The Thing on the Shore

by Tom Fletcher

  “Do you want a cigarette, Harry?” Yasmin held the packet out toward him. “Do you smoke?”

  “Sometimes I smoke,” Harry said. “I think I would. Yes, please. That would be lovely.”

  “I wasn’t sure you smoked.”

  “Sometimes I smoke.”

  Yasmin lit the cigarette for him.

  “Thank you, Yasmin,” Harry said. “Most generous of you.”

  “A pleasure,” Yasmin said. “Y’know. The company.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. He could not keep still. He kept shifting his feet around. “I just don’t know how to do the things that matter,” he said. “In fact I don’t know what things do matter. And then when I think I’ve got it worked out, when I think I understand this or that or the other, some … some fool, some cretin, some middle-class barbarian comes on—comes on the line and shouts and swears and stamps their foot and blows it all out of the water.” He took a long drag and then exhaled smoke as he spoke. “I don’t think I’m coping,” he finished.

  “I know what you mean,” Yasmin said. “I mean, you’ve been here longer than me, but it feels like you can either be conscientious and lose your mind, or you can not give a fuck—pardon my language—and do all right.”

  “You’re spot on,” Harry said. “Spot on.”

  Yasmin finished her smoke and stubbed it out on the top of the little waste bin. She then threw the stub away and folded her arms, and watched as a train pulled in from the north. “How’s Arthur?” she asked.

  “Oh, he’s OK. Well, you know Arthur. It’s hard to tell.”

  “I suppose.” Yasmin had been thinking of Arthur’s small collapse even as she asked, but didn’t want to mention that explicitly in case Harry didn’t know about it.

  “Hey,” Harry said, suddenly smiling widely, “Arthur said that Bracket’s asked him to help out a little bit with team managing and stuff. Did he tell you that? Did Arthur tell you? He’s just emailed me.”

  “No, he hasn’t said. That’s good, though!”

  Yasmin remained silent while Harry finished his cigarette and disposed of it. Harry then stuck both of his hands deep into the pockets of his cheap waterproof coat and said, “I’m so proud of him.”

  Yasmin nodded. “He’s a lovely boy,” she said.

  Harry looked back up at her with those eyes.

  “I was worried that me being a loony might make him a loony too,” he said.

  Yasmin opened her mouth to reply but couldn’t think of anything to say, just as Harry turned around abruptly, his shoulders hunched, and hurried over to the door. He swiped his access card and disappeared inside.

  Yasmin thought she saw him wipe his eyes once inside, but through the smoked glass it was hard to tell and, besides, her eyes were watering slightly too with the wind and the cold so it probably didn’t mean anything.

  She looked at her phone. She’d have to get inside, too, and plug back in. She looked up at the blank expanse of wall, then turned and looked out toward the sea. It was dark and turbulent today—the kind of seascape that could be romantic and inspiring but could also, if your moods were aligned in the wrong way, be incredibly disheartening. Yasmin realized that her present moods were aligned wrongly. The sea was indeed disheartening. Threatening, almost. She had been thinking of texting Bony, but decided against it.

  Yasmin bit her lip and wondered how Diane was getting on.

  YOUNG EYES

  Artemis studied Diane as she sat down. She was wearing loose, pale gray trousers and a tight V-necked jumper. She had huge, young eyes, but they were somehow both scared and scornful at the same time. Or rather, Artemis thought, they were scared but attempting scorn. Call centers were full of girls like Diane. They didn’t want to be there but didn’t really have anywhere else to go. The boys felt that way too, of course, but with them it didn’t translate into the same sexy, smoldering resentfulness that turned him on so much. Or maybe it did and he just didn’t realize it because he wasn’t gay, but whatever.

  “Diane,” Artemis began, resting his elbows on the table with his hands clasped in front of his face. “I thought I overheard you accuse a customer of ringing us up because they had nothing better to do. I hope I misheard.”

  Diane didn’t reply, but her skin paled beneath the fake tan. It was like looking into a frozen pond and seeing something beneath the ice suddenly swim away. It left her face a mottled orange and white.

  “Did I mishear?” Artemis pressed her.

  “Y-yeah,” Diane said, and then fell silent again for a moment before continuing. “Yeah, you misheard. This guy, right, he—”

  “I misheard?” Artemis interrupted, opening his hands out. “So what did you say?”

  “I said … I asked him … I said have you not got anything better to do than ring us up and kick off? He was shouting like a proper mentaller.”

  “Maybe he was a proper mentaller. Did you think about that?”

  “No, but—”

  “Was he being abusive?”

  “No, but he was saying—”

  “Diane,” Artemis interrupted her, holding up a finger. He looked down. “If he wasn’t being abusive, then I don’t give a fuck what that customer said to you. You just deal with it, OK? No matter how angry, no matter how stupid, no matter how self-righteous or argumentative or snotty—you deal with it, OK?”

  The moment Artemis uttered the word “fuck,” he spotted a change in Diane’s face. A brief indication of shock, but then the stealthy appearance of some kind of grudging respect. Besides, his tone had not been unkind. He could be a very kind man when he wanted to be, he reflected.

