The Kingdom by the Sea

by Robert Westall

  They both listened in silence to the sounds of chewing outside the door. Then Harry said, “How long you lived here?”

  “Since afore the last war. The last war was none of my business. Neither is this one. I thought the Germans might be going to land here a couple o’ years ago, but they seem to have changed their minds now. Want to listen to the news?”

  Without waiting for Harry to say yes, he swung round and turned on a large old-fashioned radio, with a proud flourish. “That radio’s the one thing the sea didn’t give me. I bought it second-hand at Hardy’s in Amble. I bought it with the money I got for the fish. It runs on batteries. I buy them with money from the fish too.”

  They listened in silence to Bruce Belfrage reading the news. The news wasn’t very good, as usual. The Eighth Army were retreating in the Western Desert. The Russians were retreating round Smolensk. The RAF had sustained “comparatively light” losses, bombing Germany. The man switched off. “Must save the batteries. How you goin’ to manage, now you’re an orphan?”

  “Dunno,” said Harry warily.

  “You can always manage, by the sea,” said the man. “I’ve learnt that the hard way, over thirty years. I’ll show you how, if you like. Then you’ll have to go away and find your own beach. There’s not room for two here on this one. Is that a bargain?”

  “That’s nice of you,” said Harry, and found he meant it.

  “Just doin’ me bit for the War Effort,” said the man. “You’ll have to sleep outside though. Wi’ the dog. In the shed.” And he immediately led Harry to the door, taking the empty bowl off him as he went.

  The “shed” was simply one end of the long building, with a wall missing. It was full of propped-up, saltstained planks of wood, old fish boxes and lumps of cork. Don followed, the well-chewed remains of the fish still in his mouth. The wind, getting up, howled round the open shed, blowing in both spots of rain and rifts of hissing dry sand.

  “You’ll make yourself snug enough here,” said the man. “Well, goodnight to you.” And he went in and slammed the door hard.

  Harry managed to build some kind of shelter for himself and Don, behind the propped-up wood.

  A hand shook his shoulder. “Time to get up. Tide’s on the turn. Time’s a-wasting. Drink this.” The man thrust a very chipped enamel mug into Harry’s hand. Harry sipped it. He thought it was tea without milk or sugar; it was as bitter as gall, but after he’d drunk it, he felt better. He peered out of his shelter. Dawn was just breaking, a steely slit between grey sky and darker sea. There was a brisk breeze, with rain in it.

  Then the man was back, and handing him three straw fish baskets, with handles.

  “That one’s for sea-coal, an’ that one’s for slank, and that one’s for anything interesting you find.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ll see,” said the man, striding off, with what seemed to be four straw baskets in each hand.

  After two hours, Harry’s back was breaking; he was soaked and his knees were caked with sand, and he’d lost all feeling in his hands from cold and wet; they were red and swollen. And yet he was still fascinated. The man stalked the tide-line, bent double all the time, looking as natural as a heron on the hunt for its breakfast. He stalked with a heron-stride; he dipped with his hand like a heron striking. His feet even looked like heron’s feet, bony and splayed and grey. And he must have eyes like gimlets. He didn’t just find sea-coal (which Harry soon learnt to recognise), and slank (which was a particular kind of seaweed, which the man said was better for you than green vegetables). He found a penny, with the King’s head almost worn away by the sea and sand. He found a round rusty tin, still half-full of sweet-smelling tobacco. He found a sodden navy-blue jumper, with one elbow worn out, but it would darn. A baby’s dummy, nearly new, a deflated rubber bathing-ring that could be repaired. Two crabs stranded by the tide, a dead flatfish that was sniffed and pronounced still fresh, and a crippled sea-bird that he despatched with one blow of a charred plank, saying it would make supper. But he was most jubilant about some orangey stones, that he said were amber.

  “These started,” he said, “as lumps o’ resin oozing out of a fir tree in Denmark, hundreds and hundreds o’ years ago. I gotta piece once wi’ a fly caught inside it. All those hundreds of years ago. The feller who comes from Newcastle gave me five bob for that one. They usually make women’s beads out of them. But that one wi’ the fly was special. It was sent to a museum in America.” Then he said, “Not much of a morning. They’ve not been bombing these last few days. No fish. Come on and I’ll give you some breakfast.”

