‘Doberman?’ Kevin looked puzzled. ‘No. I never heard tell of a dog.’
‘Good,’ said Elizabeth, glad that that had been cleared up. ‘Are you going to come with us so?’
‘Me? Oh! But sure, I’m not …’
And he stopped. He’d been going to say he wasn’t one of them, but he thought maybe that sounded a bit rude, or maybe a bit self-pitying.
‘Come on, I’m inviting you,’ said Elizabeth, picking up what he meant. ‘If you like.’
‘Yeh, but what about Miss High-an’-Mighty?’ Kevin cocked a thumb in the direction of the rucksacks bobbing along ahead of them.
‘Bev? Oh, don’t mind her. Her bark’s worse than her bite – I think.’
‘Have ye enough of picnic for us all? I wouldn’t want to be eating someone’s rations.’
‘We have enough for a small army.’
Kevin thought for a moment. He knew Beverley wouldn’t want him. She was far too stuck up for the likes of him. But this other girl was nice and friendly. And it would be interesting to see what it was like on the island. The locals always kept well away from there. But there was really no reason to be afraid. She wasn’t dangerous or anything – at least he didn’t think so. And he had nothing else to do. It was his sister’s turn to help in the shop. He’d done the delivery to the pier already, and he had the rest of the day off. It was unusual for him to get a whole day off, so it would be nice to use it properly, instead of just kicking about on the beach and maybe doing a bit of fishing in the afternoon. And anyway, he couldn’t really let them off on their own. They might get into some sort of trouble, these Dublin youngsters, all by themselves out there. Really, they’d be much better off if they had him to watch out for them. Because you never knew.
‘Right you be, so. I’ll come.’ Kevin put out his hand for the garden flares. ‘I’ll carry them yokes for you. Whatever they are.’
Kevin and Elizabeth started to struggle after the others, slithering along the slimy causeway, lurching together and laughing when they bumped into each other, stepping over rivulets cut into the sand by ropes of sucking seawater and over streamers of gleaming wet seaweed, slurping through puddles and pools left behind by the tide, carefully circling around black and slippery rocks.
By the time they reached the far beach, on the island, the tide was already on the turn, and little wavelets were starting to lap around their ankles.
Chapter 4
BREAKFAST ON THE ISLAND
ELIZABETH AND KEVIN CAME ASHORE splashing and laughing. They had had to take off their runners for the last few hundred yards of the journey and tie them around their necks, as the water was starting to whirl around them in threatening little eddies, as if a giant bath were being slowly filled by unseen taps. The bottoms of their jeans were wet, though they tried to keep them out of the waves. Their runners were hopelessly waterlogged.
Beverley was sitting waiting for them on the tiny island beach, with a glowering expression on her face, like somebody’s mother when they’ve been out past their curfew time.
‘What’s he doing here?’ she asked Elizabeth through clenched teeth, nodding towards Kevin, but not meeting his eyes.
‘I – well, I’m – I’m not sure,’ spluttered Elizabeth, taken aback at just how rude Beverley could be. ‘What are you doing here, Kevin?’
‘You asked me,’ said Kevin simply.
‘Oh, so I did!’ said Elizabeth with a peal of laughter. ‘I invited him, Beverley,’ she added defiantly.
‘And what’s he going to eat?’ Beverley was not amused. It was her expedition after all. Elizabeth had no business inviting anyone, least of all that Kevin. ‘He seems to have one hand as long as the other, as far as I can see.’
‘Oh, give over, Bev. There’s loads to eat. What were you doing on the beach, Kevin, at Tranarone, I mean, at this hour of the morning?’
‘Oh, em, just walking,’ said Kevin evasively, kicking a stone and running a hand through his hair, which lay down again neatly as soon as he’d riffled it.
He must spend a fortune getting it cut, Beverley thought. Really, when you thought about the poverty in the world!
Kevin didn’t really want to start explaining about the pier delivery. That would only bring up the whole business of Herself, as the local people called her, and that wouldn’t be a good idea, not if Elizabeth was a bit worried about trespassing. There was no harm in her, some people said, but even so, you never knew. Maybe they wouldn’t have to meet her. If they were just here for a picnic, well then, they could have it and be home before dinner time and there wouldn’t be any problem. Not that it was a problem. Not really.
