The Kingdom by the Sea

by Robert Westall

  “Well,” said Mr M. when Mrs Cleve had finally left. “We’ve got our marching orders then! I gather you’re spending your summer holidays with me. Because I’m your uncle. And I’m helping you to get over being an orphan. And you might be coming to live with me permanently.” His eyes roved over Harry’s face. “What did you say to her? You’ve got her eating out of your hand. Who taught you how to handle women?”

  “I lived with me mam for twelve years… she’s just like me mam.”

  Mr M. threw back his head and laughed. It was the first time Harry had ever heard him laugh. It wasn’t to be the last.

  The best day was the day they climbed Hedgehope. They went on the bus, a little battered muddy country bus, that groaned and rattled and squeaked its way round the tight bends; with a conductor who seemed to know everybody by name, and asked about all their friends and relations. A conductor who received parcels from people who weren’t even travelling on the bus, and gave out the parcels to others who were eagerly waiting at bus-stops. Silly little parcels, like a half-dozen eggs in a bag, or a bundle of rhubarb. And he didn’t charge them anything; just doing it out of the goodness of his heart, Mr M. said. And one old man got on with a live hen tucked under his arm, a hen that watched Harry with its sharp yellow eye, and pecked at the old man’s serge sleeve with a sharp yellow bill. Another old man had a well-grown lamb that bleated all the way, and left droppings in the aisle. And everybody called to each other down the aisle, like one big happy family.

  After that, Hedgehope seemed very silent, with just some invisible birds calling from out of the sunwarmed heather, that Mr M. said were curlews. As they climbed higher and higher, the county of Northumberland spread out wider and wider around them, deep rounded valleys and straggles of tiny grey houses.

  Mr M. said Hedgehope was the second highest mountain in Northumberland, and that the highest, over there, was Cheviot itself.

  “Why didn’t we climb that?” asked Harry.

  “No view from the top,” said Mr M. “Just a great flat-topped muddy old pudding.”

  Hedgehope gave views all the way up. When they reached the cairn at the top, Mr M. pointed out Lindisfarne, lying like a crumpled lady’s handkerchief on the sea, and the Fames, and Penshaw monument in County Durham, and the mountains of the Lake District, a misty tinge far to the west.

  “It’s like you can see the whole world,” said Harry.

  “Oh, there are far better views from the top of Scafell. You can see the Isle of Man, and the Irish coast. And from Mont Blanc…”

  “Have you climbed Mont Blanc?”

  “Many years ago. As a young man. I’d like to do it again, before I’m too old. If this war doesn’t drag on forever….”

  “I’d like to climb Mont Blanc. Is it very difficult? Cold? Does the snow on top lie all the year round?”

  “You could manage it. If we got you in training for it.”

  If we got you in training for it; that meant it might really happen, some day. The world seemed to open out at Harry’s feet. Not just the view from Hedgehope, but the view from every mountain in the world. Life seemed suddenly to go on forever and ever, and it was marvellous. Life with Mr M. suddenly joined up with life as it had been before the last bomb. The things in between; the burning bricks of home; Mam, Dad, Dulcie suddenly seemed incredibly small. Life would go on now; he knew it. As more than being hungry and soaking wet, as more than fighting angry farmers and the sea. Life relaxed, full of good things, as it used to be. When you could take it as it came…

  Except that Mam and Dad and Dulcie wouldn’t be there to see it. They must be in some hole in the ground by now. If they’d found anything of them at all.

  They were so far away now, so small.

  He suddenly found himself just standing crying there.

  Mr M. didn’t make a fuss, or tell him to cheer up and stop it. Mr M. just gently turned away, to let him cry in private.

  Except Mr M.’s shoulders were gently shaking…

  Was Mr M. crying too? That made it easier somehow. Nothing to be ashamed of.

  When it was all over, Mr M. led the way without a word, down the southern slopes of Hedgehope. There was more grass, between the clumps of heather and bracken, and the air was stiller and warmer, out of the wind. It got quite hot, descending, and there were lots of big fat flies trying to drink your sweat.

