The Last of the Bowmans

by J. Paul Henderson

  Billy seemed to read his thoughts. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? I don’t think I’d ever want to live in another county, never mind another country. Don’t you miss not being here?’

  ‘Sometimes, but not often. I’ve lived in America for almost as long as I lived in England and I feel more at home there now. I like Texas – or at least the part of Texas where I live. The climate’s a hell of a lot better and there’s a beauty to the arid landscape. You ought to come out and visit sometime?’

  ‘I’d like to – and I know Katy would. But I think I’d have a hard time getting it past Jean.’

  ‘Don’t tell her then and just come on your own. Tell her you’re going on a business trip to Scotland or Denmark. You’ve had plenty of practice at that.’

  ‘Very funny, Greg. Remind me to laugh, will you?’

  ‘Uncle Frank’s coming out next year. We’re going to Montana. You could come with him and tell Jean I’ve asked you to escort him. He’ll need someone to keep a rein on him if he wants to get through immigration. What do you think, Uncle Frank?’

  ‘I think I’d like to have been a dog,’ Uncle Frank said absent-mindedly.

  Greg and Billy looked at each other.

  ‘Why a dog?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Because if I was a dog I could eat meat everyday and sleep in front of the fire. And I could bite people and run off and piss in the street whenever I wanted to and not worry about being caught short.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d want to be a dog, Uncle Frank,’ Billy said. ‘There’s a good chance someone would have you put down, especially if you bit people. I know Betty certainly would.’

  ‘She’d be the first person I’d bite,’ Uncle Frank said. ‘She and her… oh, bloody hell fire! All this talk about pissing’s made me want to go to the toilet. Stop the car will you, Billy? Soon as you can, lad.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait a minute, Uncle Frank. There’s a car right behind me and there’s no hard shoulder. I’ll pull over as soon as I can.’

  Uncle Frank started to fidget and drum on the back of Greg’s headrest. ‘Blood and sand, Billy, I can’t hold off much longer and these are my only trousers. You’ve got to stop… now!’

  Billy turned on the indicator and started to slow down. The car behind honked its horn and then overtook him, the driver’s middle finger raised. Billy eased the vehicle on to the verge, careful to avoid the potholes, and then stopped. Uncle Frank fumbled with the door handle and scrambled out. It took less than a minute to relieve himself.

  ‘And that’s another thing about dogs,’ Uncle Frank said, once he was back in the car. ‘They don’t have to wear trousers!’

  Revelation

  They arrived at the small village close to The Gap and looked for a sign posting the cliffs. After a couple of false starts, they drove down a narrow lane and parked on an area of rough ground where the track ended, close to the entrance to a large holiday village crammed with caravans and chalets.

  Neither Greg nor Billy was sure of their surroundings. Certainly there’d been no caravan park in the area when they’d stayed at The Gap, and now there appeared to be no clear descent to the beach. Greg climbed out of the car and walked to the far end of the uneven land, and then disappeared from sight. He returned after about five minutes.

  ‘We’re at the right place,’ he confirmed, ‘but we’ll have to be careful. It looks like there’s been an earthquake down there.’

  Greg hadn’t been exaggerating. The concrete slipway that led to the beach – built more for the purposes of gravel extraction than tourism – had been ripped apart and torn into two foot thick slabs. The wall that had retained the slipway had all but disappeared and huge blocks of concrete and masonry now littered the beach. The soft boulder clay of the reddish-brown cliffs had eroded dramatically and the structures that had depended on its stability crumbled: the ramp, the WWII military defensive positions and the holiday bungalows.

  They made their way slowly, Uncle Frank sandwiched between his two nephews. Sometimes Greg took his arm, other times Billy his hand and, on occasion, both held on to him. It took them fifteen minutes to descend to the shore, but they arrived safely.

  The beach was as magnificent as both Greg and Billy remembered. The tide was out and the sands of the crescent-shaped bay reached far into the distance. They walked past children paddling in pools, playing games and clambering over eared and lozenge pillboxes that had fallen from the cliff. They passed grown-ups sitting in chairs, sunbathing on large beach towels and scouring the clay for fossils: ammonites, belemnites, corals and molluscs.

