Deck

‘Mr Whippy’s on the blink again Brian.’
‘Shit.’
Abigail and Brian shifted places within the small space, Abigail taking up the position by the service window where a salt-speckled boy just ordered a 99.
‘Sorry lad,’ she said. ‘The machine’s broke. Get you something else?’
The boy said nothing, squinting at her, gripping a handful of change tightly in a fist. One of his legs was coated in sand and his trunks were dripping onto the asphalt of the car park.
‘I’ve got Zooms, Fabs. Might have a Screwball at the bottom of the box.’
‘Got a Cornetto?’
‘No,’ said Abigail, though she actually did. There was one left and it was hers for later.
The boy turned and ran away.
‘Time waster,’ muttered Abigail.

Following the afternoon rush, Abigail and Brian performed their end-of-day duties in quiet synchronicity. The shadows lengthened across the beach, granting long black tails to the rocks, and the wind picked up, bending the marram grass, casting it back upon itself, revealing in ripples and rivulets along the blades its hidden fingers, but inside the van was cosy and warm from a day in the sun. The last of the families collected their children and towels, beating them down for sand, and trudged back to the caravan park, their voices getting softer and softer until nothing could be heard but the cawing of gulls against the rhythmic cascade of the Atlantic Ocean. Abigail cleaned the machines and the surfaces while Brian darted about in the freezer, counting and rearranging, levering off any Mini Milks that had attached themselves to the walls during the day.
‘Down the Turk last night young lady?’
‘Might have been.’
‘How was it?’
‘Oh you know, a bit Anglo-Saxon.’
Abigail stuttered a little as she spoke, then looked at Brian to gauge his reaction. It was a fresh manner she was trying out, calling things Anglo-Saxon and Gallic and Pagan, even when she was not sure of their exact provenance. She often experimented with manners in this way, and, like a new coat, the first few times she wore them outside of the house a sudden nervousness struck her and she felt not at all as sophisticated and debonair as she had expected to. Brian, however, used to such odd phrases, ignored her and continued his stock check, counting the boxes of flakes and Twisters and fruit lollies and marking the number he needed to order on the sheet.

‘And,’ said Abigail, just remembering, ‘Mary spilt her Pernod and black all down my green dress cause she was too busy drooling over Mickey Hammett playing pool to realise she was spilling it. Mum’ll flip when she realises I’ve got nothing proper to wear to midsummer.’
She stopped gathering flake crumbs from the counter and looked out over the beach.

There were three beaches in St Maggs. This one, next to the caravan park, where the tourists came, the town beach, a miserable strip of shingle that was barely worth walking your dog on, and, over the cliffs, the smallest beach of all, known to locals as the long beach. The long beach was only accessible by a steep and narrow path, and it was here she went to smoke and drink cider with her friends, throwing deodorant cans and crisp packets onto the bonfire to see what would happen.

‘Why do people come here?’ she said. Brian had his head in the freezer.
‘What’s that?’
‘I said, why do people come here? It’s shit. There’s not even a cinema or nothing.’ Brian straightened up.
‘The seaside. Chance for the wife to get a bit of sun. Let the kids off the leash. Wouldn’t be my personal choice but you can’t hold it against folks if that’s what they want to do. Get used to it, anyway. There’s no money but deck chairs and ice cream, not in Cornwall, not no more.’
Abigail rotated so she was facing Brian.
‘Dad says Maggie’s going to come through with the loan. He says when that many thousand march through London there’s no way they’ll not reopen it.’
Brian smiled gently.
‘Well I wish I shared your father’s optimism, girl. When does your Alex leave for the upcountry?’
‘He went three days ago.’
‘Shame. Would have liked to see him off. Of course there’s so many going now it’s hard to keep track.’
Abigail suddenly felt like crying.
‘Mum says he’ll be a fish on land up there, says it doesn’t do to take a Cornish man away from the sea. I think it’s exciting. I wish I could go with him.’
Brian sighed.
‘I’m sure you’ll be on your way soon enough’, he said.
‘It’s only a temporary situation anyway. He’s got the twins to feed so he’s just going to Yorkshire until the loan comes and they reopen the pit. He’ll be back soon Dad said. Back before you know it.’

Abigail's heart beat fast and she felt her face going red so she turned outwards again to hide herself from Brian. It was like this with everything in her life, with her mother’s incessant comments on her hair, her Smiths t-shirts, her bookishness; her father’s bluish skin, his bed-boundness, the hacking cough that revved through the night behind his door; her brother’s poverty, his hungry wife, his drinking; Abigail turned away and looked at the horizon and convinced herself that this was normal and that the scattershot anxiety she felt throughout the day was nothing but schoolgirl hysteria. The thought that sustained this delusion was that one day she would get out, as her friends were always phrasing it, to Bristol or London, or even Manchester, where English-Irish poets skulked in crumbling Victorian doorways and asked to meet you in graveyards, where the boys had all their teeth and didn’t stare at your tits; she would live in Rusholme or Whalley Range and shave one side of her head.