  So Harry was glad when they came to the craggy hollow, where the little stream they’d been following became a waterfall, into a pool the colour of dark slate, amidst slopes of velvet green grass.

  “Cor, I could just do with a swim,” said Harry.

  “Thought you might.” Mr M. reached into his big rucksack with a smile, and produced an old towel, and dark blue bathing trunks. “There’s a place to change, behind those rocks.”

  Harry took the towels and trunks, and went behind the rocks. Somehow, he knew the towel and trunks had been here before; someone else had changed here; someone else had bathed. When Mr M. watched him jumping in and splashing, he would be really seeing someone else. He knew what Mr M. wanted him for; to fill up a boy-sized hole inside himself. That was OK. That Harry felt able to do. It was no more than he’d done for Artie. The only difference was that he’d always known Artie would go away some day, and he had the sudden, breathtaking idea that Mr M. wasn’t going away anywhere, ever.

  He jumped and splashed a lot, even after he’d had enough. Mr M. must get his money’s worth too.

  When he finally did come out, shivering and goosefleshed, because the mountain water was pretty cold, Mr M. was busy pumping up an old brass Primus stove, on which a billy-can of water was boiling.

  “Tea,” said Mr M. “Nothing like a mug of hot tea after a swim. And cake. Plenty of cake.”

  Afterwards, they sat side by side, watching the fall of the water. A little breeze had got up, that blew the thin stream to one side, so it wavered like smoke, never the same.

  “D’you know what shepherds do with orphaned lambs in these hills?” asked Mr M.

  “No,” said Harry abruptly. He hoped it wasn’t something horrible, that would spoil the wonderful day.

  “They find a ewe, whose lamb has died. And they take the skin off the dead lamb, and tie it round the living lamb, and put it to the ewe… and the ewe smells the smell of her dead lamb, and takes to the living lamb inside the skin. It works, it really does.”

  “I’m glad,” said Harry.

  “It’s nature. It sounds brutal, but it works. You get one happy ewe and one happy lamb.”

  “Yeah,” said Harry.

  There seemed no need to say more.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I wouldn’t have liked to live with Saint Cuthbert,” said Mr Murgatroyd. “He only changed his boots once a year. The other monks had to drag the old ones off him. And he used to wander about all night praying, so the other monks couldn’t get any sleep. They must have been quite glad when he went off to Inner Fame.”

  “That’s not what they taught us at school,” said Harry, leaning his elbows on the wall next to Mr M.’s, just touching, in a companionable sort of way. “They only taught us he was holy and converted the heathen.”

  “Schools!” said Mr M. “I sometimes think all schoolmasters should be stood up against a wall and shot. They never teach boys anything interesting, or anything they really want to know.”

  “Too right,” said Harry. That was what the Australian airmen said, who were billeted in Whitley Bay. It sounded slick and tough and grown-up. He watched Don, foraging through the long grass below the outer wall of Lindisfarne Priory. “Don’s fine now.”

  “Paw healed up wonderfully. He’s a fine vet, is Mr Harper…”

  Harry put his mind out of gear and watched the sunset, as the virtues of Mr Harper were extolled once again. Mr M. couldn’t half go on; must be being a schoolmaster. But there were far worse things than going on. At least the awful silences were gone. Silences were comfy now, though rare. And Mr M. could look him in the face at
last. Even when he talked about his son; or Harry talked about his mam and dad.

  Mr M. said that crying was good for you, even for men. But he had never cried again. And neither had Harry. But they’d watched birds, and walked along beaches, and gone sea-fishing, once all night. And come home with a good catch of flatfish, and fried some for breakfast.

  And Mrs Cleve was as pleased as Punch with both of them. She said Harry was filling out, and Mr M. looked ten years younger. Mr M. said she was like a hen with two chicks.

  “One week of the holidays left,” said Mr M. suddenly.

  “Yeah,” said Harry smugly. “We can go sea-fishing again.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean I’ll have to get back to work, and you’ll have to get back to school. What school were you at?”

