by Hilary McKay
* * *
By the time Binny managed to catch up with Clem they had reached the almost empty beach. With its closed up beach huts and the gray sea spitting and churning in the rock pools it looked very unwelcoming.
“There’s no one here,” said Binny, although that was not quite true. There were some head-down-against-the-wind grim walkers, two entirely-dressed-in-black surfers, a middle-aged couple with a small dog and a huge kite, but no little boys.
“Are you sure they said they were coming here?” demanded Clem.
“I think so.”
“Bin?”
“Yes, yes they did. What had we better do?”
The difficulty was that the beach was not an isolated place. It looked it from above, but really it was one of a long chain of beaches and little coves that looped round headland after headland, all along that stretch of the Cornish coast.
“You go right and I’ll go left!” ordered Clem. “Okay?”
It wasn’t okay at all, thought Binny. What was she to do if she found the boys? She hadn’t her phone with her; she wouldn’t be able to stop Clem from carrying on her own search to the left.
And what was she to do if she didn’t find them? At what point would she turn back? And, hardest of all, how could she ask these questions without making Clem say “helpless” once again?
There were other things that she would have liked to talk to Clem about as well. The lost money question. Could Clem possibly have picked up and tidied away a pile of twenty-pound notes without noticing? Clem was such a swift and ruthless tidier that she could almost believe it might have happened.
Binny had turned right and begun her trek along the sands as soon as Clem had ordered it, but now she paused to look back. Her sister was already far away, stomping along with her fists in her pockets, terribly bothered about James being alone on the beach. Let James be safe, willed Binny, as she watched her. Let them both be safe, and she looked anxiously toward the sea. Pete had told them about the fierce currents that ran round their part of the coast, riptides, he called them, strongest in spring and autumn. James had been intrigued, and mentioned his precious pink and lime green wetsuit . . .
At this thought, Binny detoured to climb a sandbank and peer out to sea, but except for the two insane surfboarders it was reassuringly empty, a restless tarnished pewter ocean, uninvitingly gray.
* * *
Binny need not have worried.
Half an hour earlier, James and Dill, arriving at the beach very breathless after a nerve-racking detour to collect Dill’s treasure, had hardly bothered to glance at the sea.
“Let’s see your treasure properly!” James had said to Dill.
“All right,” Dill had agreed, and had obligingly pulled out the object that he had sneaked into his gran’s house to retrieve while James jiggled impatiently on the doorstep.
“A tin?” asked James.
“The treasure’s all wrapped up inside,” said Dill. “That’s where I keep it. Gran doesn’t know. No one does. Gran doesn’t know I’ve got the tin either. It’s a coffee tin. I found it in her sideboard.”
“What’s a sideboard?”
“Her smelly cupboard. It’s got her booze bottles in it, and Dead Granddad’s ashtrays, and all the photos she doesn’t like looking at, and this tin.
James took the tin and looked at it more respectfully. It was red and gold, with pictures on the sides.
“Bare ladies!” said James, turning it as he inspected them. “Four! Four bare ladies, Dill!”
Dill blushed, but did not deny it. He loved the bare lady tin. His only regret was that the ladies had such long and waving hair.
“It’s nearly really rude!” said James. “You can easily tell they’re not wearing anything anywhere!”
Dill smirked and took the tin back for another look himself. He had not expected such appreciation from someone as young as James. One day, he thought, he might show him the calendar he had discovered in Dead Granddad’s old shed. Meanwhile, however, there was treasure to be buried.
“Where?” he murmured, scrutinizing the beach. “Here? Near the steps?”
“There’s people,” said James critically.
“Not looking at us, though,” said Dill.
“They might,” said James, “specially when we start digging. They might see that we’re digging and come over and stare.”
Dill fidgeted uneasily at this suggestion. He didn’t like being stared at. His grandmother was a great starer. She would come into a room where he was doing something privately and peacefully, and stand quite still and stare. Then she would start shouting. Dill particularly hated the thunderous silence of the pause between the stare and the shouting. One such silence had happened only that morning when he and his supersoaker had flooded the freezer in an attempt to make snow.
“It’s no good trying to do something private if there’s people about,” said James.
Dill nodded, thinking of his lost supersoaker.
“We’ll do it properly,” said James. “Follow me!” And he led the way along the beach, so that Dill had to hurry after him, more than a bit indignant, since he was the one who was seven, not James, and he was the one with the treasure to bury and it had been his idea in the first place.
“Stop, stop!” he called at intervals, but every time they paused it was the same. There was always some person lurking in the distance who might potentially stare. It took a long time to find a place with no people at all, but at last they did, and then it was Dill’s turn to be the bossy one. James was allowed one last look at the bare ladies and then ordered to close his eyes and not look while Dill very secretly dug.
“What we’re doing is a deathly secret,” he told James. “Deathly! Okay?”
“Deafly?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” said James, wondering what a deafly secret was and secretly feeling his ears. Might it stop them working? “Deafly,” he agreed, absolutely determined not to ask. “When can I look?”
“When I say.”
This was very chilly and boring for James, and not at all how he had expected treasure burying to be.
