The Kingdom by the Sea

by Robert Westall

  Then, as he got nearer, he saw she was looking at him; she had come down the road ten paces towards him. She gestured to him, as if urging him on.

  Again he looked behind him; but there was nobody.

  She shouted something urgent, which he couldn’t make out. Unable to bear the suspense, he broke into a feeble trot, all the weight of the pack and pans on his back banging away.

  As he neared her, she reached out and grabbed both his hands. He looked, bewildered, at her middle-aged bespectacled face. He didn’t know her from Adam. She was a total stranger. But she was yelling at him urgently.

  “My mother’s fallen on the stairs, an’ I can’t lift her! Come quick and help me lift her!”

  If she hadn’t been holding his hands, he might well have run away. He was scared of old age and illness. He had enough troubles of his own. But the woman had a firm grip on him, so he went. Up the crazy-paving path, with huge white conch-shells lined up on both sides. Dreading what he might see, when his eyes got used to the dark hallway.

  A massive bulk, at the foot of the stair. Fat grey-clad legs sprawled any old how, skirt right up above the knees. A clutter of sprawled arms and knobbly sticks. And a face.

  The face smiled up at him. “There’s a kind lad,” the old lady said. It was a headmistressy sort of face, with white hair piled high, and gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the nose, and dangling a gold chain. He knew in an instant this was no useless old granny; this was somebody far too important to be left lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

  “If you’ll take this hand,” said the old lady, as calm and decisive as Field Marshal Montgomery, “Ada can manage the other. Now, both heave together. And stop flapping, Ada! I’m not dead yet.”

  There was one tremendous heave, and she was on her feet, her spectacles wildly awry. She adjusted them, and said, “Sticks!”

  Ada grovelled behind her, and produced the sticks. The old lady settled her grip on them both, nodded to Harry, as if to say all was well, and said, “Come in, young man,” and led the way in stately fashion.

  The room was large and cosy, with a blazing fire and bookshelves all over the walls. But what caught his eye was a table laid for supper. With big fat silver knives and forks, just like at Carrick’s Cafe.

  “You’ll stay for a bite, of course. Take his bags upstairs, Ada. And set another place. We must look after our rescuer. Do sit down, Master… I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Harry… Baguley.” He shook hands solemnly.

  “I expect you would like to wash your hands, Master Baguley? Show him the bathroom, Ada.”

  The bathroom smelt fragrant and female. Like their bathroom at home, after Mam had had a bath, only much more so. He was almost afraid to use the pale pink towel, in case he left a dirty mark on it. He washed his face and hands three times, then dried them on his filthy handkerchief. But he borrowed a large pink comb and combed his hair, and carefully checked for hairs afterwards, and pulled the hairs out of the comb and put them in his pocket to throw away later. Then he grew afraid he had made that small dirty mark on the pale pink carpet, and spent three minutes trying to scrub that out with his hanky and spit.

  He hovered on the landing, suddenly terribly shy. But the old lady’s head appeared, and she said, “Ah, there you are!” And then he had to go downstairs.

  “Do sit here. I expect you’re ready for your supper. I see you’ve been camping! You haven’t had very good weather for the first week of your holiday!”

  “No, it’s been a bit wet.” He realised how posh her voice was, against his own. Even though he was talking to her the proper way he talked to the teachers at school.

  “Camping by the sea?” He followed her eyes. There was a small pile of sand on the carpet, where his bag had rested for a moment. His mouth fell open with embarrassment, but she just said, “I’ve loved the sea all my life, since I was a young gel. Used to swim every day - three times a day, when I could. My father used to call me the Mermaid.”

  He thought she didn’t look much like a mermaid now. She said, “I don’t look much like a mermaid now, do I?” and roared with laughter. Then she said, “Tell me all the things you’ve been up to. Your dog’s quite snug in the kitchen, by the way. Ada found a ham bone for him, with a bit of meat on.”