  “The High School,” said Harry automatically. But the blue sky seemed to darken, the glitter go off the water between them and the mainland. “I can’t go back there…”

  “No, no,” said Mr M. reassuringly. “But if you went to the High School there, you can go to the High School here. The Duke’s School, at Alnwick, where I teach.”

  “Wouldn’t mind that, I suppose.”

  “Very gracious of you. We’ll have to get you a uniform; but you’ll be entitled to extra clothing-coupons with being bombed out…”

  “I got some coupons in my attachè case,” said Harry quickly. “Mam was careful. She had a lot left.”

  “Yes… but,” said Mr M. “We can’t go on living from hand to mouth, you know. We can’t go on pretending you’re my nephew forever… people have to be informed. Everything’s got to be regular and above board.” He suddenly sounded very schoolmasterish. “We must do things properly. We can’t go on like this.”

  “I don’t want to go back,” said Harry. “Going back will ruin everything. Who cares?”

  “Your Cousin Elsie…”

  Harry shuddered. “She won’t want me. She’s got six kids of her own and they live in two rooms in Back Brannen Street. It’s a slum. My mam and dad couldn’t stand her. But she’ll still make trouble.”

  But it wasn’t just Cousin Elsie. It was everything. He’d turned his back on North Shields forever. You didn’t climb all the way up a mountain, just to chuck yourself off the top and fall all the way back down again.

  “That’s enough, Harry!” Mr M. spoke quite sharply. “We are going back to North Shields tomorrow and we’re going to set things straight. Then we come back here, and make a fresh start… it won’t take more than a few hours, for goodness sake.”

  God, thought Harry bitterly. Grown-ups. You tell lies for them. You find them flat on the floor and pick them up and make them happy again. And then they start getting bossy.

  He had a wild thought about getting his stuff together again, and sneaking off with Don in the middle of the night. But life was no good without your own person, and he’d never find another person as kind as Mr M. And he was tired, tired of the road.

  “All right,” he said. “But you’ll be sorry.”

  He never spoke a truer word.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “C’mon,” said Mr M. briskly. “We can’t hang about all day. I’ve got the car started. She’s going a treat. Don’s in the back already. He can’t wait to get moving.”

  Harry got up wearily, and said goodbye to the kitchen, with its big hanging oil-lamp and twin rocking-chairs, each side of the fireplace, where they used to sit of an evening. Then he said a long goodbye to Mrs Murgatroyd, who twined about his legs on the doorstep.

  “Oh, come on,” called Mr M. “We’ll be back in a few hours.” Don barked one enthusiastic bark, from the back seat of the car.

  Harry pitied the innocence of dogs. He got in and slammed the car door, like a prisoner slamming the door of his own cell. As they drove out, he said a silent goodbye to the goats, and the chickens and the geese.

  “Lovely morning for a drive,” said Mr M. “Lucky I’ve got enough petrol. I get it for helping with the evacuees - I shouldn’t be using it really. But you’re going to be an evacuee soon, I suppose. My evacuee. Really, we’ve hardly got time to get things sorted out, before school starts. You’ll need football kit and…”

  He went on and on making plans, as they drove through the bright morning. Harry didn’t listen. He was saying goodbye to his kingdom. The kingdom where Mr M. was king and he was prince. It was easy, being a prince with Mr M. You only had to be yourself, and run and laugh and ask questions and help with everything like the goats and hens, and everything was a pleasure. He knew exactly what Mr M. wanted. They’d been lifting potatoes in the garden last night, Mr M. turning over the ground with the spade, and Harry feeling in the loose soil for the exciting small round smooth cool shapes of the new potatoes. Then his hand had closed round something shrivelled and large and soggy and yuk. He’d pulled it out with a squeak of horror and seen it was another potato.

  “That’s the old man,” said Mr M. “That’s the potato I planted in the spring, that the plant grew out of. The old man dies, but he gives us all these new potatoes.”

  And suddenly it was all clear in Harry’s mind. The old man potato was the father, and the new potatoes were the sons. The life in the old man was passed on.

  “Chuck him back,” said Mr M. “His job’s done. He’s content.”

  And suddenly Harry realised that Mr M. had been quite content to die in his own good time, when he’d passed on all the things he knew to all the sons he taught. And all the things he owned to his own son.

