by Jon Bounds
What we don't know is that earlier that month the pier, which essentially is just a large nightclub, lost its licence and had to be closed. This followed a long list of noise complaints, a couple of broken jaws (one fractured in two places), a slew of people being beaten unconscious or hospitalised, a GBH charge, and, the icing on the violent cake, two men being chased down the pier and having to jump off the end. One of them broke both his legs on landing.
* * *
'Fancy a game?' I say to Dan, nodding my head towards a fairly big windmill across from where we've parked.
'My back's fucked.'
'I don't think it's a physically demanding game, crazy golf. It's a seaside staple.'
Danny pulls the driver's door open. Midge looks up from his phone.
'Fancy a round of golf?'
Midge grumbles something like 'nah, you're all right, so we leave him to it.
Two balls and two putters is over a fiver, but we've the course to ourselves and nine holes ahead of us.
And we have a laugh, with that particular crazy-golf thing of trying hard for one or two hits each hole and then just deciding to whack it as there's no way you can calculate the path the ball is intended to take. We bash through boats, over humps, between flood-defence-type barriers. But before the windmill – here an impressive ten feet high, clay-coloured and with six white blades – this routine starts to become a chore.
Crazy golf just isn't much fun. It's frustrating for me, and although Dan is some way ahead in the scoring (or at least better at lying about how many shots each hole has taken), he is also just wishing it over. I take frustrated swing after angry swing, thudding the heavy little ball against the windmill. Eventually it goes through the hole and clunks off the back wall into the grass. This is the first windmill that's made me angry. Across the country people are protesting about the useful ones that provide electricity but not about these buggers that stop you getting balls into holes. There's no logic.
* * *
Halfway round I can see Jon lose interest. This, of course, coincides with the moment that I pull into a nearly insurmountable lead. We persevere. The course is well kept, and the sun, the quiet calm and the idle concentration suit my fuzzed-up head. Of course I win, using a combination of applied maths, proper golf stance and grip, and a fluky hole-in-one at the last hole. Jon smiles. It's a real smile, which brightens me up from deep inside my fog.
'We'll put that down to performance-enhancing drugs, shall we,' he says.
'Put it down to whatever you want, you still lost.' I smile back. 'Where's Midge?'
'I don't know, where do you think he goes when we're doing stuff?' asks Jon.
I shrug.
* * *
I lose, we hand the kit back over the counter of the kiosk and return to the car.
* * *
We look over to the beach and Midge is a short way down, walking along with his head down looking at the shells. I'm struck by a flashback of my mum. My mum, the matriarch who rules absolutely and is and has been a lot of things – wife, mother, sister, auntie and childminder – and I guess that's only how I ever saw her. Except for one time. We were on a rare holiday to France and by the beach mum wandered off. I looked up and she was in the distance looking for shells, or pretty rocks, which she would then keep and take home. She's still got thousands of them in the garden. But I saw her in the distance with no one around her, no one to take care of, shout at, or natter to, just her. And I realised that she, my mum, was human. And with that realisation came the immediate knowledge that one day she wouldn't be here. I quickly took a picture. I still have it: my mum, a silhouette against a setting sun, alone, happy, mortal.
They say childhood is over when you realise that one day you're going to die. I don't know what finished that day, but I've always hugged a little tighter since.
Midge looks at me staring at him and, when he's close enough, says, 'What? What have I done now?'
'Nothing, mate, you ready to go?' I ask.
'Yeah,' he takes a final look around. 'It's shit round here, innit?'
* * *
We're crossing the Humber Bridge on the way to Whitby. The weather is bright and the drop at each side is sharpening. The List says that there isn't a pier in Whitby, but there is goth heritage. Goth is the most untouched of the youth tribes: its Victorian romanticism might be in a Venn intersection with steampunk, and emo kids might have the black hair and surliness, but goths are goths and, while the band names might change, the look and feel doesn't.
They congregate one weekend in Whitby every year to celebrate the fact that they are usually alone and that Bram Stoker sailed Count Dracula to the shores of the town.
We're driven here by necessity and the idea that it was a place where we should stay in a traditional seaside bed and breakfast.
But what is really driving us here is a grumbling old punk – and he's muttering about the roads as we trundle up and down the hills that hug the coast. I'm simultaneously Googling for places to stay and looking out at the old houses now converted into low-rent hotels and B&Bs. Dan is silent, and spaced, wheezing a little whenever he moves.
* * *
I sleep on the way to Whitby and by the time we arrive the sky is grey, the same colour as my skin. Woozy from the detox and the nap, I watch Midge navigating purely on instinct coupled with Jon's power of suggestion. We haven't booked a B&B, thinking that this late in the season there will obviously be plenty. I get out of the car. Jon clearly doesn't want to speak to the owners on his own.