At the far end of the beach she saw a tall figure walking towards them. As he crossed the line of bracken that divided the shore from the car park she realised it was Jory Maddern, an old fisherman. He didn’t live in St Maggs proper, but on his own croft set apart on the hillside overlooking the long beach. As with any village, there was no fact like rumour, and his living alone, combined with his habit of sitting and staring out to sea for long periods, even during storms, created a mystique around him that bordered on fear. As a young man, he had been the only survivor of a fishing wreck, and since he never married it was felt with some force that he had wasted the divine fortune showered upon him, as if he had spat in the eye of God.

‘Jory’s coming,’ said Abigail.
‘Wonder what that old bat’s after,’ said Brian. ‘You can go girl, if you’re not wanting a lift. I’ll count the pennies. Though I suppose you’ll be after your pay and all.’
Jory tapped on the window.
‘Closed, pard. Sorry,’ said Brian through the glass.
Jory tapped again. His long hair was damp although it had not rained that day. ‘God’s sake,’ said Brian, edging the window half-open. ‘What is it Jory?’
‘I need to use your phone.’
‘My phone? Jory you’re out of your tree. Does this look like a phone booth? What do you need to use a phone for?’
Jory looked biblical, thought Abigail, in his wax jacket, open on a tatty vest, his face and chest leather-brown from the sun, his eyes pale and shot through with sharp fissures of dark red.
‘There’s a body. Someone needs sending a boat out there,’ said Jory.
Brian pulled the window all the way.
‘You saw a body?’
Jory gurned and let a long string of spittle out onto the ground. He sniffed.
‘Smelt it. It’s five miles out, over breakers to the east. We need sending a boat out there or it’ll get away.’
Brian stood still for a moment, then shuffled past Abigail and opened the back of the van.
‘Get in Jory,’ he said. ‘Abigail you come up front with me. Gary’s is closest.’

When Brian turned the key in the ignition the jingle came on and he fumbled to switch it off, mumbling swear words under his breath. Silence restored, they took off down the gravel track towards Gary Ruxton’s farm. He was a stout man with grey skin and a white moustache stained yellow in the middle from tobacco. He owned the caravan park and could normally be found sitting on a plastic chair outside the hut that served as reception and tuck shop, smoking Camels and reading The Sun.

‘You’re talking to them,’ shouted Brian over his shoulder. ‘I’m not calling the lifeboats and telling them you can smell a body five miles at sea. They’ll laugh me out of town. What does a body smell like anyway?’
‘A dead body,’ corrected Jory.
Brian pulled up outside Gary’s place and switched the engine off. Him and Abigail got out. Gary was sat outside, surrounded by cigarette butts, drinking tea from a chipped mug. He did not stand, but said in his husky voice, ‘You be delivering now, Brian? If you’ve come to sell to my folks then I’ll be having a cut. Bit late for ice cream. Getting nippy.’
‘There’s a body,’ said Abigail.
‘Jory thinks he can smell a body,’ cut in Brian. ‘He’s got it in his head, anyhow. He wants to use your phone.’
Gary’s face darkened. Abigail turned to see Jory stepping out of the van. He walked straight past the three of them and into the tuck shop.
‘What the bleedin’ hell,’ said Gary. The chair creaked as he levered himself out. ‘Who does he think he is? Marching in like Napoleon…’
Abigail and Brian followed Gary into the hut. Jory was standing with his back to them, over by the tins of beans and sausages, the coil of the phone line stretched taught from the receiver to his ear. There were streaks of birdshit down the back of his coat, green with bubbles of white.
‘Five miles… Head past Mariner’s Landing… Male, yes, definitely male…’
Gary turned to Brian and raised his hands in disbelief. Jory rang off and turned to face the group. Clearing his throat, he rubbed his hands on his jacket as if to clean them and walked back outside.

Gary’s wife Gail came in holding a basket full of pillowcases and sheets for the wash. ‘Was that Jory Maddern I’ve just spied skulking off there? Why, you lot are a sight and a half.’
She stopped and put the basket on the floor.
‘Who died?’

*

By the time Brian drove Abigail back into the village, word had already spread and a group were gathered by the jetty. They pulled up on the front in time to see the lifeboat setting off. Abigail recognised Billy Turner and his dad in their yellow garb, as well as old Kenver Strange who ran the pharmacy. At the head of the boat stood the skipper Marty Graham, deep in conversation with Jory. Jory made sweeping movements with his hands and pointed, whilst Marty shouted instructions back to the crew.