  They staggered up the beach, carrying loads of charred wood, as well as full bags of sea-coal and slank.

  He learnt to live with Joseph; learnt when to stand up for himself, and when to bend.

  Joseph had moods. In the morning, he was as cruel and savage as a gull. If the dog got in his way, he would kick it, with those grey iron-hard bare feet. If Harry got in the way, he would kick him too. There was no arguing with Joseph in the mornings; he would get hysterical, screaming at you, so that his spit landed on your face. He would tell you to pack your bags and go.

  In the afternoons, especially if it was sunny, he would sing to himself, the old songs of a whole war ago.

  “Keep the home fires burning…”

  If he found something good in the afternoons, he would caper around like a boy. The afternoon they found the whole keg of butter, three-quarters buried in the sand, he grabbed Harry and waltzed with him half down the beach, working out how many radio batteries the money from the keg would buy.

  At the end of the working day, after a mug of the vile tea, he would get dressed up in an old shiny black suit, and even boots, and cycle on his old butcher-boy’s bike up to the town of Amble, with his carrier laden with loot for the grocer’s and the second-hand shop. It was the only time he ever wore anything on his feet; and a collar and tie as well. He looked almost normal. When he came back, he would get the supper, and tell Harry word for word what he had said to the grocer, and how he’d put one over the secondhand dealer. That was the time to ask him favours. He would even give you things, without being asked. Sometimes the things were useful, like a clasp-knife with blades honed down till they were like sickles. Sometimes they were useless, like a photograph of a little girl in a Victorian sailor-suit.

  Later in the evening, he would drink from black bottles, and put his arm around you, and tell you the story of his life, or philosophise.

  “Everything’s good for something, Harry, everything’s good for something. A dead fish has no use for its body, but the seagull that finds it has. A wrecked ship’s no good to a sailor, but it’s good for firewood. This war’s bad for sailors, but it’s good for me. I find dead ‘uns, you know. Drag ‘em above high water, and go for the coastguard. They pay me a pound for every dead ‘un. An’ when I die, I hope I go on the beach. Good for the fish, good for the gulls. I don’t want to lie in no dark hole when I’m dead.

  When he started to talk about being dead, it was time to retire to the shed for the night. Lie cuddled up with Don, and listen to Joseph shouting at himself, and at his dead mother, and at God.

  And then it was morning again.

  You never asked what you were eating with Joseph cooking. But the funny thing was, it always tasted good. And you never got ill. And you learnt so much; it was like being back at school again.

  Until the day the bombers came. The British bombers.

  They hadn’t been on the beach more than two hours, when the first bomber came. Hard up the coast, at zero height, skirting Beacon Point and the Scars: a mutter, a roar, a scream of engines. Tiny bombs dropping from its yellow belly, at the yellow markers floating so peacefully in Druridge Bay. It was a strange bomber to Harry; not one out of the war magazines or aircraft-recognition booklets his dad had had. It had a little solid pointed nose, and two pointed engines, and an oval tailfin. Must be a new sort.

  The tiny bombs exploded, sending up plumes of whi
te foam, and banging Harry’s ears painfully But Joseph was dancing again, waving wildly as the second bomber started its run.

  “Tide’s coming in. Fresh fish for tea tonight. Run and get boxes, lad. All the boxes you can find.”

  Harry fetched all the boxes they had. Joseph had obviously given up beachcombing for the day; he just stood and watched and waved as ten bombers came, one after the other.

  Then the bay was quiet again. Where were all these marvellous fish?

  And then suddenly a wave broke on the shore that was silver. A solid wave of fish, tiny and large and enormous. And all dead. Fish to pick up in handfuls. Fish to fill boxes till they could hold no more. And still the fish came. And still Joseph capered, drunk with joy.

  When the fish stopped coming, he put on his suit, and went to Amble to telephone, leaving Harry on guard.

