The Kingdom by the Sea (7 page)

“I was here two days an’ three nights,” said Harry. “We ate an awful lot…”

“That’s all right, son. And you left the place nice too. Good lad.” There was such… gratitude in the old man’s voice that Harry grew bold.

“Is this your railway carriage?”

“No. It was my lad’s.”

“The vicar? Jack?”

“Aye, Jack. God rest him!”

“Is… is he
dead?”
Harry’s voice rose to a squeak he couldn’t control.

“Aye. And his missus. And the bairns. In the bombing at Newcastle. A year gone. They all went together. One little bomb on the vicarage. The houses each side were scarce touched.”

“But… but…” Harry stared round the carriage. “They seemed so…” He couldn’t get it out.

“Alive? Aye, they’re here. If they’re anywhere. That’s why I keep the place on. They bought it to come and be near me, on their holidays. They were that happy here. Always laughing.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harry.

The old man put his hand on Harry’s arm. “Don’t be sorry, son. Ye’re the first customer we’ve had. Aah used to reckon they were mad, leaving the door unlocked when
they weren’t here, an’ that notice on the table. But Jack always said that anyone of ill-will could soon smash a door or a window open, and he’d be in a rage by the time he’d got inside. Whereas if he was welcomed, he’d respect the place… ye’ve proved my Jack was right after all, son. Thank you. It gives me the strength to go on wi’ things, here. God bless you, whoever you are.” Tears stood out in his old eyes. “What’s your name, son? I’m going to write it in the book - the first name.”

“Harry Baguely.”

“And might I ask where you’re headed?” asked the old man, very gently.

“Just… up the coast,” said Harry. “I’m a pilgrim.”

“Oh, ye’re gannin to Holy Island - Lindisfarne?”

“Yes,” said Harry. Though he hadn’t decided till that very moment. Now, somehow, he
had
to go to Lindisfarne.

“God bless you, Harry Baguley” said the old man. “You and your dog.”

Tears grew in Harry’s own eyes. He suddenly felt he wanted to tell the old man everything about the bombing. It was like a great weight of water inside him, held back by a thin, thin dam. But the old man had enough troubles of his own. And the old man was happy now, in a way. Harry couldn’t bear to spoil his happiness, to let all the misery inside himself loose in the world.

“Tara,” he said abruptly, before he broke down. Shouldered his blankets, picked up his case and went.

But he turned and waved, before he was out of sight. The old man was sitting on the step of the carriage, lighting his pipe. He waved back.

The light was failing as they came off the rocks and into sight of Druridge Bay.

That was always the worst time, when the light failed. It was all right in the morning, when the sun was shining and the whole day lay ahead. It was nice to doze and watch the dog swimming, in the heat of the noonday sun. But getting dark had always been home-time, draw the curtains and wait for Dad to come from work time. The time Mam began to cook supper.

Druridge Bay was five miles of sand-dunes, low cliffs and empty sand. Not a thing stirred in the whole long curve of it. Five weary miles of nothing. And he had nothing to eat again. He stared around bleakly. Out to sea, some buoys and
floats bobbed meaninglessly. Druridge Bay, Dad once said, was a bombing range for the RAF, simply because nobody ever went there. He wondered wearily whether a plane would appear and drop a bomb on him and the dog; it would solve a lot of problems.

But the dog seemed to have found something, under the low, crumbling mud-coloured cliff. The dog was circling and barking. He put on a weary spurt to catch up.

The dog was barking at a very odd building, tucked under the cliff. A long box of a building, like a sagging shed. Fisherman’s hut? But surely even the poorest fisherman could do better than this? It was a shed made of patches. Patches of withered plank, of tins hammered flat and nailed on. Patches of corrugated iron, patches of old lino with the pattern still on it. But all painted with black tar, against the wind and rain. And at the far end, a thin stovepipe chimney, from which came smoke and… the smell of cooking fish. It must be the smell of the cooking that was making the dog bark.

He was still about fifty yards away, when a door in the patchwork swung open, and a figure emerged and flung a piece of what looked like wood at the dog. It flew straight and true, and hit the dog on the backside. Don gave a yelp, and fled to a safe distance.

“Hey,” shouted Harry. “That’s
my
dog.”