  So he told her all about Joseph, while Ada bustled in with plates of sliced ham and tomato, and a stand full of scones, and a large sponge cake.

  By the end of tea, his belt felt very tight. He knew he had made a pig of himself, but she kept on urging him on, with a kind of glee. “I know what appetites young men like you have.” Half-way through tea, the sunset had faded, and it had begun to rain, a heavy hopeless rain that battered at the windows. When he had refused a fourth piece of cake, the old lady pushed back her chair, grasped her sticks and said, “Not a night for camping-out, I’m afraid. Come and sit by the fire.” Then, when he had sat, she said, “Ada, make up the bed in young David’s room.”

  And that was that. He might as well have been kidnapped and chained up, for all the chance he had of getting away that night. But he didn’t seem to mind. He was full, he was warm and he had lost any desire to go anywhere. A great calm had descended on him.

  Until Ada returned, and said, “What about pyjamas?”

  “Lay out a pair of David’s. I’m sure boys don’t wear pyjamas when they’re camping. And lay out David’s dressing gown and slippers.” She looked at Harry’s startled face. “David won’t mind. Much too busy hunting U-boats off Bermuda. And getting-off with the local girls, I have no doubt.” She smiled conspiratorially, and he smiled back. She said, “It’s nice having a boy around the house again. Though why nice boys turn into boring middle-aged men, I’ve no idea. Tell me about your school.”

  It was a long cosy evening. She was a good listener, and he talked more than he had done for years. About making a model yacht and sailing it, with Dad. About bullying at school. It was hard to keep off the things he didn’t want her to know, the dark bits, the last bombing, the fight between Artie and Corporal Merman.

  They hardly saw Ada at all. First she was washing up in the kitchen, then she was making up the bed upstairs. Then she was fetching supper drinks.

  “That dog dry yet? Good. Boys always like to go to bed with their dogs. Just take him a walk round the garden first, Ada. It’s stopped raining, and we don’t want any doggy accidents, do we, Harry?”

  Then she talked on, herself. About before the war, and the weekend parties, and the housefuls of young men, and the horses and sailing-boats, and sailing out to the Farnes and having picnics, with the gulls wheeling overhead, catching tit-bits on the wing. How fascinating she was! He’d never realised how fascinating an old person could be. Not like the dull middle-aged Ada, who seemed to do nothing but work and ask what was next to be done.

  It was midnight before the party broke up. It was the grandfather clock striking twelve that did it.

  “I must go to bed,” she said, “like Cinderella.”

  He stood up, the spell broken.

  “Give me a goodnight kiss, Harry,” she said. “I might be sixty, but I still enjoy being kissed by handsome young men.”

  But it was the silent Ada who showed him up to his room, where the sheets were turned down, and the pyjamas laid out. Pyjamas that were far too big for him.

  “Will you be all right… getting her upstairs?” asked Harry worriedly.

  “She’s better at going up,” said Ada shortly. “Goodnight.”

  He had to roll the sleeves of the pyjamas up, or they’d have been unbearable. But he and Don slept soundly, with the scent of lavender sheets filling the room.

  In the morning, Ada wakened him with a cup of tea.

  “Breakfast’ll be ready in half an hour.”

  The table was laid for one.

  “Where’s…?”

  “In bed,” said Ada shortly. “And will be, for the next three days. That’s if she’s lucky. She overdid things last night. She a
lways does, when she has a man around the house. She always liked the men.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t be sorry. You did her a lot of good really. She doesn’t see much of life now.”

  “David… all the others?”

  “Too busy with the war. We’ve not seen anybody but the postman for months. When they’re not fighting, they’re living it up in London. I don’t blame them really. They need their relaxation. But they don’t know how bad she is. And she’ll not let me write and tell them. Proud, she is. She’ll not have their pity. Not when she could always wrap them round her little finger, when she was younger. That’s her, when she was young.”

  She showed him a photograph, from the mantelpiece, in a silver frame.

