‘Yup,’ I say. ‘We do.’
The deckchairs in the tubs are wibbling and squirming under Eric’s fingers. The bigger one is trying hard to escape.
‘We need you to destroy these,’ says Eric, nodding at the tubs.
‘How badly do you need me?’ asks Jacob.
Eric and I look at each other. ‘Quite badly,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ says Eric. ‘Quite badly.’
‘Badly enough to be really nice to me?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘What were you thinking of?’
‘Nice words, perhaps?’
There’s a massive kick from the deckchair I’m holding that I only just manage to hang on to.
‘You’re fantastic, marvellous, extraordinary,’ I say.
‘Talented, gifted, fairly remarkable,’ says Eric.
‘Fairly remarkable?’ says Jacob. ‘Only fairly?’
‘Utterly remarkable,’ I say.
‘Hmm,’ says Jacob. He rubs his stomach and it moves under his hand in a rolling wave. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it.’
* * *
I’ve never been in Jacob’s house before. It’s not how I expected. Because his mum is big and pink and marshmallowy, I thought that the house would be the same. A grown-up version of the kind of thing Tilly would like.
But it’s not like that at all. It’s modern and white and clean-lined and really quite nice. Or it would be if the sitting room wasn’t basically just a huge TV set.
We go up to Jacob’s bedroom, which is exactly what I expected, crammed full of technology and old crisp packets. Jacob empties a load of sweet wrappers from a tin onto the floor.
‘You can’t do that,’ says Eric.
‘S’all right, Mum’ll tidy it up later.’
‘But …’ Eric begins.
I hold my hand up. Eric sighs and takes the top tub out of the column of tubs.
The little deckchair snaps upright and tries to get out, Eric tips the tub and the deckchair falls into the steep-sided metal tin.
‘Coo,’ says Jacob. ‘It’s like a little animal.’
‘Very like,’ says Eric, taking the next tub from the stack and dropping the next deckchair in.
We watch the two deckchairs lying down, standing up, snapping and trying to get out.
‘They’re like little tigers,’ I say.
‘Or crocodiles,’ says Eric, dropping the third one in.
I drop my bigger one in and it chases the other three round. Much like a sheepdog.
‘So what next?’ says Jacob.
‘We burn them,’ I say.
We all look down at the little deckchairs thumping and throwing themselves about.
‘Really?’ says Jacob. ‘Burn them – like they are just ordinary deckchairs or something?’
‘Yes,’ I say, holding the tin firmly to my stomach.
We stare for the longest while.
‘They’re kind of cute,’ says Jacob.
‘In a vicious snappy way,’ says Eric, rubbing a red patch on his palm. ‘But yes, they are.’
I look up at the other two. ‘We can’t, can we? We can’t burn them.’ They both stare at me. ‘Let’s give it another day. Think about it for a while.’
‘Yes.’ Eric nods.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘I just need somewhere safe to leave them overnight.’
19
Not Kind of Cute
I can hear the tiny deckchairs dancing around inside the tin and I’d really like to take them straight to the little town lock-up, which we agreed would be the safest place for them. It’s not a prison any more, it’s a tourist attraction, but it does have iron bars and a letter box and nothing inside. And Grandma has a key.
But we need to wait until dark, and we need to take a look inside the cave at the end of the beach.
The last of the holidaymakers are leaving, and Eric, Jacob and I try to look as if we’re beachcombing.
I don’t really get beachcombing – it’s all rubbish, some of it’s bone rubbish and some of it’s plastic rubbish – but I try to be convincing.
The mayor’s daughters climb out of the pedalo, rubbing their legs. He greets them on the shore and the larger one shouts something at him and waves her arms violently, which I imagine means something like I’m not doing that any more.
With a miserable face, the mayor drags the pedalo back up the beach and leaves it chained to the wall. He doesn’t put it in the cave.
The remains of some of the sculptures are still visible on the beach. A sand dragon that has lost its head and half a mermaid, between all the flattened patches and new sandcastles. Jacob kicks the head from the mermaid, tramples the dragon flat and knocks down the largest castle. He’s very similar to a windbreak at times.