  But the new potato had died before the old man. In the blazing wreck of a battleship off the coast of Malaya. And turned Mr M.’s whole world upside-down.

  Until Harry had turned up. The new new potato. He wanted nothing in the whole world except to be Mr M.’s new new potato.

  Except Mr M. was ruining everything. The kingdom was behind them now, destroyed, gone forever. And now the car, running sweetly along, was rolling up the map of Harry’s journey too. Holy Island had vanished behind, where he’d fought the gang and fought the tide and won. They passed the old lady’s house, then saw in the distance, near the cliff, the upward-pointing barrels of Artie’s anti-aircraft guns. And the pillbox where the RAF man had given him a watch. And even a thin trail of smoke, emerging over the cliff edge, that might have come from Joseph’s chimney.

  And the chip shop at Newbigin, and the old boat he and Don had hidden under, the endless day after the fight with the farmer. They were coming to the Blyth ferry, and the place where Don had scared off the two men.

  It was all undone in less than an hour, all that sweat and pain and hope and despair. All the times he’d won, and all the times he’d lost. He’d done it all for nothing. The whole journey, the whole kingdom by the sea, was only a few minutes’ drive in a car.

  The old familiar scenes began to close in around him, like prison warders. The Haven and the chip shop at Tynemouth. And still Mr M. prattled on about arranging school dinners, and what class he might hope to be in at the Duke’s School, and how he’d teach Harry to carve shepherd’s crooks in the long winter evenings.

  “You’d better direct me from here,” said Mr M. “I’m quite lost now.”

  Oh, Mr M., how right you are, but you don’t know it.

  “Left,” said Harry. “Left again. Right here.”

  And then they were outside where his house had been.

  All there was left was the sagging garden gate, and a few straggly bits of Dad’s old privet hedge. Beyond, everything was flat, with weeds starting to grow among the bits of broken brick. It looked like nobody had ever lived there. Were bits of Mam and Dad and Dulcie still down there, under the earth? Or had they dug enough out to be buried respectably in Preston Cemetery? He gave a great shudder… even Mr M. noticed. He put his arm round Harry’s shoulder.

  “Sorry, son. But you had to see it. You had to say goodbye properly. You couldn’t go on running away forever. Now it’s done, we can go.”

  “Go?” said Harry. “Go where?�
��

  “The warden’s post, I think. They know… what happened to people. They keep records.”

  “First right, second left,” said Harry, staring at the clutch and brake-pedals, with Mr M.’s feet on them. He just felt sick. He just knew what was coming was utterly terrible; it hung over him like a thundercloud.

  The wardens were friendly and sympathetic. You could tell the raids had almost stopped for the summer, because the wardens weren’t tired to death, or grey with seeing too many horrible things. There was almost a holiday atmosphere in the brick warden’s post. Two of them were sitting outside on small wooden chairs, getting a sun tan. The dartboard looked well-used.

  The Head Warden got down a great thick grimy book, like the secretary’s petty-cash book at school.

  “What date was it roughly?” he said gently.

  Harry told him. The warden licked the end of his great thick calloused finger and turned the dog-eared pages.

  “Baguley,” he said. “Baguley. Man, woman and child…” Then he said, “Hallo, that’s funny. They’re down here as being dead, but then their names have been crossed out again. Hey, Bill, you know anything about this?”

  Bill came and looked, but he didn’t know anything either.

  The third man, Tommy, didn’t know any more, except that the crossings-out were official. “Mebbe they were dug out alive after all. By the heavy rescue. The heavy rescue might know. They’re in Prudhoe Street…”

  Somehow, Harry got back into the car. He knew they hadn’t been dug out alive from that heap of blazing rubble he’d left. It was all a balls-up, a cruel crazy balls-up. He didn’t even get out of the car when they got to Prudhoe Street. He left it to Mr M.

  Mr M. came back after a very long time. He got in and said, in a low voice, “They dug down through your house. They found nothing.”

  “Maybe they were… all burnt up.”

  “The man assured me they would’ve found something. They always find something.”