  Soon after he returned, a green van came, with three men to load the fish. They stared curiously at Harry, before they paid Joseph, and drove away.

  Joseph turned to Harry and said, “Those men asked your name. I think they’ve gone for the poliss. They don’t like you being with me. They think I’m potty.” He tapped his head. “They think I’ll do bad things to you, because I’m potty.” He tapped his head again. “Better go now, Harry. Go and find your own beach. I taught you all I know. The sea will be your mother and father now. Goodbye.”

  Then he turned and walked away, not up to the shed, but towards his bike and Amble. As he mounted, he shouted, “I didn’t see which way you went.”

  And then he was gone.

  And Harry was on the run again.

  Chapter Nine

  Harry only went about two miles up the beach, and then found a cranny in the crumbling cliffs. He wasn’t sure if a policeman would come, or if it was just Joseph’s way of finally getting rid of him. But best not to take chances. A policeman was much too big a thing to take risks about. Policemen were final; you couldn’t fight policemen.

  But he reckoned the police were much too busy to come searching the cliffs. Or plod along the beach without their bikes. They would watch the roads; ask people at their cottage doors whether they’d seen a boy and a dog go by. The best thing was to lie low, till everyone had forgotten about him.

  He lay low on a ragged patch of cliff top where the fields didn’t quite come to the cliff edge. He didn’t want any bother with farmers either. There was a slightly worn path along the edge of the cliff; but he hid himself from the path in a patch of gorse. Don seemed quite content to lie with him. The sun shone in fits and starts, but it would have been very dull, if it hadn’t been for the beach and the sea. Tide was going out, leaving strands of sparkling black sea-coal, and half a ship’s lifebelt, and a couple of empty bottles. Higher up, above the high-tide mark, there was plenty of dry seaweed that would make a soft bed for the night, if you shook the sandfleas out of it… he would never be bored beside a beach again, thanks to Joseph.

  He let dusk descend before he went on along the cliff path. He didn’t wait till total dark, because, although these cliffs weren’t very high, he didn’t want to fall down them. He was hungry, but he was used to being hungry by this time. He could wait till morning, if he had to.

  It was not quite dark when he saw the cottage, right on the edge of the cliff. There was no smoke coming out of the single chimney. And it was a funny place for a cottage to be, somehow. The land seemed to be crumbling under its edge, and it was tilting ever so slightly seawards, as if it might fall down the cliff at any moment. But it wasn’t falling apart; it was tilting all together, like a tin toy cottage. It had no garden, and no sign of life.

  He crept closer. The windows looked funny, not right somehow. There were slates off the roof, and dusk showed through the rafters. Not much shelter from the rain there. But worth a look. He tiptoed up to it, silently as he could.

  He touched the wall. It wasn’t brick, he realised with a shock. It was concrete, with bricks just crudely painted on it, and the paint was flaking off, like the old stage scenery at school. The walls were cold smooth concrete, and very thick. And the windows were just painted on as well, and the little blue curtains. In the middle of each painted window was a machine-gun slit.

  It was a pillbox, just got up to look like a cottage. Even the pointed roof was a flimsy fake; with a flat concrete roof underneath. That was why it was starting to slide down to the sea all in one piece, without falling apart. A pillbox from 1940, a pillbox for the Home Guard.

  The steel door was half-open, and part-buried and jammed in the sand, so it wouldn’t close. It had door-panels painted on it, and a number thirteen - somebody’s old joke.

  He sniffed inside. Just the smell of the sea, covering a faint, dirty dried-out smell, which he knew very well. Somebody, a long time ago, had used the pillbox as a lavatory. That meant that nobody official ever came here any more. This was 1942, and the Home Guard was a joke, because everybody knew that Hitler wasn’t coming now.

  He went inside, and lit one of the stumps of candle he’d nicked off Joseph. (Well, he was owed something, for loading all that fish.) The floor was thick with sand - two or three inches, blown in by the wind. And there were things left lying, besides the mummified brown curls that were making the faint dirty smell. There was a browned Daily Mirror from two months ago - that would come in useful for the loo. And there were bottles, beer bottles, that could be used to store water. And a box that could be broken up for firewood.