'I don't know mate, words difficult me for a bit,' I stumble.
'It's okay, just hang back, I'll do the talking,' he says, unsure.
We walk to the nearest house with a sign and ring the bell. A man answers wearing a thick fishing jumper that he probably only wears for the tourists.
'Hi, we'd like a room for the night,' says Jon, noticeably cheerier than when he was talking to me.
'Just you two, is it?' he says suspiciously.
'Nope, our friend in the car as well,' says Jon, gesturing to Midge.
'Separate rooms?'
'No we'd like to share,' says Jon, probably thinking about the dwindling pot of money.
'I'm afraid we've got no rooms for you.'
The 'you' is pointed. At the time I was incensed at the sly homophobia, but looking back it may not just have been the possibility that we were gay. It could also have been how gay we were: an unshaven, mod bear taking his grey, detoxing chicken in a Hawaiian shirt to a room with a pierced, leather midget to do who knows what. It never occurred to us that we'd have any trouble finding a room so walking down the street looking at the 'no vacancy' signs starts to panic us a little.
* * *
My shyness and paranoia are kicking in a lot, as have various ticks. Annoying recurring thoughts about my inadequacies are all I can muster. I'm lonely and try to think about good things: cats, dogs, babies. That's the only thing I can do to control it, and if the thoughts get really bad then I have to sort of shout it to myself like a mantra 'cats and dogs and babies, cats and dogs and babies'; they're good things, good things happen when you're with them, they're warm, things are simple.
Midge decides there's better parking round the corner and I will a silent Danny to stand near me as I ring the doorbell of a potential place to stay. There's no answer, but we can hear the rumbling of a cider tramp sitting on a stoop across the way. There's cackling and there's talk of werewolves. And there's no answer.
One of us must look pregnant with our saviour as a procession of innkeepers turn us away. Their reasons are increasingly bizarre and their speech has the pattern of someone making up excuses on the spot.
'Try Mountbatten House across the way,' referring to a place we've already tried and been moved on from. I check the web for nearby campsites, but there are none: which is reasonable when you think how cold it must be this far north at this time of year. We round the corner and I look for Midge and my red Renault, but it's not where I think
it should be. Has he decided to bugger off, taking our car and money? We don't really know him that well and he's had a week of not fun. Has he snapped? My heart and mind are turning over. Dan is non-communicative. The painkillers are killing most of his vital signs. I was thinking we might have to sleep in the car, but now even that's not here.
* * *
The next place that answers the door are apparently having issues with their boiler, but I guess that was a lie. We try the next street, and the next, until, rapidly running out of options, we come to Kimberley House. Even in our tired and worried state both me and Jon take time to do our best Victoria Wood impression. 'My friend Kim-ber-ley' – we pronounce the exaggerated northern vowels – 'my friend Kim-ber-ley, yer know, with the big dangley earrings.' Cheered by this we ring the bell. No one answers for a while and we're about to leave when a woman in a red top and apron answers the door.
'Hello,' she says in a broad northern accent. Me and Jon grin at the coincidence. Jon asks about a room and she lets us in. She tells us that she only has a double with a kid's bed but we take it, explaining that we don't mind 'Morecambe and Wiseing it' and, delightfully, she seems to know what we mean.
* * *
She has a welcoming smile and an accent that places her somewhere in Lancashire. I feel safe. I feel sitcom safe. I'm happy to pay, now after all the problems, a price nearing a hundred quid for a 'family room' (one double and a single), which is the cheapest way we can sleep three. It goes on my credit card. I go out to the car – which is exactly where we'd left it – to fetch Midge and bags. Danny negotiates the stairs and heavy fire doors with something that isn't quite ease.
* * *
After any time camping the novelty of being indoors is hard to shake. I lie on the bed and feel my spine unclick.
'Why do I get the kid's bed?' says Midge redundantly.
'Who would you like to share with? Either me or Jon?' I ask. 'Jon snores, and I get handsy.'
'Wouldn't surprise me,' says Midge, unpacking his sleeping bag.
'What are you doing?' I ask.
'Making my bed,' says Midge as he unfolds the bag on top of the bed.
'You can use the sheets,' I tell him. 'It's all part of the price.' He looks confused.
'Just didn't like to, we're only here one night.'
A toilet flushes and Jon comes out of the bathroom.
'Midge, do you want the next shower? I'm too comfortable to move at the moment,' and, I add in my head, I know what Jon was probably doing in there for the last ten minutes.
'Cheers, Dan,' he says, grabbing his towel and wash kit.
There's a knock on the door, and me and Jon freeze. We aren't doing anything we shouldn't, but I think we're just kids at heart really, waiting for the grown-ups to tell us to stop it. It's the woman who runs the B&B, a lady whose name we learn is Rachel.