  The young girl was laughing, eyes full of mischief. Wearing a white sailor-dress, and holding the hand of a man in blazer and white flannels. They looked very happy together.

  “Is that… her husband?”

  “No - just one of her young men. She had so many young men. They took her sailing… fox-hunting… up in airplanes later on. She was always one for a dare. She took part in the London-Paris air race when she was forty-four - climbed Mont Blanc when she was forty-eight. With young men half her age.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was never one for that sort of thing. But you… Master Harry… you’re the last of a long line.”

  “Can’t I say goodbye?”

  “She wouldn’t like you seeing her… as she is now. Go on, eat your breakfast and get off. Wherever you’re going.”

  She came to the gate, to see him off. With a pack of fresh-made sandwiches.

  “Can I… come back again?”

  “You can try. Don’t leave it too long.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was a grand morning. As he headed back towards the sea the sun shone in his eyes, and he felt zooms of excitement running through him; zooms he couldn’t explain at all, except the grass was so green, and twinkling with last night’s rain, and there were flowers everywhere in the grass, tiny spots of yellow and blue; and all the birds were singing their heads off, and he seemed to have it all to himself. The whole show was for his benefit. And the sandwiches put him one meal away from worry; today, he would not have to think about food, with that huge breakfast inside him that made even burping a pleasure, for it brought back the tastes of porridge and bacon and egg and marmalade.

  He reached the coast in a rush, for the land sloped down towards the sea. And there, spread before him, lay the island of Lindisfarne, with the road to it clear, a dark bar of sand leading across the shining water. Everything was on his side, and he made up his mind. To Lindisfarne he would go. He was a pilgrim, and he would finish his pilgrimage.

  He was as ignorant of Lindisfarne as any Geordie boy of his age. He knew it was called Holy Island, because hundreds of years ago, monks had lived on it. One of them had been a saint, Saint Cuthbert. And the tide went in and out, making it part of the land twice a day, and an island twice a day. And that was all he knew.

  But the very look of the island, with the shadows of clouds drifting across its green hide, spotted like the hide of a cow with brown patches of sand-dunes… it did not look like part of the world, the world of bombs and vicious farmers, and the terrible battle to get enough to eat, and even newspaper to wipe your backside with. He just knew it was an enchanted place, a further shore. He knew he was crossing, not the North Sea but the River Jordan, that the vicar talked about in church. Like Christian, in The Pilgrim’s Progress, and trumpets would sound for him when he reached the other side.

  There was a cottage, as he left the land. A man leaning on his gate, smoking a pipe, called out, “Two hours. You’ve got a grand day for it.”

  He didn’t know what the man meant; but he waved back cheerfully. The wet sand was firm beneath the Army boots that Artie had given him, and even the joggling pans on his back were merry companions.

  Don loved the hugeness of it. Ran ahead, barking for joy. Ran in huge circles, pouncing on bits of seaweed. Charged at the flocks of feeding gulls, sending them exploding into the air like white fireworks.

  I’m coming, thought Harry. “I’m coming,” he said to the island, all the way across.

  The only things that worried him were the two watchtowers. The first he came up to when he was a third of the way across, a gaunt erection of tarred wood piles and rusting iron girders, that thrust itself leaning from the sand. There was a little tarred cabin on top, with a pointed roof, and the legs were thick with barnacles and seaweed. It looked like it had been there a very long time, fighting the waves. There was a thin-runged ladder leading up into it. He took off his gear and climbed the ladder. But the little cabin was completely empty, except people had carved and pencilled names and dates all over the planks inside. And phrases like, “Oh dear, caught again” and, “A bitter cold night”. It felt unpleasantly like a prison somehow. It did not feel a happy place. Of course it could not be a prison really; it was obviously to do with the war; it reminded him of the watchtowers the Nazis had round their prison camps. He left it quickly, and did not check up on the other one, half a mile further on.

