They were all quiet, all seemingly taken up with bobbing up and down and retaining their hold on the slippery cracks in the rocks. The water was making a different noise now, not just a lapping, slapping noise, but a sucking, swishing noise, deep and distant, yet near, under their feet, in fact. The tide had turned and already it was racing for freedom away from the enclosure of the bay, struggling to get between the barriers into the wider sea again.
The man felt the suction through his toes and was about to remark upon it, but as he looked along past his wife’s face, her chin resting on the surface of the water, to the other two, he decided to remain quiet. He was worried a bit, more about the girl than the boy because, whereas the boy was trying to throw off his experience, she still retained that terrified expression, as if she were waiting for something similar to happen again. If she were his daughter he would be worried about her altogether. She looked all nerves, tightly strung. He was well aware that both the boy and the girl were wishing him and his wife were far away; they were not clever enough to be able to hide their feelings. Oh yes, they were civil, and even grateful that he had made his appearance when he did, but he knew that they wanted to be alone. He could leave them alone from now on, yet somehow he was reluctant to do so. He himself had had enough of the water. This was the third time he had been in in as many hours. Now he would like nothing better than to go and continue his sunbathing on the beach, but this couple seemed to have a call on him. He couldn’t understand really why he felt as he did—teacher’s training, he supposed. The emergency was over and he should leave them to themselves, but there was a subtle reason why he was reluctant to go. Phyllis would likely be able to put her finger on it. She was very good at being able to spot the whys and wherefores of one’s actions and reactions, much better at it than he was, and yet it was he who always did the talking and explaining. He wished they could have a talk now. He would put the question whether or not what the girl saw today would have a lasting effect on her. Was she the sensitive type who wouldn’t be able to forget in a hurry that slim figure stretched between the trees? He doubted it really. The modern girl was different. All the anatomical secrets of a boy were known to her even before she left school. By, yes! Her curiosity was like an acid eating through the outer covering, not resting until it laid bare the exciting stimulus beneath. She couldn’t wait. There had been that case of Ridley, which must have been going on since he was ten and the girl twelve, and under everybody’s nose at that. That was an odd thing about the present generation of girls. It was no new thought that women were the real hunters but they had, in other generations, covered their actions with a veil of decorum. But not the girls of today. They did the chasing openly, shamelessly. It had made him actually squirm to see an unresponsive male leaning up against a wall with a girl’s stomach, breasts and thighs pressing hard at him while her hands sought to rouse him with widespread fingers stroking both sides of his face. And look at that young cow in the fifth form at the Barnes Road School, who had nearly driven Pat Bailey up the wall sitting with her legs apart whenever she got the opportunity and pulling her skirts up to show him a bit more, and never blinking when she looked at him, and saying, ‘Ye…es, sir, Mis…ter Bailey.’ They had laughed in the common room, offering to change places with him, but it had been no laughing matter. It had been serious. So serious that Pat had moved. He had been sorry about that, for he had liked Pat.
But about this girl here. No, he didn’t think it had been the sight of her boyfriend’s naked body that had shocked her so much as…Well, what? He really didn’t know. Was it this Palmer gang she was afraid of? She had looked ready to pass out when the young fellow had jumped on that interloper a few minutes back. And the look of fear hadn’t eased from her face since then. He looked towards her now. She was moving from the rock to which she had been clinging to the next one, and he saw her twist herself about and up, and sit as it were on top of the water, and he called, ‘Oh, you’ve found the flat one, then. There’s another just to the side; we’ll all be able to get on it in a minute or so. She’s running down fast now.’
Joe did not listen to the man; at least, he paid no heed. He moved along towards Brid’s legs and, looking up at her, he said, ‘How did you know it was a flat one?’
‘I could see it through the water. I’m…I’m a bit tired, I think.’ She made an attempt at lightness by saying, ‘It’s a bit wider than. the baths.’ She had been looking down at Joe as she spoke, and then he saw her eyes lift above his head as a voice came from the beach, and he registered immediately, with an answering tremor of fear in his stomach, the swift intensifying of the expression that had been on her face since he had first seen her this afternoon.