The figure turned. It was very tall and remarkably thin, with pale bare feet, and trousers that finished raggedly halfway up its legs. All in black it was, with a long thin neck and long thin face, and hair that glinted silver in the last of the light. It looked eerie, like a ghost or a scarecrow. But it said, in a pettish voice, “You should keep your dog under better control then!”

“It’s cos he’s hungry.”

“You shouldn’t keep a dog if you can’t afford to feed it.”

It was a voice like a scolding old granny’s, when she comes to her front door to tell you not to make so much noise playing. But it looked like a man. His hair was cut all ragged behind, and his face was so old, even the wrinkles had wrinkles. But he moved as quick as a kid, a nervous kid.

“What’s yer name?”

“Harry Baguley.” There was no harm in telling this oddball. Nobody would ever believe what
he
said.

“And what you doin’ round here at this time o’ night, Harry Baguley? If your parents had any sense you’d be in bed, or doin’ your homework.”

“They’re dead,” said Harry. “Killed in the bombing.” This bloke was so weird, you really could tell him anything.

“So you’re an orphan?” said the figure. “So am I. I suppose you’d better come in then.”

Harry hesitated; remembered Dad’s warning about
going with strangers. But this bloke sounded reluctant, as if he didn’t want to ask Harry in really. As if he didn’t want to be bothered, but he felt it was his duty.

“Can I bring the dog in?”

“If it shuts up, and minds its manners.”

It was dark inside the strange hut. There was only the light of the burning stove, which appeared to be cut out of a big thick oil drum, and a couple of lighted wicks which floated in a yellow liquid, in rusty tin cans. The smell of burning rotten fish was overpowering. Harry felt a bit sick.

“Sit down.” The man pointed to an unpainted keg, stamped “Danish butter”. Harry sat, and stared round. The walls were hung with all kinds of things. Three ship’s lifebelts, a huge unlit ship’s lantern, the broken rudder of a fishing boat, rusty saws and hammers. The man followed Harry’s eyes.

“All from the sea,” he said, with a strange pride. “All from the sea. I am an orphan, but the sea is my father and my mother.”

Don began nosing around.

“Keep that dog still, or you’ll have to go,” shouted the man suddenly and shrilly Harry, hearing a sudden patter of rain on the roof, grabbed Don’s collar, and said carefully, “What’s
your
name?”

“Joseph Kielty. Everybody knows me round here, for
miles around. I used to be a clerk at Smith’s Dock, afore my mother died, God rest her. Then I came here. Do you want some fish stew?”

“Yes, please,” said Harry. He didn’t know which was worse, feeling ravenous, or feeling sick from the smell of burning fish. But when the fish stew was ladled out of a pot on the stove, and given to him with an incredibly battered spoon, it tasted marvellous. Don sniffed at the bowl hungrily, hopefully.

“Have you got something for my dog?” asked Harry cautiously.

“Does he eat raw fish?”

“He’ll eat anything.”

The man produced a large whole fish from somewhere, and lured the dog outside with it, and slammed the door. “I’m not having him making a mess in here.”

They both listened in silence to the sounds of chewing outside the door. Then Harry said, “How long you lived here?”

“Since afore the last war. The last war was none of my business. Neither is this one. I thought the Germans might be going to land here a couple o’ years ago, but they seem to have changed their minds now. Want to listen to the news?”

Without waiting for Harry to say yes, he swung round
and turned on a large old-fashioned radio, with a proud flourish. “That radio’s the one thing the sea didn’t give me. I bought it second-hand at Hardy’s in Amble. I bought it with the money I got for the fish. It runs on batteries. I buy them with money from the fish too.”

They listened in silence to Bruce Belfrage reading the news. The news wasn’t very good, as usual. The Eighth Army were retreating in the Western Desert. The Russians were retreating round Smolensk. The RAF had sustained “comparatively light” losses, bombing Germany. The man switched off. “Must save the batteries. How you goin’ to manage, now you’re an orphan?”

“Dunno,” said Harry warily.

“You can always manage, by the sea,” said the man. “I’ve learnt that the hard way, over thirty years. I’ll show you how, if you like. Then you’ll have to go away and find your own beach. There’s not room for two here on this one. Is that a bargain?”

“That’s nice of you,” said Harry, and found he meant it.

“Just doin’ me bit for the War Effort,” said the man. “You’ll have to sleep outside though. Wi’ the dog. In the shed.” And he immediately led Harry to the door, taking the empty bowl off him as he went.

