it past Lestrade to go AWOL, dig up the money and vanish into the autumn mist. Even if the bastard was caught, he could just play the nerves card and be out in twelve months. As long as he’d got the money stashed in a new hiding place then it was still going to be there for him. And what the bloody hell could Castle do about it? Who could he complain to about the theft of money he’d already stolen?

  Under the table Betty slipped her foot into his crotch and abruptly brought him back to the present.

  The main course – chicken in white wine sauce for her, steak and chips for him (none of that “pommes frites” nonsense) – had arrived with great ceremony.

  But rather than digging in, Betty was tickling her toes against his swelling hard-on. Her smile was lascivious and wide, elbows on the immaculate white table cloth, leaning across and licking her lipstick lips.

  “I’ve got it all sorted out,” she told him.

  He sliced his meat open, finding it nice and bloody Say what you would about the French, they could cook a good bit of beef. “What have you got sorted, Betty?”

  “I couldn’t get
a photographer all the way out here, but I arranged one in London. I got Jimmy to do it for me. He owes me a few favours after all. Here’s what happens. We leave here tonight and get a cab, but instead of going to your charmingly small chalet, we get the last train to London. We’ll go to your flat and in the morning, I’ll open the window and lean out and Jimmy will take snaps of me. Then he’ll sell them to the newspapers – probably the News of the World – and they’ll ask the question: ‘What is Elizabeth Franklin doing scantily attired in an unmarried man’s flat in the early hours?’ They won’t actually publish them, I don’t think, but – you know – they’ll say they’ve seen ‘the photographic evidence’.”

  Her grin was brimming with toothy delight. “I’ll be a scarlet woman for a few weeks, sure, but I can use that. At the moment I’m just dull. People see security when they see me, they see best friends, older sisters – mothers.” She actually shuddered. “This will change that! This’ll make me sexy, wanton even. Can you imagine the scandal? Can you imagine what kind of roles I’ll get offered on the back of it? Can you? Real roles. Sexy roles. Can you imagine that? And we can do it tonight, Larry. We’ll set the ball in motion tonight and this time next year we’ll be the King and Queen of Hollywood. Just say yes, Larry. Say you’ll skip pudding and we’ll head to London and start the rest of our lives? Leave this battered, grey island – and every paltry, bloody thing in it – behind. Change our lives forever in the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. What do you say, Larry? Please, for me. Let’s leave all this behind and conquer the new world!”

  Brave new world, he thought, but – sharp and sparkling though they were – Betty’s pleading eyes blurred as he reminisced. There was the weekend he discovered Lestrade had got leave. It was in that strange, exuberant, but still on edge period between VE Day and VJ Day. Suddenly leave was available, so Castle got some for himself.