Albert Fogg drags the last deckchairs towards the cave and I pretend to examine a really interesting pile of bladderwrack. Eric joins me. ‘See,’ I say. ‘Over there.’ I point towards the door in the side of the sea wall.
We crouch on the beach, watching and waiting. Albert Fogg rummages in his overalls for a key.
‘What’s he doing?’ asks Jacob, arriving panting behind us.
‘Quick,’ I say, ‘let’s get a look inside.’
We stroll and then gallop until we’re close enough to see, but far enough away for Mr Fogg not to notice us.
The door swings open and he shines a torch through the opening. I can’t see exactly what’s going on, but things are moving inside.
‘Did you see that?’ I say to Eric.
He nods.
Albert Fogg arms himself with a broom and goes in bellowing. ‘Get back, you nasty things, you. Get BACK!’ There’s a crack and bang and Mr Fogg rushes out clutching his elbow. He tries to shut the door but a windbreak jams itself in the hinge and he can’t.
‘You beastly things, get back – or I’ll destroy the lot of you.’ The beach equipment inside his store doesn’t seem to be able to hear and starts to stagger onto the beach.
‘Help!’ he yells, slipping backwards as a huge deckchair with an extra leg-rest topples towards him.
I get there just as the cloth of the deckchair starts to smother his face. ‘Pull,’ I shout to Eric, and we both grab the leg-rest end and tug violently until Mr Fogg struggles free from underneath.
The deckchair joins its brothers stamping out of the cave and standing on their ends on the beach.
Jacob dances back and forth in front of them looking big, his eyes flashing dangerously red.
More and more of the chairs march out of the store, until they’re five deep on the beach, and then the first one finds the steps at the back and tries to climb them.
We watch in horror as it manages to get halfway up towards the promenade.
‘Oh no,’ says Mr Fogg, sinking his face into his hands and moaning. ‘I’m done for,’ he says, collapsing onto the beach and pulling his coat up over his head.
I check the beach – it’s empty – and Mr Fogg can’t see, so I wave at Jacob and he lets loose a long tongue of flame, which bounces across the deckchairs, crackling, singeing and sparking, but not really burning.
The chair on the steps pauses.
‘Again,’ shouts Eric, already beginning to drip from his fingertips.
The heat is immense as Jacob sends lightning bolt after lightning bolt at the chairs, and then Eric counters this by sprinkling them with water. A wall of steam rises from the beach and the chairs stop, evidently confused and hopefully intimidated.
‘I can shrink them,’ I say. ‘But it won’t really help.’
‘We can burn them this time,’ says Jacob. ‘They’re not a bit cute.’
‘They’re still living beings, and they’re Mr Fogg’s deckchairs,’ says Eric. ‘They’re his livelihood.’
The deckchairs stand facing us. Shuffling. Waiting.
Mr Fogg is still sitting on the beach, his face hidden. Waiting as well.
And then, as if someone switched them off, the deckchairs sag to the sand, tumbling, floppin
g, leaning and ultimately lying just as deckchairs should, awkward and floppy.
20
Foggis Fogg was the First
We go with Mr Fogg to the Trusty Tramper, the café in the harbour that the sailors use.
‘The usual, Albert?’ asks Cheery Charlie, the woman that runs the place.
‘Aye,’ says Mr Fogg, wiping his nose on his yellow sou’wester coat and shaking his head.
She provides him with a mug of tea and we cluster around a small yellow table by the door.
‘So when did it start, Mr F?’ asks Eric, arranging sugar.
Mr Fogg stares long and hard at the tiny wisp of steam rising from his cup.
‘January. No – March.’ He takes off his cap and scratches his head. ‘Or was it before Christmas?’ He stares out of the window at the approaching darkness. ‘February it was. February, just as I got them out for a bit of a clean-up. That’s when I noticed something was up.’
‘What kind of thing?’ I ask.
‘Well.’ Mr Fogg sips his tea and sits back. ‘It’s difficult to say. There was a bit of this and a bit of that.’
