Bones Under The Beach Hut (7 page)

    'Hi,
Carole,' she said. 'It's so hot I'm about to go down to the beach. I've knocked
together a bit of a picnic. Do you and Gulliver fancy coming?'

    'We
were just about to go to the beach ourselves. But not Fethering Beach.'

    'Oh?'

    'Smalting.
To check out my substitute beach hut.'

    'And follow
up on your investigation?' asked Jude teasingly.

    'Who
knows? Anyway, why don't you come with us?'

    
Fowey
was not in the same row of beach huts as
Quiet Harbour.
It was in fact
as far away as it could be. The three slightly curved rows of twelve units each
were set in a bigger curve, forming a crescent shape, so that from their
director's chairs outside
Fowey
Carole and Jude had a perfect view of
the damaged hut.

    It
was, of course, locked shut, as were about half of the others. In front of the
remainder, families spread themselves while small children made endless
journeys up and down to the water. Like the nearby Fethering Beach, the one at
Smalting sloped very gradually, so that at low tide a couple of hundred yards
of sand were exposed. When the tide was high, it came up to the bank of shingle
that protected the beach huts and the promenade.

    Carole
and Jude found themselves looking at a perfect English seaside scene, as
featured on vintage railway posters; one that hadn't changed much for the
previous fifty or sixty years, except for the ubiquitous mobiles and the white
earphone leads of iPods. Another difference from the normal reality of English
seaside scenes was that it wasn't raining.

    Thinking
back to her own childhood, Carole was also struck by the brightness of the
swimwear on display. Her recollection was of a navy woollen bathing costume
that clung embarrassingly to her developing figure, that tickled and felt
clammy when it got wet. Watching the pubescent girls in tape-thin bikinis
cavorting on Smalting Beach made her feel very old.

    She
wasn't made to feel younger by the behaviour of her neighbour. As soon as
they'd got the director's chairs out and Carole had settled down to her
crossword, Jude proceeded to remove her T-shirt and skirt. What was revealed
was a turquoise two-piece costume, which did little to disguise its owner's
generous proportions. Carole, who didn't carry a spare ounce of weight, still
worried about her wobbly bits, but clearly Jude had no such inhibitions. And as
ever, in spite of the volumes of flesh exposed, she managed to look good. A
couple of passing boys in microscopic Speedos viewed her with considerable
interest.

    Jude
caught Carole's eye and, as she so often could, seemed to intuit her friend's
thoughts. 'If you've got it, flaunt it,' she shrugged. 'Haven't you brought a
bathing costume with you?'

    'No,'
replied Carole in a manner that suggested she had been asked something much
more offensive. That teenage awkwardness about her body had never quite left
her, and now as a post-menopausal woman she felt far too old to start showing
it off. She didn't even really like showing her legs without tights and her
chosen beachwear for the day was a pair of grey slacks, a sleeveless white
shirt, white socks and blue canvas shoes.

    'You'll
have to get hold of one before next week,' said Jude.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'Lily's
going to want her Granny to go into the sea with her, isn't she?'

    'Oh.
I hadn't thought of that.'

    'I'm
going down for a paddle,' Jude announced impetuously. And she ran over the flat
sand towards the sea, setting everything jiggling, but again attracting some
admiring male glances.

    Carole
tried to focus her mind on
The Times
crossword, but without success. She
was continually distracted by the sounds and sights of the beach. And her eyes
kept wandering across to the locked frontage of
Quiet Harbour,
prompting
further speculations about what she had seen inside the hut.

    To
distract herself, she went into
Fowey
and took the small pink director's
chair out of its plastic wrapping. She set it on the sand between its two
grown-up counterparts and indulged in a moment of soppiness. She couldn't wait
to see Lily sitting in it. She somehow just knew her granddaughter would love
the thing. Then, not wishing Jude to witness her sentimentality, she folded the
little chair and put it back inside.

    Still
restless, she gave in to the reproachful look from Gulliver, who took a pretty
dim view of being tied up by his lead to a hook on the outside of the beach
hut. So Carole took him for a little stroll along the curved rows of beach
huts, observing as much as she could without being seen to be snooping. The one
right next door to
Fowey
was called
Shrimphaven.
The doors were
open, but the hut looked to be empty. As a result Carole peered in more
obviously than she might have done, and was embarrassed to meet the
bespectacled gaze of a young woman sitting in the shadows over an open laptop.
Making an awkward cough of apology, Carole scuttled off along the line of huts.

    Some
of the owners she recognized from her previous visit. Outside a hut called
Mistral
an elderly couple sat on candy-striped loungers. The woman, plump, white-haired,
with powdered skin like pink meringue, was contentedly working her way through
a book of word searches. She looked up as Carole passed.

    'Morning,'
the old woman said in a comfortable, homely voice. 'I gather you've got
problems with
Quiet Harbour.'

    'A
bit of fire damage. Not too serious. Vandals, I suppose.'

    The
woman shook her head gloomily. 'Too much of that going on these days. By the
way, my name's Joyce Oliver.'

    'Carole
Seddon.'

    'And
that's Lionel.' The husband she gestured to looked unsuitably dressed for the
beach. Though he was in shirt sleeves, the shirt was a formal white one, and
his charcoal trousers with neat creases looked as though they were the bottom
half of a suit. Over the back of his lounger hung a matching jacket. His shoes,
black lace-ups with toecaps, were highly polished. Beside him on the sand was a
copy of the
Daily Mail,
but he wasn't reading it. He was just looking
out to sea with an expression of infinite bleakness.