“Hurry!” he commanded, many times, but each time, Dill, pacing and counting and squinting at rocks, would growl, “Shush! This is important!”
Even after the measuring and digging were finished and James was allowed to uncover his eyes there was still the map to be drawn. Dill did this leaning over a driftwood plank with the paper hidden in his arms. He took so long that James went off with the spade and buried, with equal secrecy, a handful of white shells, his mother’s birthday cake candle, and a very recent find, pocketed only that day from the sands.
After this they went home, keeping close under the shadow of the cliffs where the wind seemed a little less cold. If they had looked out toward the sea they would have seen Binny, head down, eyes screwed half shut against the sandy wind. However, they did not look. They were much too engrossed in being mysterious with each other.
“What did you bury for treasure?” asked Dill.
“Ha!” said James. “What did you?”
“You saw the tin. The bare lady tin.”
“I didn’t see what was in it.”
“You didn’t do another thing too,” said Dill smugly. “You didn’t make a map.”
“I can remember,” said James. “Easily.”
“Easily!” scoffed Dill, pirouetting like a scrawny sand imp. “Easily!”
James picked up a tangle of rotting bladderwrack, dead crab, and someone’s faded underwear, rugby tackled Dill, and shoved it under his superhero vest. They writhed on the damp sand, kicking and whacking, until James sat up with his hair full of ancient, stinking crab fragments and said, “Anyway, I left a sign.”
“What sort of sign?” asked Dill, inspecting the underwear, screwing them into a ball, and then hurling them at James’s head.
“A seagull’s feather.”
Dill’s eyes slid sideways and his mouth turned down at the c
orners.
“What?” demanded James, who knew a sinister smile when he saw one.
“A feather!” said Dill.
“So?”
“It’ll blow away. You should have made a map.”
James jabbed crossly at the sand with the spade, burying the underwear. He knew it would blow away. He knew he should have made a map.
“Anyway,” said Dill, who didn’t like anyone except himself having secrets, “what was it you buried?”
“Shells and stuff,” said James evasively.
“What sort of stuff?”
Although James had not actually seen Dill accidentally drop anything on the beach, he did not want to answer that question. To avoid it he set off very quickly in the direction of home, walking so rapidly that it was almost a trot. Dill hurried after him, as speedily as he could while conducting an urgent searching of his pockets.
“Slow down!” he commanded, but James only trotted faster, until Dill stopped completely, knelt down, and emptied out his pockets on the sand. James watched apprehensively, walking backward.
“Where’s it gone?” demanded Dill.
“What?” asked James, but he couldn’t help his eyes sparkling, and Dill looked up and understood.
Then Dill gave such a dreadful shriek that James was truly frightened. He dropped the spade and sprinted. He ran for what seemed miles and miles. Over the wet beach, straight through shallow tide pools, dodging barnacled rocks, dogs, and kite flyers, and at last across the final soft slope of sand to the steps. Then up the steps and galloping past the harbor.
And all the while he ran, Dill pounded after him, and he called to James in a hoarse nightmare screech, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
* * *
However Binny, far away, knew nothing of all this as she continued her lonely plod across the empty sands.
* * *
The children’s mother was having a very worrying time. She had been in the middle of her shift at the old people’s home when she was called to the telephone.
“Polly dear, are you sitting down?” asked Miss Piper, and her always placid voice was so extremely calm that the children’s mother was instantly alarmed.
“Sitting down? Sitting down?” she repeated. “Why should I sit down? What’s happened? Is it the children? I can’t sit down; I’d get the sack! For goodness’ sake, just tell me?”
“I am so sorry, Polly!” said Miss Piper. “I’m afraid it’s the house . . .”
“Not the roof again!” interrupted the children’s mother, sounding quite desperate.
“The door is standing wide open,” said Miss Piper. “I’ve been in and called. There seems to be no one at home.”
“No one at home?”
“And I’m afraid it looks very much like . . . do sit down for a moment . . . you’ve been burgled!”
“Burgled?”
“Yes.”
“Burgled?”
“Unfortunately yes.”
“But what could they possibly take?” demanded the children’s mother. “And where are the children?”
“They do seem to be away,” admitted Miss Piper, “but I’m sure you need not worry about that. Clem is almost grown-up and sensible, after all, and Binny is nearly thirteen . . .”
“Yes, but James!” interrupted their mother wildly. James was not remotely grown-up or sensible. His mother pictured his smooth bright head and wicked dark eyelashes, golden tipped, enchanting, the veils for so many smoldering plots, and lost her head completely.
“I’m coming home! I’m coming home now!” she cried, and ten minutes later, by leaving half the residents unserved, forgetting her bag and jacket, and running all the way, she was home.
It was true.
There was Miss Piper on the doorstep and the front door wide open, exactly as described.
“There was no need for quite such a rush!” said Miss Piper.
But the children’s mother took no notice and raced through the house, flinging open doors and calling, “James! Binny! Clem! Where are they? Where are they? Oh, where is James? Kidnapped?”