Abigail joined the crowd, which was huddled indistinctly, not quite a circle, not quite something else. From the buzz she could immediately tell that no one knew anything and everyone had a theory. It was said with certainty that a German had been missing from the caravan site for three days, but to listen to the babble there were ten bodies out there.
‘It’ll be a body dumped at Newquay come down the coast, town’s fulla junkies…’
‘Graham from the butcher’s said that he heard on the radio that an American cruiser went down last week…’
'Probably some emmet eejit who couldn’t judge the tides…’
‘Who ever heard of such a thing? Smelling a body. Gives me the heebie jeebies…’
‘Mark my words…’

In the crowd she saw her friend Mary, eating a portion of chips from newspaper.
‘Ere, what do you think?’ said Mary as Abigail came over. ‘Isn’t this dreadfully exciting? Apparently the German fella was last seen headed for the long beach, and he didn’t even have a towel with him.’
Abigail said nothing and stole a chip. Mary started up again.
‘But do you actually think he can smell a body? Do you think they’ll find one? I reckon it’s madness, this whole thing. But then, it’s like a fairy tale in a way.’
‘Your thinking is so Celtic, Mary. You want to believe the myth before it’s written.’
‘Honestly Abigail, sometimes I don’t have the foggiest idea what you are talking about.’
She took another chip.

A bottle was going round the crowd. Someone shouted, ‘They found the German’, and money was exchanged with a told you so. A few of the kids became impatient with the adult talk and walked to the shoreline, taking it in turns to throw stones at the gulls sitting on the water. The honey light of early evening was beginning to shift towards the grey-blue of night.

An hour later, the mood had turned. There was no sight of the lifeboat, and several of the villagers had become bored or hungry or cold and gone home. A young couple that Abigail recognised from the year above argued with each other, until she turned and marched off, saying, ‘Don’t be gobbin’ on so much, give your arse a chance…’ He tried to grab her coat but she twisted away and he let it be.

Mary and Abigail sat off to the side, on a bench, passing a Cornetto between them. ‘Ere,’ said Mary, ‘What if it’s a trap? And Jory’s going to kill them all and steal the boat?’
‘And then what?’ said Abigail.
‘Eat them. Sail to America. Open a pet shop. He’s a freak, you have to admit.’
‘I like his style,’ said Abigail.
‘What, pirate tramp?’
‘It’s biblical.’
‘Maybe,’ said Mary, her eyes widening, ‘this is a nuclear war thing. Like, a secret Commie submarine coming to spy on us, and they had a traitor on board so they had to shoot him and then get rid of the body.’
‘You can’t shoot someone on a submarine, Mary.’
‘Ok they strangled him then. Or fired him out of the torpedo guns.’
Abigail felt a hand pressing down on her shoulder. 
‘There she is. Been round the houses for you. Have you any idea what time it is missus?’ 
‘Sorry mum.’ 
Her mother glared down at her, the orange glob of a cigarette glowing between thin lips. 
‘Don’t apologise to me, you can apologise to your father who let his dinner go cold waiting on your sorry face. I can’t believe you’re eating ice cream, you knew we was having hot pot tonight.’ 
She gripped Abigail's top and rubbed it between her fingers, spilling ash on her shoulder.
‘Don’t tell me you wore this to work.’
‘Mum,’ said Abigail.
Ignoring Abigail, her mother turned to Mary and said, with sudden cheer, ‘And how are you my lover? Staying out of trouble I hope.’
‘I’m swell Mrs Benson.’
Abigail’s mother leant in close and assumed a conspiratorial air.
‘Honestly, Mary,’ she whispered, ‘never have kids. For your own health.’

She turned to Abigail, straightening up. ‘We’ve got news of your brother. You’ll not believe this but I took a call from the foreman upcountry and the bugger hasn’t shown up.’
‘What?’ said Abigail, but her mother carried on as if she had not heard.
‘I’d bet the house he fell in with some lads on the train and stopped in London to get drunk for a few days, though on whose money I dread to think.’
‘Mum,’ said Abigail.
‘I haven’t had the heart to tell Jean, she’s had so much trouble with the little ones, you know how teazy they are at the moment, and if she found out he’s drunk this away like he did last time, and considering all the running her old man did to set it up, well I don’t know.’
‘Mum,’ said Abigail.
‘Of course your father blew a gasket when he heard. Lucky it were me who took the call otherwise I think the phone would have been through the wall. Nearly sent me through the wall and all I was doing was the telling. For God’s sake girl where are you up and off to now? Abigail. Come back here. Abigail!’

Abigail’s mother lifted her eyes and saw what had caused her daughter to rise from the bench; a commotion on the beach, the lights of the lifeboat gyrating closer, a shuffle of excitement through the crowd on the shore. Dropping her cigarette to the ground, she crushed it beneath her shoe with a twist and set out after her daughter.

The boat came within shouting distance and the noise from the jetty began, the villagers calling and asking and joking. No reply came from the craft, and as it came closer the crowd too became silent. They had seen the long black shape on the deck, and Marty holding his seaman’s cap against his chest.

After they moored, the two Turner men lifted the body from each end upon their shoulders and carried it onto the jetty, draped between them like a rug. An immense quiet filled the group, broken only by the wet slaps of the waves against the side of the boat.

All eyes turned, gleaming in the darkness, towards Abigail and her mother, who stood staring at the drenched, bloated figure laid out on the wooden boards.

Abigail lifted her gaze to the horizon and felt her mother collapse by her side.