  But there were other things that baffled him. A pair of sandy snake-like objects, that turned out to be a pair of woman’s stockings. And a little gold thing that glinted fat yellow in the candlelight - a cheap earring. What the hell were dressed-up women doing, in a dump like this?

  But the great thing he found was a real fireplace, with real ashes in it. Pillboxes weren’t supposed to have fireplaces… but he supposed since the fake cottage had to have a chimney, the Home Guard had made the most of it.

  It occurred to him that he could make this place very snug. Somebody had already blocked up the machine-gun slits with a mixture of sacking and half-bricks, for some reason…

  He suddenly missed the dog. He went to the cliff edge and saw it moving, a dim shape, down on the beach, running between the bands of seaweed, nosing here and there. Don was looking for his supper. Lucky Don.

  He didn’t do much that night. Just picked up the mummified filth from the sandy floor with paper, and threw it over the cliff. Then he spread his blankets, and lay down listening to the sound of the sea.

  Don soon came back, carrying something slimy in his mouth that smelt strongly of fish. To the sound of Don gnawing with gusto, he fell asleep.

  The next day was the most exasperating so far. It started all right. He was wakened in the dawn, by the sound of the tide turning; he had all Joseph’s habits by this time. He was on the beach straightaway, looking for what the tide had left.

  There was plenty of good big sea-coal; but he had no straw baskets to carry it in. He had to leave it in a row of little heaps, till he found a fish box. The fish box was big, and he filled it too full of coal, and it was heavy to carry. By the time he’d carried three boxfuls up the cliff, he was weak and weary.

  He tried to dig free the iron door from the sand, so he could close it and keep his things safe. But when he had dug enough sand away, he found the hinges were rusted solid and wouldn’t budge. So, by the time the sun was well up, and people might come, he had to bundle up his things and find a hiding place for them in the false roof over the pillbox. Slates kept falling off, revealing his hiding places.

  The real trouble was, he didn’t know if this was a safe place or not. He didn’t know if people still walked here, along the cliff path. Couples with dogs; nosy kids, because it was Saturday morning again.

  And even worse, he had nothing to eat. He’d found two dead fish, that smelt all right. He’d topped and tailed and gutted them, as Joseph had taught him. But he didn’t dare light a fire to try to cook them until nightfall. Smoke from the
chimney in broad daylight would be a dead giveaway. He tried to eat the fish raw, but the feel of it in his mouth made him throw up, bitter strings of gall falling from his mouth on to the sand. He chewed a bit of his pocketful of slank, but it felt like chewing string.

  He would have to walk to Amble, and try to get something at a fish and chip shop, before he died of hunger. And he might meet Joseph in Amble, and then there’d be a right row.

  He walked along the cliff path, miserable as sin. Don ran before him, obviously well-fed, plume of tail waving, full of the joys of spring. He wished bitterly that he was a dog as well.

  It was a mile on that he saw the Bofors anti-aircraft guns, sticking their long thin muzzles into the sky, out of their circular walls of sandbags. Motionless. All except one, that was going round and round in the most peculiar way A bit further on, there was a low brick building with sandbags piled up in front of the windows, and a green army truck. But there was no sign of life, except that the one gun kept going round and round. It was too intriguing; he couldn’t resist it. He walked up to it, stepping over a very discouraged barbed-wire fence.

  The gun stopped circling one way, and began going round the other. In his hungry state, it made him feel quite dizzy.

  There was a single soldier, sitting on the seat attached to the gun, whirling his arms so fast on some handle sticking out of the gun that his arms were a blur. He wasn’t a very smart-looking soldier; he had his forage-cap shoved under the epaulette on his shoulder, and his overalls were filthy with grease.

  As he circled past, he saw Harry standing there, and stopped.

  “Hi, son!” He had a friendly lopsided grin, because he had a fag-end, unlit, stuck in one corner of his mouth. “You look like you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence. All the cares of the world on your shoulders, on a lovely morning like this?”

  “I’m starving,” said Harry. What had he got to lose? And the man did have a very friendly grin.

  “Doesn’t your mam feed you?”