“I’m sure not kidnapped,” said Miss Piper. “Why would anyone do that? I expect they are quite safe. They must have gone out, and then, I suppose, whoever it was who turned the place upside down, arrived. I looked, but there are no marks on the front door to show it’s been forced. Who has a key?”
“A key? A key?”
“I suppose Clem and Binny have keys? You didn’t give the builders a key, did you Polly?”
“Only Pete, for his finishing off. He comes when he has a spare hour or two. He finds so many things to do.”
“I’m sure he does!”
The children’s mother turned very quickly and looked at Miss Piper.
“All builders find things to do,” said Miss Piper, smiling. “The question is, do they need doing? Well, I suppose you have to trust him to some extent but . . .”
She was interrupted just then by a dreadful fishy smell, accompanied by a wet, grimy, sandy, seaweedy, dead-crabby sight.
“Hello, don’t kiss me!” said James.
James was in no danger of being kissed. Quite the opposite, and his eyelashes couldn’t save him. He was grabbed, de-sneakered, and hauled out of his filthy jacket, hustled into the garden to have sand slapped off his unspeakable jeans, dumped on a newspaper in the kitchen and dared to step off it while dead crab was picked from out of his hair, and all the while indignantly questioned.
“What has been happening? Where have you been? How did you get in this state?”
“It’s only sand,” said James.
“Soaked! Look at you!”
“There’s always wet bits on the beach.”
“On the beach?”
“I had to run.”
“What do you mean, you had to run? Where are the girls?”
“Binny was here,” said James. “Sitting on the stairs. Clem went out.”
His mother left him to dash to the stairs, as if somehow she might have overlooked Binny sitting there. Miss Piper murmured in very quiet not-for-James-to-listen-to capital letters, “P-O-L-I-C-E?”
“Police?” asked James, who was inconveniently good at the spelling-words-out trick. “Why, what have you done?”
But James’s mother was calmer now, and thinking a little more logically. Instead of calling the police, she called Clem on her mobile. After this she became very much less worried and very much more angry, and she explained to Miss Piper that apparently the house had been ransacked by Binny, not burglars, and that it was the girls who had left the door open, rushing out to hunt for James.
“And James was on the beach alone?” asked Miss Piper.
“With Dill,” said James sulkily.
“Dill? Well where is Dill now?” demanded his mother.
“At his gran’s never speaking to me again.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure he’s safe home?”
“He went in the door. I heard his gran yelling,” said James, fidgeting crossly on his newspaper. “Like you are now, only not so loud.”
“I’m not yelling at all!” said his mother, suddenly and quietly dignified. “I’m just very angry. You know quite well you are not allowed on the beach.”
“I’ve been there loads of times,” said James.
“Not without someone older than you.”
“I had Dill! He’s seven! That’s older than me. And anyway, Binny let me.”
“Don’t you go blaming other people as if you hadn’t a brain of your own!” retorted his mother. “Do you know how worried poor Miss Piper and I have been?”
“I was about to call the police,” said Miss Piper.
“That would have been good,” said James, perking up at the thought. “You still could! And tell them Dill put dead crab in my hair.”
“You are a very silly little boy and you are lucky to be home safe,” snapped his mother. “Now stop arguing, take off those dreadful jeans, there, where you’re st
anding . . . don’t move from that spot . . . and then upstairs and get into the shower. I must ring Clem again, and see if she’s met Binny. Oh, what an awful day!”
Chapter Eight
Monday Afternoon, Part Two
Far away on the sands, utterly hopeless, cold and forlorn, Binny was also thinking, What an awful day. James was lost, and it was her fault. The money was lost, and that was her fault too. She realized now that she had stolen it and the knowledge was like a great secret burden that she must drag wherever she went. Neither her mother nor Clem could ever be told. Binny knew too well what would happen once they knew. Somehow, however difficult, however many hours of bathing old ladies and washing dishes in the café it would involve to earn the money, they would save it up and give it back. Since the bankruptcy of the family when Binny’s father died, neither her mother nor Clem could bear the thought of owing money.
Dad! thought Binny, and surprised herself at how angry she felt that he was not here to help. Not that he was much good at looking after money anyway, but at least he could have listened. It would have been less lonely. Had he been lonely when he realized, and kept secret, that knowledge that the bookshop money was all gone?
How could he not have been, thought Binny, and forgave him.
The main beach where she and Clem had started their search for the boys was behind her now. She had rounded a promontory and had crossed another, the one with the caravan site above. Now she was plodding along a third beach, smaller and rockier. No James and Dill here, either. If they were not safe it was her fault, the direct result of her madness in the marketplace. She wailed aloud, “What can I doooo?” and the herring gulls, hunched against the wind at the waves’ edge, glanced at her in yellow eyed disgust.
I wish I was a gull, thought Binny enviously, with nothing to lose but feathers.
Ahead of her now, was a point where the cliffs reached right out to the waves. Here the sea broke and swirled round the tumbled rocks at their base and there was no more sand. Binny had never been so far away from the town before. She looked uneasily up at the granite boulders that blocked the way. Possibly, before the tide rose so high, the boys had scrambled round that headland, but somehow she did not think so. No footprints showed on the hard wet sand.