The “shed” was simply one end of the long building, with a wall missing. It was full of propped-up, saltstained
planks of wood, old fish boxes and lumps of cork. Don followed, the well-chewed remains of the fish still in his mouth. The wind, getting up, howled round the open shed, blowing in both spots of rain and rifts of hissing dry sand.

“You’ll make yourself snug enough here,” said the man. “Well, goodnight to you.” And he went in and slammed the door hard.

Harry managed to build some kind of shelter for himself and Don, behind the propped-up wood.

A hand shook his shoulder. “Time to get up. Tide’s on the turn. Time’s a-wasting. Drink this.” The man thrust a very chipped enamel mug into Harry’s hand. Harry sipped it. He thought it was tea without milk or sugar; it was as bitter as gall, but after he’d drunk it, he felt better. He peered out of his shelter. Dawn was just breaking, a steely slit between grey sky and darker sea. There was a brisk breeze, with rain in it.

Then the man was back, and handing him three straw fish baskets, with handles.

“That
one’s for sea-coal, an’ that one’s for slank, and that one’s for anything interesting you find.”

“Like what?”

“You’ll see,” said the man, striding off, with what seemed to be four straw baskets in each hand.

After two hours, Harry’s back was breaking; he was soaked and his knees were caked with sand, and he’d lost all feeling in his hands from cold and wet; they were red and swollen. And yet he was still fascinated. The man stalked the tide-line, bent double all the time, looking as natural as a heron on the hunt for its breakfast. He stalked with a heron-stride; he dipped with his hand like a heron striking. His feet even looked like heron’s feet, bony and splayed and grey. And he must have eyes like gimlets. He didn’t just find sea-coal (which Harry soon learnt to recognise), and slank (which was a particular kind of seaweed, which the man said was better for you than green vegetables). He found a penny, with the King’s head almost worn away by the sea and sand. He found a round rusty tin, still half-full of sweet-smelling tobacco. He found a sodden navy-blue jumper, with one elbow worn out, but it would darn. A baby’s dummy, nearly new, a deflated rubber bathing-ring that could be repaired. Two crabs stranded by the tide, a dead flatfish that was sniffed and pronounced still fresh, and a crippled sea-bird that he despatched with one blow of a charred plank, saying it would make supper. But he was most jubilant about some orangey stones, that he said were amber.

“These started,” he said, “as lumps o’ resin oozing out of a fir tree in Denmark, hundreds and hundreds o’ years ago. I gotta piece once wi’ a fly caught inside it. All those
hundreds of years ago. The feller who comes from Newcastle gave me five bob for that one. They usually make women’s beads out of them. But that one wi’ the fly was special. It was sent to a museum in America.” Then he said, “Not much of a morning. They’ve not been bombing these last few days. No fish. Come on and I’ll give you some breakfast.”

They staggered up the beach, carrying loads of charred wood, as well as full bags of sea-coal and slank.

He learnt to live with Joseph; learnt when to stand up for himself, and when to bend.

Joseph had moods. In the morning, he was as cruel and savage as a gull. If the dog got in his way, he would kick it, with those grey iron-hard bare feet. If Harry got in the way, he would kick him too. There was no arguing with Joseph in the mornings; he would get hysterical, screaming at you, so that his spit landed on your face. He would tell you to pack your bags and go.

In the afternoons, especially if it was sunny, he would sing to himself, the old songs of a whole war ago.

“Keep the home fires burning…”

If he found something good in the afternoons, he would caper around like a boy. The afternoon they found the whole keg of butter, three-quarters buried in the sand, he
grabbed Harry and waltzed with him half down the beach, working out how many radio batteries the money from the keg would buy.

At the end of the working day, after a mug of the vile tea, he would get dressed up in an old shiny black suit, and even boots, and cycle on his old butcher-boy’s bike up to the town of Amble, with his carrier laden with loot for the grocer’s and the second-hand shop. It was the only time he ever wore anything on his feet; and a collar and tie as well. He looked almost normal. When he came back, he would get the supper, and tell Harry word for word what he had said to the grocer, and how he’d put one over the secondhand dealer. That was the time to ask him favours. He would even give you things, without being asked. Sometimes the things were useful, like a clasp-knife with blades honed down till they were like sickles. Sometimes they were useless, like a photograph of a little girl in a Victorian sailor-suit.