Jacob lets a long whistle out from between his front teeth. ‘Let me know if you find anything out,’ he says, standing up. ‘I’m just going to get a hot chocolate.’
I check my pockets for change. I’ve no money.
I try again. ‘What kind of thing – exactly?’
‘At the start of the season I like to check the chairs, wash ’em down, clean up the pedalos, see there’s no mouse holes in the windbreaks – that sort of thing.’
‘Oh yes,’ I say.
‘So it was a sunny day, and I opened up the shed there, and pulled out one or two chairs and they were – frisky.’
‘Frisky?’
‘Yes – frisky. Dancing about a bit in the wind, harder to pick up, put down and fold. I didn’t think anything of it, but then the next time I opened it up, probably about a week later, one of the chairs sort of fell – well, launched itself at me.’
‘Oh?’
‘And then, during Easter, it’s been getting worse. I found the ones at the side of the store were less of a problem, but the ones towards the back have been the worst – so uppity – and as the season’s gone on I’ve had to hire out more of them, and now I’ve had to use the difficult ones or disappoint people.’
‘So what’s causing it?’ asks Eric.
‘Search me,’ he says, blowing on his cup. ‘No idea – kept the chairs in that lock-up all my life. Nothing’s been in, nothing’s changed.’
‘And have you found any way to stop them?’ I ask, thinking of the four little chairs still jammed in Jacob’s sweet tin, which are dancing around under my blazer, letting out occasional crashings and bangings.
Mr Fogg shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘All I’ve managed to do is to truss them up or tie them down. I’ve never seen them go quiet like those ones you saw on the beach just now – it’s as if they’re alive.’
‘Shouldn’t be using them,’ says Eric. ‘I mean, someone’s going to get hurt sooner or later.’
‘I agree,’ says Mr Fogg. ‘I tried to say that to the mayor – I said, “Someone’s going to get hurt sooner or later” – and he said we had to keep it quiet.’
‘I get that it would be bad for trade,’ I say.
‘It’s not just that,’ says Mr Fogg. ‘It’s the Best Beach contest.’
‘I can see it would be nice to win it …’
‘No – you don’t understand. He’s desperate to win it. He’s attracted all these big businesses. Did you know that there’s a big burger chain from America sniffing around Marigold Tours? Or that the Royal Hotel could soon be known as the Royal Gogleplex Hotel? It’s already been sold. Also, he’s selling off the beach and the rights to sell deckchairs. He’s got a Chinese sofa company in mind – apparently people want something more comfortable these days – AND, in order for those deals to go through, we need to win the Best Beach contest.’
‘Oh!’ says Eric.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Why are you keeping it a secret? If he’s selling it off, what would you be doing? Won’t it be the end of your job?’
‘Ah – thing is, they’d let me stop at last. Been trying to retire for the last few years. I’ve got me a little web-design company in Regis Bottom that I’d love to have more time with. But they keep on asking me back. Been Foggs doing the deckchairs since 1875, you know. Foggis Fogg was the very first, then it was his son, Foggit Fogg …’
‘But wouldn’t you be sad at seeing the deckchairs go after so many generations?’ asks Eric.
Mr Fogg stares into space. ‘Honestly – not much. I’m pretty fed up with it.’
Eric looks a little weepy-eyed.
‘Well,’ says Mr Fogg, relenting, ‘I’d miss it, of course I would, for about five minutes, but, imagine, I’ve almost never felt grass beneath my feet on a sunny day, always blasted sand between my toes. Plays merry hell with my corns.’
‘You must have had some pretty terrific summers on the beach?’ I say.
‘Seventy-six was good – and then we had a lovely time in eighty-two.’ He sips his tea. ‘Yes. I don’t want to do it, but I suppose it’s a tradition for the town.’
Jacob sits back down with a mug of steaming-hot chocolate. It smells divine. I think of Grandma’s promised tripe à la mode de Caen, and feel even hungrier.
‘And what about you?’ I ask Mr Fogg. ‘Do you want to win the Best Beach competition? Does it mean anything to you?’