  “OK,” said Diane.

  “I know it’s a tough job.” Artemis smiled slightly, “but someone’s got to do it, right? Imagine you’re providing these people with a service—a kind of stress relief.”

  Diane nodded slowly and smiled slightly.

  “What shift are you on?” Artemis asked.

  “Twelve–eight,” Diane said.

  “Excellent. I’ll be around until eight. Come and see me once you’ve logged off, and I’ll print you out some confrontation-management stuff. Just come and see me at my desk.”

  “OK,” Diane said.

  There was a silence.

  “That’s it, Diane,” said Artemis. “You can go now.”

  “Oh!” she said, and stood up. “See you later.”

  “Yeah,” Artemis said, “see you later.”

  He watched her ass as she left the pod. It looked more or less perfect. She was how old, sixteen or seventeen? He couldn’t really tell. Seventeen, though, that’s the age his daughter would’ve been if she hadn’t died. Same age as Diane.

  Perfect, more or less.

  Artemis was just typing nonsense in order to look busy by the time Diane approached his desk up on the command center. He had been watching her and noticed how she had packed her things and tidied her desk slowly. She probably wanted to be left alone with him, he reasoned; after all, he was the boss, right? Not to mention his overwhelmingly attractive physical presence. He looked toward her and smiled. She was zipping up her short black jacket. Everybody else was gone. All of the lights in the huge room were off, bar the ones above the command center. Through the window great big pink clouds could be seen hanging over the sea.

  “Just let me log out,” he said. “I’ve printed off the material. I’ve got it in my briefcase. Shall we go for a drink?”

  Diane smiled in a small, surprised way, and nodded.

  “Excellent,” Artemis said. “Excellent.”

  What did he feel like now? He felt like having sex above all else. He felt like fucking. He felt like fucking her, to be specific. It was Diane inspiring the lust in him. Although, in fairness, it was always there, just waiting for something or somebody to awaken it. Would she go for it? He couldn’t tell. She was only young, after all.

  He looked at her across the table in the bar of the Waverley Hotel. He had considered taking her somewhere else—somewhere a little mor
e lively, maybe—but that would have been too risky.

  She sipped at her Midori and lemonade. “Never had this before,” she said. “’Snice.”

  “It is nice,” Artemis said. “I’m glad you agree.”

  Outside there was a strange kind of playfulness to the weather: a light breeze, a bright sky, brief spatters of rain every now and again. Diane just slowly sipped her drink.

  It was almost as if she didn’t know what to say.

  “So,” Artemis said. “What do you know?”

  “What?”

  “What do you know? What’s the gossip? What goes on amongst all of you guys when you’re in the break room?”

  Diane shook her head. “There’s no craic,” she said.

  “What?”

  “No craic,” she repeated.

  “You don’t mean drugs? I’m telling you now there’d better fucking not be.”

  Diane snorted. “’Course I don’t mean fucking drugs,” she said. “Y’know, there’s no craic. No gossip. No news.”

  “What? Oh!” Artemis threw his head back and laughed. It was only slightly put on. “What are we? Are we Irish now?”

  “We say it up here, too,” Diane said.

  “Well,” Artemis said, “I think I have a lot to learn about West Cumbria.”

  “It’s shit!” Diane said with fury, almost slamming her little tumbler down as she said it. “Nowt ever fucking happens and every fucker knows each other.”

  “I see,” Artemis said, and he smiled. “Well. Nobody knows me, eh?”

  “No,” Diane said. “Nobody knows you.” She leaned forward and tilted her head so that she was looking up at him with those big, big eyes. Artemis found himself trying not to look down past her neckline. She smiled. “Where are you from?”

  Artemis reclined back and thought about it.

  “I’m from Manchester,” he said. “Not originally, but that’s where I’ve been for the past God knows how many years. Managing a call center down there, or at least one contract—one floor in a massive building full of call centers. But let’s not talk about that. It’s all very boring.”

  “Any family?”

  “What?” he asked.

  Diane sat back a little when he said that, as if she thought that she’d seen something awful, and her smile wavered. But then Artemis caught a hold of himself and Diane realized that she must have been mistaken. She laughed nervously.

  “I don’t have any family,” Artemis said.

  Diane was very drunk before too long. She was not half as mature or experienced as she seemed to have been making out, Artemis thought, as he walked her up the stairs. No matter. Maybe he’d been misreading her.

  No matter.

  Once they entered his hotel room he locked the door and then, positioning himself between her and the door, he let Diane go. She looked around her. She looked confusedly at the cream-colored walls, or coffee-colored, or whatever the fuck they were, and at the cream-and-coffee-colored bedclothes, and the cheap white bedside units.

  “I think I want to go now,” she said.

  “I think you’re a bit too drunk,” he said. “I don’t think it would be safe for you to go outside now.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, then unzipped her jacket and shrugged it off.

  “Into the bathroom,” Artemis said, and pointed. He pushed her toward the bathroom door and, as soon as she’d entered the smaller en-suite room, he took off his coat, jacket and shirt. He followed her into the bathroom and watched her throw up in the toilet. When she stood up again, she stared at him blankly, her mouth slack, then looked at the wall and put her hand out. Artemis took it and led her through to the bedroom.