  The sky was azure and cloudless, the sun smiled brightly and knighted them with its warmth, and a gentle breeze carried the scent of the waves to their nostrils. It was a day made to order, a day saved up from yesteryear for a special occasion, a day when no terms and conditions applied, a day…

  ‘It’s not exactly Llandudno, is it?’ Uncle Frank commented.

  ‘It’s not meant to be,’ Greg said. ‘Just enjoy it.’

  ‘What I can’t figure out is where the bungalow we stayed in was,’ Billy said. ‘And that farm – the one we used to go to for milk in the morning – where’s that gone to?’

  ‘The farm will be up there somewhere,’ Greg said, pointing to the bluffs. ‘It was inland from the bungalow and won’t have been affected by the erosion. But the bungalow’s probably gone. Dad was under the impression it already had.’

  ‘When did he tell you that?’ Billy asked surprised.

  ‘A long time ago,’ Greg said. ‘In one of his phone calls.’

  Billy was about to question him more on the subject when his brother’s phone rang and Greg walked a short distance away from him and Uncle Frank.

  When Greg rejoined them he looked serious. ‘Is anything wrong?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Not wrong as such – just strange,’ Greg replied. ‘That was Cyndi. Ever since she decided to have a boob job she’s gone all religious. I just don’t get it. She goes against God’s nature by having implants in the first place, and now she seems to be trying to get back into His good books by preaching at me. Do you know what her last words were? “Don’t let the Devil lead you astray.” Can you believe that?’

  ‘What did you say?’ Billy asked.

  ‘I said that unless the Devil was a keen caravaner, he wouldn’t even know this place existed!’

  ‘What did she say to that?’

  ‘I don’t know: I hung up.’

  ‘She sounds to me like one of those Orange Women,’ Uncle Frank said. ‘Every one of them has false breasts and they’re all either crossing themselves or talking about their special relationship with God. Check her lips when you get back, Greg, and see if she looks like a fish. That’s what the symbol for Christianity is – a fish. Orange Women tend to wear religion on their lips rather than their sleeves.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Greg laughed, and then noticed that his brother was trembling. ‘You okay, Billy?’

  ‘Something weird’s happening, Greg,’ Billy gasped. ‘I’m having a sort of flashback to when we were kids, seeing things that were here then but aren’t here now. There’s Mum sitting in a striped deckchair and Dad leaning against a boulder with his trouser legs rolled up and smoking a pipe. And I’m lying on my back and you’re playing near a large pipe with water coming out of it.’

  ‘You mean that pipe over there?’ Greg asked, pointing to an old rusted pipe jutting from the cliff.

  Billy looked at it and made a strange noise. He groaned, fell to his knees and started to hyperventilate. ‘This is… this is where it happened… it was you… you’re the one that made me the way I am.’

  Billy’s eyes rolled and then closed, and he toppled face forward into the sand.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Uncle Frank asked.

  ‘I think he’s fainted,’ Greg said, carefully turning his brothe
r on to his back and cradling his head.

  ‘He’s a bit of a Nancy that brother of yours, isn’t he? First it’s feet and now it’s sewage pipes. That boy needs to toughen up, Greg. He wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in the Wild West.’

  ‘He’s been living in the Wild West for most of his life, Uncle Frank. He’s tougher than you think.’

  Of all the places and events in life that Billy might have chosen, it was odd that he’d decided upon childhood memories of The Gap as a focal point for therapeutic relaxation, especially when the location proved to be the very source of the fear that Dr Haffenden was treating him for.

  When Billy came round, and after the small crowd of gawkers and well-wishers had dispersed, he sat cross-legged on the sand and told Greg and Uncle Frank about the day that changed his life…

  The family, as usual, had gone to The Gap for two weeks of summer holiday. Billy had been seven at the time and Greg three. For much of the first week it had rained and they’d spent the time either making daytrips to nearby resorts or staying in the bungalow and playing games. The second week, however, had been one of glorious sunshine and wiled away on the beach. It was on the last full day of the holiday – the day before they returned home – that the incident occurred.