‘Where’s Gerard?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘I think I’m going to have to take these jeans off,’ she added, not waiting for Beverley’s reply.
‘Elizabeth!’ Beverley sounded more and more like an outraged parent.
Elizabeth was pulling her jeans down over her knees, revealing a pair of pink-spotted pants.
‘What?’ asked Elizabeth crossly.
‘You can’t go around in your knickers!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bev, gimme a break! It’s only till my jeans dry a bit. Anyway, we’re on the beach. People go around half-naked on the beach all the time.’
Beverley jerked her head frantically, warningly, in the direction of Kevin and mouthed at Elizabeth. But Kevin had already moved off up the beach.
Suddenly there was a whoop: ‘How’ya, kiddo!’ Kevin had spotted Gerard, who was toiling away farther up the beach, gathering driftwood for a fire, with Fat under one arm.
‘Here!’ said Beverley, diving into her rucksack and producing a pair of striped blue and white shorts. ‘Put these on.’ And she thrust them hurriedly at Elizabeth. ‘Quick!’
‘Oh, ta,’ said Elizabeth, who was starting to feel the cold. She wriggled quickly into the shorts and started to dig for her sandals in her rucksack.
Kevin and Gerard came back with an offering of wood in various shapes and sizes, most of it reasonably dry.
‘Matches?’ asked Kevin, starting to arrange the wood into a fire-shaped heap in the lee of a biggish rock.
‘Elizabeth has them,’ said Beverley, and added spitefully: ‘if she hasn’t got them wet too.’
‘Course I haven’t!’ Elizabeth’s voice was cheery. ‘They’re wrapped in three separate plastic bags.’ She opened her rucksack and started rootling through it again.
Gerard opened his also, and produced an old and holey towel. He shook it out as best he could with one arm, and spread it on the sand. Then he laid Fat on it reverently. Fat immediately stood up, arched his back and pressed his paws down hard into the towel. Because the towel was laid on loose sand, it skidded under this pressure, and landed Fat flat on his stomach. He yowled and lay there disconsolately for a while, clawing ineffectually at the towel.
‘Bloody cat!’ hissed Beverley, through clenched teeth.
‘Blasted animal!’ Elizabeth agreed, still searching for the matches.
Their eyes met in a complicity of disapproval. Gerard swallowed hard and pretended not to mind. Very gingerly, Fat pulled his legs in, one at a time, folding them up like telescopic aerials. Then he curled himself into a doughnut, tucking his ears well down under his haunches, and went haughtily to sleep. Kevin put out a tentative hand and stroked Fat’s fur. Gerard shot him a grateful look. Kevin smiled back at him.
‘Here they are!’ Elizabeth waved a lumpy plastic-bag parcel. ‘And the firelighters!’
‘You brought firelighters?’ Beverley was irritated that she hadn’t thought of them. ‘You should have carried them separately from the matches, though. I’m sure it’s dangerous.’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘Beverley, the firelighters were in a separate plastic bag inside the other one. They weren’t even touching. It wasn’t dangerous. Now, will you kindly get off my back? You’re worse than a teacher!’
Elizabeth pitched two soft white blocks, reeking of petrol, in Kevin’s direction. He caught them deftly,
set them in nooks in the woodpile and turned to her for the matches. These she threw also. In a moment, the steady flames at the corners of the firelighters has started to stretch up and lick hopefully at the wood.
‘What about breakfast?’ said Elizabeth, arranging her jeans on a rock near the fire, wet trouser cuffs laid out at an angle to the heat. ‘I’m starving.’ She propped her runners up against the rock too.
Beverley started to unpack her rucksack slowly, still sulking a bit after the way Elizabeth had spoken to her. But as she pulled food item after food item out of the rucksack, she began to cheer up. ‘We’ll need the frying pan first, Gerard, and then the kettle.’
‘Yes, Beverley, oh yes!’
Gerard leapt up and started to unpack his rucksack too. ‘One frying pan coming up. Do you need a knife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sharp?’
‘Obviously.’