* * *
We all check her out as she bends over. Terrible, but true. I'm really looking forward to the bed, even if I have to share with Dan. It's more sitcom material, although nothing really noteworthy happens, as I'll tell you later.
We try to engage Rachel in conversation, trying to find out how she came to be running a guest house on the other side of the country from where she's from. Danny does best, as he pretty much always does in conversation. I stare through the net curtains, across the dullness and the gathering night.
* * *
'I've just got to make up the little bed.' She looks at the sleeping bag on it. 'Is he going to use that?' she asks, confused.
'No, not at all.' I get up and pull Midge's stuff onto the floor.
Up until about six months ago Rachel had an office job, but with the threat of redundancy she and her husband took a holiday staying in this very B&B on a cold night in January. She chatted to the manager who was looking to retire, and by the end of their weekend away they had bought the place.
Midge bustles out of the bathroom in nothing but a small towel, sees Rachel making his bed, freezes, and goes back into the bathroom. I think for a moment. A new business in a new city is brave move for anyone, especially considering the pram I saw in the private front room. We explain our trip and that we might be writing a book about it. She spies my notebook.
'Will I be in it, then?'
'Well, it's partly about doing a potentially stupid thing on a whim and just seeing how that pans out. You might make it in, yes. How do you spell your name?'
She gives me the half flirty, half motherly smile that only some women pull off. 'R-a-c-h-e-l'.
Later we're walking through Whitby, which is a strange mixture of 'alternative' shops and high street. Looking at the windows it seems a lot of the tourist places are closed for the winter already. Whitby slopes sharply down to the River Esk. We, being weary, follow the slope down, slowly though, as the roads are cobbled and uneven with tight turns and shortcuts that lead nowhere. The first pub we come to is a place called The Ship, anonymous in a forgettable kind of way, but seemingly very proud of winning the Harrison Cup: Whitby's pool competition. Seeing it makes me sad. I can never imagine a time when I'll be that settled, a regular in a pub, nestled in a routine caring about a pool competition that no one has heard of. I don't know what this drive I have for constant novelty is. I don't know what I'm looking for. Which, of course, is going to make it very much harder to find. The thought is fleeting and everyone is cheery. A decent shower and the thought of sleeping in (or on, for Midge) a real bed have got everyone in a good mood. Even Midge, who has to drive across the country tomorrow, is drinking and joining in.
Jon has been communicating with a few people via our Twitter account. One of these is a lady who has offered to come for a drink with us if we make it up to Whitby.
She suggests a pub near the docks called, suitably enough, The Pier. The Pier is open and bright, big and used to tourism, but tonight we are the only customers. Susie turns out to be a lovely, slightly awkward, middle-aged woman, now a sculptor but who had previously worked in a school.
'So you want to go see the lighthouse then?' It stuns me for a second, but then I remember that one of the reasons she had got in touch with us was to offer us a look from the top of a lighthouse. Susie is a volunteer lighthouse keeper for Whitby's two harbour lighthouses.
There are 81 steps up to the thin balcony at the top of the lighthouse. On one side you can see a complete vista of the town of Whitby. From up here, lit by a smattering of windows and streetlights, it looks like a fairy-tale fishing village, a model built for a disaster movie, doomed to be flooded over and over by bored special-effects technicians. The unreality is breathtaking. While Midge and Jon ask Susie questions I'm on the other side looking out to sea. It's dark black, a complete absence of light, a darkness that sucks you in. I just gaze, trying to pull meaning from nothing.
* * *
After days of staring into sea, enjoying the emptiness, I'm staring back at the land. I blink, enjoying the red burn to the retina that the lamp provides. I'm not quite sure how we got to the top of a lighthouse at closing time, but here we are and it's the shadows and points of light from Whitby and its harbour that are drawing me in.
I see a ship on the horizon, and am confused between land and sea.
Susie has brought us up here, dragging us away from singing along to Fleetwood Mac in a pub, away from looking at pictures of the presumed fallen on the walls. Giving me a hug during which I could smell her pink hair, and buying us a drink. I don't know Susie. We met her on the Internet, but I sort of know her based on other people I do know. We are all – except ourselves, of course – nothing but a jigsaw of different experiences, a sort of cultural and environmental DNA code. She led us up the stairs, around a rough-concrete interior. Midge bangs his head somewhere near the top and I've still no idea how that happened.
We get Midge to take photos of us in bed reading back at the B&B, using my phone. Dan lifts a copy of the local paper from a heavily emulsioned pub bar earlier and I drag a bent but unread copy of the New Statesman from on
e of my bags. In the photos we look red, sweaty and wind-beaten. I'm feeling that hot way you do after being outside for long periods, a kind of scrubbed dirtiness.
The photos are despatched to the Internet to no particular interest. And we sleep, untouching.