  “I’m fucked,” Diane said. “S-steaming, like.”

  “I know,” Artemis said. “Let me take your jacket off. You’re probably too warm.”

  Diane nodded, despite the fact that she had already taken her jacket off. Artemis gently pushed her down on to the bed and then lifted her arms up. Artemis rolled her jumper up over her head, which flopped around like her neck had no strength in it, like she was already falling asleep. She didn’t try to stop him; she was more or less unconscious. She was wearing a white push-up bra underneath, nothing else, and the bra was too small, Artemis thought. He stood back and smiled. Diane just slowly sank down on to her side and lifted her legs up on to the bed.

  Once Artemis was sure that Diane was asleep, he unfastened her bra and slowly maneuvered the straps over her shoulders and down along her arms. Her breasts were large and her nipples small and dark. He undressed completely and sat down in the small, ugly, hotel-room chair. He looked at Diane. He stared at Diane. He liked her body. He felt his arousal gathering, strengthening, swirling into him like water into a plughole, filling him up. He liked these girls: young, doe-eyed, precocious, naïve. If Diane had opened those eyes, she would have seen him sitting there naked, somehow weirdly gaunt without his suit on, his head bald and bulbous and disproportionately large, the beakish hook of his nose a kind of counterpoint to the questing cock that reared up from his lap. Hands like talons.

  Artemis liked hotel rooms, and he liked offices too. He was really somebody here in these bland, generic places. He was powerful. Give me a hotel room, he thought, or give me an office, and I can do anything. Anything.

  THE CELEBRATION

  Harry and Arthur both sat with their plates of beans on toast on their knees, watching Come Dine with Me on the TV. Harry was acting like there was something wrong with him, though; he was even more nervous and fidgety than normal. Arthur watched him across the living room. Harry kept putting his knife and fork down, then picking them up again and cutting off a little corner of toast and eating it, and then putting them back down.

  “What is it, Dad?” Arthur asked.

  “Nothing, son. Nothing.”

  “OK,” Arthur said.

  “Oh, son, OK! I can’t hide it any more.” Harry moved his plate aside and stood up, and then waved his hands around. “I’m so proud. I’ve got you something. I was going to give it to you after tea, but I can’t wait.”

  Arthur moved his head slightly to one side. “Proud of me?” he said. “What for?”

  “For getting your promotion!”

  “I haven’t had a promotion,” Arthur said.

  “Let me just … let me just get this for you,” Harry said. “Wait a second.” He left the room for a moment, and came back with the scrappy old backpack that he always took to work. He sat back down on the sofa and opened the backpack, removing from it a Tesco’s Finest chocolate cake of some sort.

  “Oh, Dad,” Arthur said. “You shouldn’t have. It’s not a real promotion, you know.”

  “Of course it is! They … they must think you’re very good! You are very good, son. Anyway, I just … I just wanted to get you something to show … to show you.”

  “You took it from the fridge at work, didn’t you, Dad?”

  “Well, yes, but it wasn’t easy. And, besides, that Artemis can always afford to buy himself another one, can’t he?”

  “’Course he can.” Arthur smiled again and accepted the cake. “Thanks, Dad, but it really isn’t a big deal. They’re just using me because they know I’ll say yes. They just push all the work downward. It’s not like they’re changing my role or anything. They’re just asking me to do something they don’t want to do themselves.”

  “You can’t dismiss it like that, son. It’s good to be valued at work.”

  “Valued, yeah. Not exploited, though.”

  “Just … just to have a job at all, Arthur, is something these days. I mean, look at me. I’m not long for that place.”

  “Dad, they just take advantage. I mean, they know that there aren’t any other jobs going around here, so they just pile on the pressure until—”

  “Arthur!” Harry almost shouted, standing up. “You’re doing well working for a respected company and at such a young age too and I am so proud and your mother is so proud as well!”
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br />   Arthur saw that his father’s eyes were wet.

  “Thanks, Dad,” he said. “I really love the cake. Here, let’s finish our tea and I’ll cut it up.”

  “No, son,” Harry said. “It’s all for you.”

  Harry stood there for a moment longer, and then turned and left the room. Arthur set the cake down on the floor, next to his chair, and put his face in his hands for a little while. Then he took the cake and went upstairs and lay down on his bed. He could hear his father through the wall, talking to himself. Or talking to Arthur’s dead mother, whichever. It’s not like there was any difference.

  Arthur went to the bathroom. He tried not to look in the bath, but he did, and there they were: the worms. He gritted his teeth and, before actually going to the toilet as he’d intended, he took some toilet roll and screwed it up and set about killing all the little bastards. He counted about fifteen. He then flushed the tissue paper away and went back to his bedroom. He’d just put a CD on when he realized that he hadn’t used the toilet at all, so he went back to the bathroom. He tried, again, not to look in the bath, but he did, and again there they were: the worms. There were worms in the bath again. Arthur sat down on the toilet seat and felt his face start to tremble and the tears start to come. He chewed his lip and realized that he was shivering. He could imagine them all packed in together inside the walls. The worms, that is.