Gerard reddened and handed Beverley a black-handled knife, carefully pointing the handle towards her, as his mother had taught him.
‘And a plate, please.’
Gerard handed Beverley an enamel plate. Beverley hung a string of sausages from one hand and started to separate them with quick thrusts of the knife. She laid them in a heap, like grotesque and floppy dismembered fingers, on the plate. Then she pushed them aside and started to slice the black pudding in the space she had cleared. She liked being efficient and getting on with things.
‘What are you going to fry them in?’ asked Kevin, interested.
‘The pan,’ Beverley replied with pointed briefness.
‘No, I mean, butter or oil or lard, or what?’
‘Uh-oh!’ said Beverley.
‘Did we forget something?’ asked Gerard anxiously, as if it had been his responsibility to pack the food.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ snapped Beverley, pricking the sausages savagely with the point of her knife. ‘The sausages will cook in their own fat. And there’ll still be enough to cook the pudding and rashers in.’
She placed the pan on the fire and let it heat through. Then she threw the sausages into it, higgledy-piggledy, and pushed them around with the knife. The sausages started to cook with a fierce black stench, not the spicy-sweet inviting smell cooking sausages are supposed to produce. And there was no inviting sizzle either. The sudden heat seemed to have sealed up the holes that Beverley had slashed in them, and the expected juices didn’t flow. This wasn’t working out the way Beverley had planned it. Irritably, she poked at them, trying to pierce their thickening skins again, but they spat back at her uncooperatively. Suddenly they all split right down the centre, with a series of hissing pops, and fat started to race around the pan in hopping droplets. Into this seething lakelet, Beverley bounced the pudding slices, which immediately shrivelled and hardened.
While they cooked, Beverley cleaned her plate with sand and as soon as she judged everything was ready, she tipped the contents of the pan back onto the plate. Then she deftly slid her knife between the rasher layers, to separate them, and laid them out, four long pink strips, on the pan, in the blackened juices of the sausages.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Gerard had taken out the crockery and cutlery and started to divide the breakfast among the four of them. They sat on the sand and ate sausages and pudding, followed by fried bread and rashers.
‘How can something be both burnt and raw at the same time?’ asked Gerard, regarding a thing on the tip of his fork with puzzled interest.
Beverley glared at him. ‘What do you mean, burnt? What do you mean, raw?’
‘Like this,’ said Gerard, holding out a charred piece of pudding with a purplish centre, still not realising that the question he posed as a scientific puzzle was being understood as a criticism of the cook.
‘It’s supposed to look like that,’ snapped Beverley. ‘Sanglant, you call it. That’s the way they do it in expensive restaurants.’
Kevin was kneeling at the fire, making tea, using the fresh water the others had hauled over in a gallon container. He sat back on his heels at this point with the kettle in his hand and threw his head right back, as if he were doing some elaborate yoga position. ‘Sanglant!’ he spluttered. His adam’s apple rippled alarmingly as he roared with laughter. ‘That’s a good one!’ The longest parts of his hair fell back between his black leather shoulder blades and almost touched the soles of his bare feet. When he straightened up, his hair sat back again on his head, like a well-fitting cap.
Beverley couldn’t help admiring this, though she didn’t appreciate being laughed at. She wondered if she could get her own hair cut like that. Absently, she put her hand to her frizzy mop and ran disappointed fingers through it, snagging at knots and tangles at every point.
Gerard longed to apologise for the remark about the burnt pudding, but he didn’t know how to, without making it worse, so he just chewed miserably.
‘Did ye bring a taypot?’ asked Kevin, exaggerating his local accent. ‘Or would that be a posh enough class of a thing for this high-class restaurant? Maybe it’s a samovar you like your tay made in, Madam?’
Beverley blushed, but she couldn’t help being impressed that he knew a word like samovar. ‘We didn’t bring a teapot,’ she said sullenly. ‘We tried to keep the load light. Make it in the kettle.’
‘Right so,’ said Kevin cheerfully, dropping two teabags into the bubbling kettle.
The tea tasted unaccountably of sausages, but nobody, not even Gerard, mentioned this.