When he pulled his body round and trod water he could just make out the two figures on the beach, and if Sandy Palmer’s outline had not been seared into his mind he would not have recognised him. For a moment he felt sick, as if he had swallowed a mouthful of salt water, and his body began to ache again and the burn began to smart.
‘Brid!…Brid!…Here a minute!’ It wasn’t Sandy Palmer’s voice that came across the water but that of the man with him, and the teacher, now close to both Brid and Joe, said rapidly, ‘That’s Palmer, isn’t it? Who’s that with him?’
He too was treading water and he swung round to look up at Brid. She was staring towards the shore as she muttered, ‘Me Uncle John…his father.’
‘You’re cousins, then?’ The man’s mouth remained open when he finished speaking.
‘No. No.’ She shook her head slowly, still looking towards the shore. ‘I…I just call him that. They live near us.’
She looked down now and into Joe’s face. She was drenched with an apprehensive fear that amounted to terror. She began gabbling to herself and it became almost audible. Oh, she wished that man and woman weren’t here, then she could tell Joe.
‘Brid! Brid! Come here a minute!’
‘Don’t go.’ The man put out a hand as if she had been about to drop into the water, but she had made no motion whatever. She remained still. Rigidly still. The water was just lapping round her buttocks now and she had her hands flat on the rock on each side of her hips, pressing hard as if to support herself.
‘You stay where you are. I’ll go and talk to him.’
Joe wanted to put out his hand and say, ‘No, you don’t, this is my business. I’ll deal with this. It’s about Brid and me. It’s our business, my business.’ But he didn’t, for he knew he was in no state to deal with Sandy Palmer and his father. His legs stopped their treading at the thought that if Sandy Palmer came into the water and went for him, there was no doubt but that he would get the better of him. Hold him under. He could well imagine him doing it. That business up on the cliff must have taken a lot out of him; he felt weak as if he hadn’t eaten for days. Deep inside he knew that he was no match for Sandy Palmer or any of them. Yet he had lathered into Charlie Talbot. He was pleased at the memory. But that had been done on the spur of the moment, and Charlie Talbot was alone. If Sandy Palmer’s father was anything like his son there would be little chance for anybody they decided to tackle. He stayed where he was and watched the teacher swimming towards the beach, and knew that the woman had moved past him and hauled herself on to the rock next to Brid. She did not touch her but just sat next to her in a similar position, with both her hands flat at her sides…
Sandy Palmer did not recognise the man swimming towards them; even when he stood up in the water and, with a swing of the hips, thrust his legs forward he still did not recognise him. But when he stood before them, running his hands over his head, he thought with a start, Why, it’s old Farty Morley. What’s he doin’ with them? When the man looked at him he stared him straight back in the eye. He had taken old Farty Morley’s measure at school: pap soft he was, always yapping. He had made up his mind to lead him one hell of a life but he had been moved away before he really got going. Lucky for him.
John Palmer did not know the man standing before him and he sa
id gruffly, ‘What d’you want?’
‘I might ask you that.’
John screwed up his eyes and peered at the bloke. ‘Who are you, anyway? I was calling to my…to young Brid Stevens. I want her here a minute.’
‘She’s not coming.’
‘Not coming? Look here! Who the hell are you? What business is it of yours what she does? I’ve never clapped eyes on you in me life afore.’
‘No, you haven’t, but your son here has. We know each other, don’t we, Sandy?’
Sandy Palmer remained silent; only his lower jaw moved, first one way and then the other, to be thrust forward as the man continued, ‘I saw your handiwork this afternoon, Sandy. I would have recognised it anywhere.’
He was speaking as a teacher now, treating him to his sarcastic form of address, calling him Sandy as if he liked him.
Sandy Palmer said not a word, but his father put in briskly, ‘Look here! I don’t know what you’re at.’