Mr Fogg examines the back of his hand. ‘It would be the pinnacle of my career,’ he says carefully. ‘Yes – I would like to win it.’
‘So, if I’ve got this right – if the deckchairs behave themselves, we’ll win the Best Beach contest and end up with them replaced by sofas from some multinational company from Shanghai, and if they don’t …?’ I trail off.
Mr Fogg raises his eyebrow. ‘Who knows?
‘So,’ says Eric. ‘Can we have a look in the storage cave?’
21
Is That a Bad Thing?
Mr Fogg has a fantastic set of torches. Most of them must be left over from the Victorians. ‘Ready?’ he says, and he unlocks the padlock.
We stand in the doorway waiting to be attacked, our eyes acclimatising to the gloom.
‘What are we looking for?’ asks Jacob, stepping through the door.
‘Signs of life – anything odd really,’ says Eric.
‘Do you mind if I stay here?’ says Mr Fogg, loitering in the entrance with a broom. ‘Just in case any of the beggars make a run for it.’ He looks scared.
I put my tin down by the entrance. The four deckchairs inside have gone quite quiet. Perhaps they’re asleep. I’m conscious that I need to get rid of them soon, before they grow any more. I can’t handle four full-sized mad creatures in my bedroom.
I shine my torch into the store. Cobwebs festoon the vaulted ceiling.
‘Not really a cave, so much as a cellar,’ mutters Eric.
Jacob pushes through the front line of chairs, the ones we hastily stacked inside after he and Eric subdued them. They smell of wet bonfires, and are totally passive. Behind them, something scuttles.
I stop, listening and watching the nearest cobweb flex under the weight of a particularly heavy spider.
The scuttling stops.
I push my way past the scorched chairs and stop by a collection of dusty windbreaks. They aren’t moving, but it feels as if they’re watching me.
‘Tom?’ says Eric from my right. ‘Are you there?’
I stumble between two lobster pots, reaching Eric’s side, and look into the pool of torchlight.
A beach volleyball set is limboing around itself, over and under, knotting and unknotting. He shines the light higher and reveals a huge dripping crack in the wall. A gash with bright green mossy sides.
‘What is it?’ asks Jacob, appearing beside us. ‘Is it an alien?’
‘No – I don’t think so,’ says E
ric. ‘But it is a cleft in the rock.’
‘Through which water is running,’ I say.
Jacob looks at us, shining his torch from his chin upwards making a ghost pig face. ‘I don’t understand.’
On the way home, Jacob walks backwards.
It’s annoying, but then practically everything about Jacob is annoying. The only person more annoying than Jacob is Tilly. I remember home and humiliation and forget feeling hungry.
‘So why’s the rock important?’ he asks again.
‘It’s a meteorite,’ says Eric patiently. ‘The same meteorite that makes everything around here behave so oddly.’
‘Oh,’ says Jacob, thumping backwards over a kerb.
His brain cogs come up with the next question. ‘So what’s the water got to do with it?’
Eric sighs. ‘I think, and it’s only a theory, that the meteorite dust, all the stuff that was mined last year, is dissolving in the groundwater and then dripping into Mr Fogg’s store.’
‘So we could stop it happening then – couldn’t we?’ asks Jacob.
‘Possibly, but I’m not sure we want to,’ I say.
‘Why?’ says Jacob.
‘Because if the beach wins the Best Beach award, they’ll sell it off to someone – it’ll be covered in plastic sofas and takeaways and then it won’t be the same any more.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’ asks Jacob.
‘Yes,’ we say in chorus.
22
If It’s All Under Control?
Jacob goes home to a tea of sausage, mash and beans.
Eric and I walk on in almost total darkness and empty the tin of deckchairs through the letter box into the tiny lock-up. I just hope that Mrs Santos who keeps it doesn’t go in for a few days. I wouldn’t want her to be attacked.
‘Why did they give up?’ says Eric.
‘What – who?’
‘The chairs. I don’t understand why they gave up on the beach like that. It was like a full-scale battle and then suddenly they lay down and surrendered.’
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