After they’d all put milk in their tea, Elizabeth produced a clothes peg and carefully pegged the carton closed, to keep the sand out of it. Beverley watched jealously. Where did Elizabeth get such a sensible idea from? It wasn’t as though she was clever or anything.
The beach was just beginning to warm up as they finished their meal. The bay had filled completely with water by now, like a shallow soup bowl, and it was starting to glimmer, just faintly.
‘I think it’s going to be a good day,’ said Elizabeth, looking encouragingly at the sun as it peered out hesitantly from the mist. ‘Someone must have broken the news to them up there that it’s summer.’
She sat back against the breakfast rock, her legs stretched out full length in front of her and took a long, satisfied, luke-warm sip of milky, sausagey tea. ‘Bless you!’ she said suddenly, without thinking.
‘What?’ asked Beverley.
‘I just said “Bless you!”’
‘That’s what I thought you said, but why? I didn’t do anything particularly nice, did I?’
‘No, but you sneezed, didn’t you? I always say “Bless you!” when someone sneezes. It’s so the devil doesn’t come and take them away.’
‘But I didn’t sneeze,’ Beverley insisted.
Both girls looked accusingly at Gerard, who was always coughing and wheezing and making gurgling noises.
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Gerard. ‘I don’t sneeze – much. I cough.’
Everyone looked at Kevin.
Kevin looked slowly around, eyeing the beach, the sea, the rocks, and the sand-dunes behind them. Nothing moved, except for the waves rushing up the beach and being sucked back down again.
‘I think it must have been yer man the cat,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe he’s what-d’ye-call it – allergic, that’s it – maybe he’s allergic to sand.’
But he wondered. He just wondered.
Chapter 5
ELIZABETH’S TALE
AFTER THEY’D HAD THEIR BREAKFAST, the children felt drowsy. They’d been up early (for the holidays) and they’d had a long walk in the sea air followed by hot food and tea.
‘Let’s have a little rest,’ suggested Elizabeth, ‘before we go exploring the island. Let’s just sit here for a bit and have another cup of tea.’
‘Hmm,’ said Beverley, ‘and what about the washing-up?’
‘Oh, we can do that later,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Pass us a biscuit, Bev.’ And she leant back against her rock and closed her eyes and pointed her face up to catch the weak heat
of the morning sun.
Then suddenly she said in a strange voice, still with her eyes closed: ‘Once there were four children, two boys and two girls.’
‘Wha-at?’ asked Beverley, fishing a packet of only slightly squashed Bourbon Creams out of the larder rucksack and passing them around. ‘What are you wittering about, Elizabeth? Talk sense, can’t you?’
‘I’m telling a story,’ said Elizabeth in her strange, faraway voice, like someone who was hypnotised or entranced. ‘Why don’t you just listen?’
‘A story! Good grief, Elizabeth, what do you think this is? Jackanory time at playschool? Now, listen, I think we should just wash up and get ready to go. We haven’t got all day, you know.’
Beverley was beginning to be sorry she’d got all these others involved in her little expedition. She should just have come on her own and had a proper explore all by herself and done it her own way. Between Gerard with his irritating breathing and his mangy cat and that awful Kevin with the hair muscling in without so much as a by-your-leave and now Elizabeth going all dreamy and starting to spout nonsense, she was thoroughly fed up with the lot of them. They deserved each other. Maybe she could just leave them here on the beach and head off on her own.
‘But we have got all day, Beverley,’ said Gerard daringly. He wanted to hear what Elizabeth had to say. ‘Is it a story about us, Elizabeth?’
Elizabeth opened her eyes to look at him and was just about to answer when Beverley cut in again: ‘Oh, shut up, you little brat, Gerard. And as for you, Elizabeth, you’ve got the child all confused with your stupid storytelling.’ Really, she thought, Elizabeth was as big a baby as Gerard was.
‘Don’t call me a child, Beverley,’ said Gerard stoutly. ‘I mean,’ he corrected himself, as he liked to be accurate, ‘I am a child, I know, but you make it sound like an insult.’
‘Yeh, you do,’ Kevin chipped in unexpectedly. ‘There’s no need to be so rough on him, Beverley. He’s only a young lad.’
Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows, One Witch (Maybe) Page 3