    'In a
world of his own, as ever,' said Joyce Oliver with a little chuckle, as
Gulliver tugged on his lead to get moving. 'Well, I'm sure we'll see you again,
Carole.

    We're
here most days in the summer, and particularly at the moment because we're in
the process of moving house. Place where we brought up the kids is far too big
for us now. It's a wrench leaving the house, but has to be done. Lionel can't
manage the garden any more. It's his pride and joy - the work he's put into the
landscaping and the water features you wouldn't believe. But it's too much for
him now and he hates the idea of having someone else doing it for him, so the
move does make good sense.

    'Anyway,
we're not quite out of the old house, and there's lots of work needs doing on the
new one - well, you can't really call it a house, it's only a flat - so coming
down here to the hut is quite a relief, let me tell you.'

    'Yes,
it's a lovely spot,' said Carole, providing a predictable comment on Smalting
Beach. Then with a nod to Joyce Oliver, she continued along the line of beach
huts.

    Carole
was surprised that the man in the next hut appeared to recognize her. She had
no recollection of ever having seen him before. Rising from a wooden folding
chair, he said, 'Good morning. You must be Mrs Seddon.'

    His
beach hut had not been open on her previous visit, because Carole would
certainly have remembered it if it had been. The opened doors revealed, fixed
on to their interiors and continuing on all three walls of the hut, a huge
array of naval memorabilia. Highly polished brass port and starboard lights
were attached to the inside of their appropriate doors. There were also
anchors, ancient quadrants and sextants, watercolours of ships, model ships,
ships in bottles, framed hat ribbons, wooden dead eyes, cleats, badges, flags,
boards with demonstration knots pinned on them, and green glass floats for
fishing nets. In pride of place at the back of the hut stood a brass-studded
wooden ship's wheel. Over the doors was fixed a worn brass plaque bearing the
name:
The Bridge.

    Slightly
fazed by the display, Carole acknowledged that she was indeed Mrs Seddon. The
gentleman who'd asked the question was of a piece with the contents of his hut.
Probably in his early seventies, he had a full grey beard in the style of
George V. He wore a blazer with embossed brass buttons and on its breast pocket
a badge featuring a lot of woven gold wire. His dark blue tie also bore some
naval insignia.

    Offering
a hairy hand to Carole, the man identified himself. 'Good morning, my name is
Reginald Flowers and I am President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.'

    It
was then that Carole noticed he was not alone. Sitting on another folding chair
beside him was a chubby little woman with faded red hair and thick-lensed
glasses. Open on her lap was a folded-back spiral reporter's notebook in which
she'd apparently been writing shorthand.

    'And
this is Dora,' said Reginald Flowers with the utmost condescension, 'who is my
secretary.'

    'Well,
Reginald, that's not strictly accurate,' the woman objected rather feebly.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'Well,
I'm not
your
secretary. I'm secretary of the Smalting Beach Hut
Association.'

    'It
comes to the same thing, Dora.'

    'No,
it doesn't really.'

    'Yes,
it does. Anyway, I need to speak to Mrs Seddon. So could you please go off and
type up those letters as soon as possible?'

    'I'll
do them this evening. I only came down this morning to have a nice day in my
beach hut.' She smiled myopically at Carole and pointed along the row. 'Mine's
the third one along. It's called
Cape of Good Hope.'

    'Oh.
How nice,' said Carole.

    'And
obviously my full name isn't just Dora. It's Dora Pinchbeck.'

    'Ah.
Well-'

    'Dora,'
said Reginald Flowers firmly, 'I would be very grateful if you could do those
letters straight away, and
then
you can enjoy your day in the beach
hut.'

    'Well,
I'd really rather—'

    
'If
you would be so kind,' came the implacable order.

    'Oh,
very well.' And Dora shuffled her notebook and pen into her bag. 'I'll have to
lock up
Cape of Good Hope
before I go.'

    'That
will be quite permissible,' her magnanimous boss assured her.

    With
a long-suffering sigh, Dora Pinchbeck scuttled off to her beach hut.

    'And
bring the letters here for me to sign as soon as you've finished them!' Reginald
Flowers called after her. Then he turned back to bestow a gracious smile on
Carole. 'As I say, I am the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. As
such, I do of course know everything that goes on in these beach huts.'

    'I'm
sure you do. Anyway, nice to meet you.' Nodding towards the collection in the
hut, Carole said, 'An ex-naval man, I assume?'

    His
face darkened. 'No, I did not myself in fact serve before the mast, though many
of my ancestors

    did.
Let's just say that the history of the British Navy has been a lifelong
interest of mine and one that in retirement I have been able to pursue more
thoroughly.'

    Carole
was about to respond: 'I'd never have guessed,' but decided it might sound
flippant to someone who was as clearly obsessed as Reginald Flowers. So instead
she commented on the splendour of his hoard. 'Do you really leave it here all
the time? Isn't there a terrible risk of it all being stolen?'

    'No,
Mrs Seddon. Although I do take the collection home during the winter months,
there is in fact no danger of any of it being stolen. That is what the Smalting
Beach Hut Association is there for.'

    'Oh?'

    'During
the summer months the SBHA - as we call it - appoints a security officer, whose
job it is to patrol the beach huts and ensure that their security is
maintained.'