  Billy had been lying on his back sunbathing, his mother sitting in a deckchair reading a magazine and his father leaning against a boulder smoking a bowl of Phillips’ Grand Cut. Greg, however, had wandered off and was splashing in water spilling from a large pipe – something both boys had been forbidden to do. (It appeared that even at this age Greg was unwilling to take direction from others.)

  The pipe conducted sewage and wastewater from the bungalows to the sea and at high tide was hidden from sight. When the tide ebbed, however, the pipe was exposed and waste matter pooled beneath it. Greg was already ankle deep in the mire when Lyle spotted him, and had then ignored his father’s exhortations to leave the ooze and wash his feet in the sea. It was only after Lyle had made a beeline for him that Greg had skipped out of the sludge and zigzagged his way to where his brother was sunbathing. ‘Don’t go near Billy! Don’t even touch him!’ Lyle had shouted. ‘Mary, get Greg! Quick as you can, love.’

  Getting out of a deckchair quickly, however, had never been on the cards, and Lyle’s entreaties not to do something only put an idea into Greg’s head that previously hadn’t been there. He’d stood by Billy and stared tauntingly at his approaching father and then, just as Lyle reached to grab him, raised his foot and wiped it slowly and deliberately over his brother’s face. Everything that had lodged on Greg’s foot – smell, secretions and excrement – now rested on Billy’s face: in his mouth, in his nostrils, in his eyes and in his hair.

  Billy, unable to breathe through his clogged nose and with an unpleasant taste in his mouth, had pushed his brother away and jumped to his feet. He’d snatched the nearest towel and blown vigorously, and then spat the contents of his mouth on to the sand. All he could smell was shit and all he could taste was shit.

  Lyle had quickly washed Billy’s face with Coca-Cola – the only liquid to hand – and then tried to console his sobbing son. But Billy was as deaf to his words as he was oblivious to the wasps now buzzing round his head: he heard only the voice and words of his mother as she remonstrated with Greg: germs, feet, diseases, feet, suffocation, feet, blindness, feet, hospital, feet, tetanus shots and feet. Feet, feet, feet!

  And so, the seeds of Billy’s podophobia were planted.

  ‘This would never have happened if you’d gone to Llandudno for your holidays like I did,’ Uncle Frank said.

  ‘Will you stop going on about fucking Llandudno, Uncle Frank? You’re not helping!’

  ‘It’s not my job to help,’ Uncle Frank countered. ‘You caused the problem, not me! It strikes me you have a lot to answer for, lad.’

  ‘He does, Uncle Frank,’ Billy said unhelpfully. ‘It’s not just my life he’s ruined. He got a girl pregnant before he went to America and he’s got a fifteen-year-old son. And he wasn’t three when that happened!’

  It took them almost thirty minutes to climb the cliff, and it was left to Greg to manage their ascent. Uncle Frank was naturally infirm and now, as a consequence of reliving the day that changed his life, so too was Billy. Uncovering the cause of his phobia would benefit him enormously in the long term, but its immediate effect had been to drain him of all physical power and, judging from the occasional sob, also a fair amount of emotional strength.

  It was also left to Greg to drive the car to their overnight destination, Billy deciding it would be safer if he rested on the backseat. Uncle Frank, now promoted to the front passenger seat – or shotgun position, as he called it – was given responsibility for reading road signs, a duty he performed conscientiously for five minutes before falling asleep.

  The hotel Greg had chosen was close to the harbour and in the shadow of a large rocky promontory topped by the ruins of an old castle. He parked in a bay reserved for guests and then unceremoniously roused his sleeping passengers, whose snores had been irritating him for most of the journey.

  He and Billy walked into the hotel carrying overnight bags and Uncle Frank his plastic carrier bag. They signed the register, took their keys and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The rooms were sea-facing and pleasantly spacious, en suite with baths and showers, but sadly, as far as Greg was concerned, no air conditioning.