  Then he was on the beach of Lindisfarne itself, with an endless row of sand-dunes on his left. He climbed up one that was higher than the others, and looked ahead. The sand-dunes seemed to go on forever; but there were grey buildings at the end of them, and what looked like ruins.

  He went on; he was plodding now; the weight of the pack was starting to cut into his shoulders. Some of the brightness seemed to go out of the morning. Then the sun went behind the clouds. He sat down to rest; and the thought of the pack of sandwiches tempted him. He tried to resist; he’d had a good breakfast; it was just gutsiness. But the thought of the sandwiches went on tormenting him, and finally he thought he’d allow himself just one…

  The trouble was, they were ladies’ sandwiches, not soldiers’ sandwiches. Small and dainty and tasty. He had a second, and a third. Don came up and begged for one trustingly. He knew the rules; what they had, they shared.

  Before Harry knew it, nearly all the sandwiches were gone. He closed the packet when there were three left, and shoved them violently back in the pack, with a fury that broke them. He suddenly felt very depressed, and got up and started walking quickly, before he felt any worse. He knew these sudden depressions; they always came when the sun went in.

  As he reached the houses, the treacherous sun came out again, and he felt better. But the houses were just a village, like any other village. And the people standing in the cottage doors looked at him in a close, nosy, silent way that he hadn’t ever noticed on the mainland. He felt at any moment they were going to ask him what he wanted. He felt if he stopped walking on, looked at all lost, they would ask him what he wanted. So he headed on towards the ruins, which at least looked interesting.

  He met a man at the gate of the ruins. He would have liked to ask him about Saint Cuthbert. But the man said sharply, “If you’re going in there, keep hold of that dog.”

  He wandered round the ruins, with Don on the leash. Don didn’t like that much. He kept on tugging furiously at the leash, wanting to sniff, wanting to be free. Wanting to pee on the old stones as well. He lifted his hind leg twice, and Harry had to drag him away. Because out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the man was still lingering by the gate, watching.

  The ruins were quite interesting, especially the single arch of stones that was still in place, that had once helped hold up the long-departed roof. It was so high and pointed and slender, you wondered how it could even hold itself up now. And the stones in the walls were worn by the wind and rain into such strange shapes, like goblins’ grinning faces, or squatting fat birds. But you could only stare at stones for so long. Especially when the sun went in again. In the end, they were only stones. Then it began to rain.

  Next to the ruins was a church that still had the roof on. They ran for it; made it into the porch together. Timidly, Harry trie
d the great iron ring on the church door. The door swung open silently, on greased hinges. Inside, it was nice, full of bright things, and with a strange sweet smell. And there was a little green baize card-table by the door, with little books stacked on it, called A Life of Saint Cuthbert.

  Eagerly, he reached for one; opened it. He had always been a keen reader; he missed his books.

  “Have you paid for that?”

  The voice made Harry jump guiltily. It was the man from the ruins, who must have followed him.

  “Not yet,” said Harry. “I was just looking.”

  “Then pay for it, or put it down. We can do wi’out dirty fingerprints all over them.”

  Harry reached in his pocket, and found a threepenny bit.

  “Don’t give it to me,” said the man. “Can’t you read what it says? Put it in that box with the slit in it.”

  Blushing, Harry looked round for the box. He seemed to have a lot of trouble getting the coin through the slit, with the man glaring at him. Then the man said, “What’s the idea, bringing that great dog into a church? Haven’t you got any manners? Haven’t you been taught the difference between right and wrong?”

  “I’ll tie him up outside.”

  “Ye’ll not. I don’t want him peeing all over the churchyard. And look at all the sand on your boots. It’s going all over the floor…”

  Harry glared at the man, and the man glared back.

  “You’re nothing but a little heathen,” said the man. “God knows where you were dragged up. You a gypsy or something?” He glanced at the pans dangling from the pack on Harry’s back. “Just looking for a chance to steal from the church, were you?”