‘No, I don’t think you do, Mr Palmer. I’m referring to a little game your son played on another young fellow this afternoon, just over an hour ago. Do you know he thought he was in Rome, crucifying the Christians?’
John Palmer lowered his head and stared under drawn brows at the man before him. He sounded a little bats. What had he to do with this anyway? And talking about Sandy crucifying a Christian. He darted a quick glance at his son before saying, ‘Look, I don’t know who you are or what you’re getting at, but to me you’re just talking plain daft.’
‘I happen to be a teacher.’ The voice now was brisk. ‘I once taught your son. I was on the beach this afternoon and heard a cry. It was from the girl you call Brid. She had just reached the top of that bank’—he flung his arm dramatically sideways, his finger pointing—‘and she saw there…D’you know what she saw there, Mr Palmer? Just what I said, a crucifixion, or an imitation one. Your son and his pals had strung up a boy, her boy, between two trees. They had stripped him naked. And you know something else?’
‘Shut your big mouth, you’re daft. He’s up the pole, Dad.’ Sandy had advanced one step towards the man, but before he could raise his hand, as was his intention, his father’s arm came across him, and John Palmer said to the man quietly, ‘Go on.’
The teacher looked into John Palmer’s face, which was not more than a foot from his now, and he went on. ‘They had not only stripped him and stretched his limbs between two trees, but—’ he paused, ‘he, your son, burnt him with a cigarette…here.’ As the teacher pointed dramatically down to himself, John Palmer, after following the man’s hand, turned and looked at his son. He had no need to ask if this were true, for in his heart he knew it was true. He knew there was something rotten in his son, and he had feared it. Of late, he’d had a number of worrying fears about him, the main one being that he was sweet on Brid. He had lain awake at nights in a sweat and an agony over this, and would get up in the morning determined to tell him; only, when he looked into his son’s face across the breakfast table, the truth would freeze in his mouth because he was afraid of the boy’s reaction to this knowledge. It had been different with Harry. Harry knew, but had never turned nasty. He had never told Harry, his mother had. His son’s voice was now shot at him, crying. ‘All right! All right! I did it. And I’d do it again. He was out with Brid all night, wasn’t he? You’re supposed to like Brid, aren’t you?’ He dared at this point to thumb his father in the chest, and when he added, ‘Concerned about Brid, aren’t you? Very concerned about Brid.’ John Palmer knew with a shock of surprise that his son had somehow become aware of the relationship between himself and Brid.
John Palmer did not now think of himself, or of the other one who was concerned in Brid’s beginnings, or of those who had suffered from her existence; but he thought of that boy stretched between two trees, naked and waiting for the cigarette end to be pressed on his privates. Christ! And his son had done that! The sweat ran out of the pores of his face, and he rubbed the back of his hand up under his cap.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake don’t look so bloody pi! You’re as bad as this bloke. He—’
‘Shut up! Shut your mouth. I’ll deal with you later.’ There was in his father’s voice a deep threat that Sandy had not heard before. To his mind his old man had always been easygoing, even a bit soft. It wasn’t until that night he had talked with their Harry that he knew why he had been easygoing…soft. He was caught, caught in a cleft stick between two women and he had to go easy. He had never been afraid of his father, despising him somewhat even before he knew of his double life, and since this knowledge had come to him he had hated him, and when he was confronted with the placidity of him he wanted to spit in his gob. But now, looking at his father, he could see no placidity; his face was changed. He had turned into someone who would strike out even before speaking, hit out as quick as look at you. He knew the type, he’d had to weigh them up. There were those who’d take it and those who wouldn’t, and his old man had become one of the latter. They were staring at each other. Then his father’s eyes lifted sharply towards Stockwell Hill, away above the beach, and he knew that the figure he saw slithering down the sand was his Uncle Tom. Then, almost the next moment, standing at the top of the rise leading into the copse, he saw Brid’s mother. Funny, but he had never called her Auntie Alice. She shouted now, calling, ‘John! Come and help me down, John.’