  Greg looked at his watch and suggested a stroll before dinner. Uncle Frank licked his lips and agreed: he wanted an ice cream; to his way of thinking there was no point going to the coast if they didn’t eat ice cream. Billy, however, demurred and said they should go without him: he needed to rest and regain composure. Despite the tough-love urgings of his uncle to pull himself together and not be a wet lettuce, Billy stood his ground, and Greg and Uncle Frank – a person who would never be invited by the Samaritans to man a phone line – left without him.

  The resort bustled with holidaymakers and was a lot more pleasing to Uncle Frank than The Gap, which he now likened to a deserted quarry. They walked down to the harbour and looked at the boats – fishing trawlers, privately owned yachts and pleasure steamers – and then moved to the promenade. They passed deckchair renters, seaside rock vendors, bought large cornets of soft ice cream and descended to the crowded beach. They took off their shoes and socks and paddled in the sea for a time, and then found an empty space and sat down. Seagulls hovered, scavenged and screeched, and Uncle Frank considered adding them to the Tombstone List – the world, he told Greg, would be a better place without them. He asked Greg about what Billy had said: had he got a girl pregnant and was it true he had a child? Greg told him the story.

  ‘And how old were you when this happened, lad? Twenty-one? You were having sex with girls when you were only twenty-one? Is that normal these days? By heck! I’m seventy-nine, Greg, and I still haven’t had sex. If I’m not careful I’m going to die a virgin.’

  He fell silent, suddenly saddened by the thought, and Greg felt for the old man. He squeezed his uncle’s puny arm, told him there was still time and that he should never give up hope, even though he himself was now of the opinion that sex was overrated. Uncle Frank continued to look rueful, doubting his nephew’s words and thinking of the life he’d never lived. Greg suggested they dust the dried sand from their feet and put their socks and shoes back on. He then helped his uncle to his feet and they continued on their way.

  ‘Donkeys!’ Uncle Frank suddenly exclaimed, pointing to a small drove tethered close to the esplanade, and instantly brightening. ‘I haven’t had a donkey ride in years. Come on, lad: let’s get some practice in before we go to Montana.’

  ‘We can’t, Uncle Frank: the donkeys are off limits to us. Look, read the sign: “No Adults. Riders must not exceed 7st or 12 years of age”.’

  ‘That’s not going to stop me,’ Uncle Frank said, continuing his approach to the donkey master. ‘If he a
sks you who I am, just tell him I’m your son.’

  Despite Uncle Frank’s assertion that he was an eleven-year-old boy suffering from progeria, the donkey master declined his money. Unsurprisingly, the man had never heard of the ageing disease but was savvy enough to know an old man when he saw one. ‘Health & Safety, mate,’ he shrugged.

  ‘There’d better not be any of that Health & Safety cobblers in Montana, Greg. I’m not going all that way and not riding a horse.’

  They crossed the road separating the promenade from the commercial strip and walked back to the hotel past shops selling beach balls, buckets and spades, paper flags and novelties; past restaurants selling fish and chips, pizzas, and more fish and chips; past ice cream parlours and more rock vendors; and past noisy amusement arcades with slot machines and funfair claws that never picked up prizes. Uncle Frank stopped outside a cinema and read the notice.

  ‘We ought to bring Billy to see this,’ he said. ‘It might cheer him up. It says it’s The Feel Good Movie of the Summer and Laugh-out-loud Funny. It sounds good, doesn’t it?’

  ‘That’s just shorthand for crap,’ Greg said. ‘They describe all bad movies that way.’

  Farewells

  After a brief stop at an old-fashioned sweetshop, where Uncle Frank bought six packets of Fisherman’s Friends – good for sore throats and colds, he told Greg – they reached the hotel and Greg went to get Billy. Uncle Frank could see no point in climbing stairs unnecessarily and gave the lozenges to Greg for safekeeping and arranged to meet him in the pub next door to the hotel.

  Greg knocked on Billy’s door and Billy invited him in. He was relieved to see his brother looking more like his old self and, when asked how he was, Billy remarked that he was feeling remarkably chipper – all things considered.

  ‘It was an exhausting business, Greg, but at least I know now why I’m the way I am – and that it’s your fault.’