When his father hurried forward and began to climb the rise, Sandy turned back to the schoolteacher. This was one he could handle.
‘Think you’re clever, don’t you?’ His features converged to a point and seemed to pierce the teacher’s face. ‘You forget that people leave school. You want to mind your own bloody business.’ There was a sing-song quality to his voice, and the teacher recognised it as a prelude. This was the way this type talked before an attack, but he knew that Sandy Palmer would not attack him at this moment. Yet he knew also that he wasn’t finished with Sandy Palmer, or, more correctly, Sandy Palmer wasn’t finished with him. He would likely suffer for defending the boy back there in the water. Well, let him start anything. The anger was strong in him now, strong as it had been when he first heard his nickname. Just let him start anything and he would have him along the line for as many years as it was possible for him to get. Just let him try anything on him. Just let him. He felt his heartbeats quickening, his stomach contracting, and the muscles of his shoulders hardening, and he thought, The dirty bastard. He had a desire to spring on this boy and pound his fists into the thin leering face, the face that was a portrait of evil in its essence if he had ever seen it, the face that nothing in this life would be able to alter for the better…Redemption. The word presented itself to him and he literally almost spat it out of his mouth, and his mind answered it as if it had been voiced by another, saying, Who are you talking to? Redemption…and this. I’ve been dealing with them for twenty-eight years, don’t forget. If Christ Himself came and laid his hands on him he would be unable to make him clean. Here, he actually shook his head as if answering the voice, Aw! Don’t talk to me.
He came to himself with a voice calling ‘Brid!’ and before turning his attention to the woman who was shouting, he thought for a moment, Let him try anything on, just let him. The woman was now standing at the edge of the water with the man Palmer and she was calling, ‘Brid! Brid!’ Sandy Palmer did not go near them and not one of the three seemed to bother about the man running along the sands.
When the man stumbled past the teacher he was gasping, and he spoke between great gulps of air to the woman’s back, crying, ‘Think you’re clever, eh? Think you’re clever.’ He did not look at the teacher. He did not bring him into the focus of this family affair. He was looking at his wife and his pal, and now at his pal’s son. Then going to the receding line of the tide and raising his hands to his mouth, he yelled, ‘Come here, you! Come here! Do you hear me?’
‘Shut up!’
‘What! What did you say?’
The two men were looking at each other straight in the eye for t
he first time in years, and John Palmer repeated, ‘I said, shut up! I’m going to deal with this, I’ve told you. It’s me that’s going to deal with it.’
‘Be God, you are! Be God, you are!’
‘Yes, I am, Tom.’ John Palmer’s voice had dropped swiftly to a quiet, reasonable tone. ‘And listen, there’s something about this that I just don’t get. Brid isn’t in her bare skin, nor the lad. An’ there’s a woman out there with them.’
‘That’s my wife.’
They all turned towards the teacher and he, somewhat puzzled, went on, ‘I don’t know what you mean by bare skin; the girl has never been in her bare skin, not to my knowledge. I have told this man here how I came upon them.’ He nodded towards John. ‘And it’s lucky I did, or else this one’—he indicated Sandy Palmer—‘might be in a police van at this minute. And my opinion is that’s where he should be.’
Tom and Alice Stevens, their attention pulled from the water for the moment, stared at the man. To them he might have been talking German, but not so to John Palmer. And when Sandy advanced towards the teacher, muttering, ‘Mind! I’ve told you. If you don’t keep your tongue—’ his father barked, ‘Hold your hand! An’ keep your tongue quiet and them fists down or else I’ll deal with you an’ all.’
‘What’s this? What’s this, anyway?’ Alice Stevens looked from one to the other in a bemused way. ‘I thought we came here to fetch Brid. Look, whatever it is, we’ll sort it out after.’ She turned now and called with a beseeching note in her voice, ‘Here, Brid! Come here, I tell you. I want you.’
The Bonny Dawn Page 12