by Max Gilbert
"No. There isn't one. There's not even a lock. We're so high up you'd need a helicopter to get onto the gundeck ... Dear me." If David hadn't been there the words would have been a little stronger. Chris gave the doors a last rattle. They were shut tight. "Not to worry, kidda. We'll get the doors fixed then we can have a proper look. We'll just have to see what we can through the windows."
Even with the windows in a gunked-up state he could tell that the view would be pretty good. Perhaps it would be most striking in winter during a storm. It would have all the spectacular sounds, sights and fury of being on a ship; with the benefit of being firmly rooted in the living rock. He could imagine waves cracking against the wall to send foam and spray gushing up as far as the windows.
He recalled trips to Scarborough when he was David's age. An angry sea would draw crowds of people to the Spa theater which hung on the edge of the sea. The waves would hurl themselves at the seawall, bursting in geysers of spray that shot perhaps thirty feet high. Showers of brine would drench any spectator who got close enough. And to a young boy's delight, someone always did. The sea always has that power. It creates a spectacular display which radiates a magnetism that draws people to it. Then all they can do is stand and watch.
He didn't know if it was the idea of danger which pulled not only children but grown men and women closer and closer-the feeling you get when you approach the lion's cage at the zoo, and lean over the barrier to see, face-to-face, the man-eating beast. Perhaps the two were similar. Seeing nature without her clothes on, in the raw, she is more beautiful, more savage, more hypnotic, more fascinating, more powerful, more aweinspiring, more frightening than you imagined. You just have to get a little closer; see a little more.
As that six-year-old boy, Chris would watch the ocean's antics. Words would run around his head as if the sea were saying, "Come on, come closer. Watch me. It's fun. Look-a ten-foot wave; look-all this foam boiling up at the foot of the seawall steps. Come down the steps a bit. It's okay. I'll make a little rush at you and you run shrieking and giggling up the steps. Come closer. I want to play with you. Come on ... Water's soft. I can't hurt you ..."
"Dad. You said the door wouldn't open."
He looked down at his hand as if it didn't belong to him. He was gripping the brass handle and rattling the thing, trying to force the door open. He shook his head as if waking from a deep sleep.
He coughed. "I was just seeing if I could free it. Come on, it'll be dark soon. Let's see a bit more before it gets too late." They left the big room. "It's a great place, isn't it, kidda?"
"Sure is, Dad." David charged along the corridor in the direction of the next flight of stairs up.
Chris followed. Why had those thoughts about the sea run through his head like that? It was almost as if they had originated outside his skull. Even recalling them now gave him an odd sensation. He shivered and licked his dry lips. Do the early stages of insanity feel like this?
"Come on, Dad!"
David had reached the steps. He climbed them, quickly disappearing from sight.
Chris, rubbing his face, followed. The excitement of moving in, he supposed. He was tired.
"What do you want, Dad?"
David's voice drifted down the staircase.
"What do you mean, what do I want?"
David appeared at the top of the steps. He looked fragile against the dark void above him.
"Dad ..." David assumed the voice that told his parents he was becoming exasperated by their slow wits. "Da-ad. You shouted at me."
"I never said a word."
"Did ... Fibber." David added the mild insult for emphasis.
"You're imagining things again."
"Am not."
"All right, David. It must have been the wind or an echo you heard."
Or did you call him, Chris? You senile old nutcase. Take two Paracetamol and lie down in a darkened room.
He looked up at the little boy looking down at him. It must have been the perspective or the light or something, but David looked further away than he could possibly have been. And above him was that black cavern-just a whistling great emptiness.
His mind flicked back to those holidays in Scarborough when he would watch children on the seawall steps as the sea, hissing like a great shapeless beast, swelled up against the walls, swallowing the steps in a gush of foam. They would run up screaming with glee, not realising how dangerous their game was. He found himself imagining David playing the same game. Running, chuckling, down toward the shifting mass of dark water, then running back up as the next wave rose up to eat the steps one after another. Of course, David would be too slow. The muscular rush of water would shove him off the stone steps and into the body of the ocean. He would hear David's cry, "Dad ... Dad ... Get me out!"
David's face disappearing beneath foam. Chris's agony at his helplessness.
If the sea pulled David out into deep water he would drown beneath the heaving ocean. If it swept him back to the seawalls, his body would be smashed against the stone blocks.
To jump into the sea there to try to save him would be suicide. No one could swim in those waters.
Would he try? Without hesitation, he knew the answer.
Of course he would.
The inevitable electric trickle of fear prickled across his skin.
"David. Stay there." He kept his voice calm, but he was climbing the steps quickly. "Don't wander off."
"Okay."
There was nothing particularly alarming about the upper floor after all. Anyway, the sea-fort was strongly built of good Yorkshire stone.
No harm would come to them here.
Chapter Nine
As he had done every evening for the last ten years, the big American, Mark Faust, locked the door of the shop and walked down to Out-Butterwick's seafront.
There were a dozen or more people there. One or two nodded a greeting, but most looked out to sea.
By this time the tide was sliding in over the beach, lifting the few small coats off the sand alongside the jetty.
The Major was there with his dog, a smartly clipped Westie terrier. The man looked every inch the retired officer, dressed in gray slacks and a blazer that bore a regimental patch on the breast pocket. The clothes, like the man, had faded over the years.
Mrs Jarvis had pulled her wheelchair to the edge of the pavement and sat resting one foot on the low wall that separated sand from road. It was common knowledge that she suffered from spinal cancer. She wouldn't make Christmas.
A car passed slowly down the road behind them. That would be the Reverend Reed. He would never stand here with the other Out-Butterwick residents, but Mark knew he would drive his old Austin Maxi up and down the seafront road at least three more times before the sun sank behind the salt marshes. No other vehicles would pass this way tonight.
More people arrived, most middle-aged to elderly. Apart from little Rosie Tamworth. She must have been about thirteen now, but she had the mind of a three-year-old and her hands shook in a palsied way.
He watched. We're all creatures of habit. We come down here at the same time, stand in the same place, and we probably all harbor the same feelings in our guts- that same tense anticipation that draws every muscle in your body taut like a bow string.
Brinley Fox wasn't quite like the rest. With his head down, he paced the beach, ferociously smoking a cigarette. The image of the old-fashioned expectant father with his wife in the delivery room.
Tony Gateman, the little Londoner, arrived panting from the exertion of his hurried walk.
Tony gave the American a brisk nod.
They waited. The sense of anticipation grew.
No one talked at these gatherings. Not yet anyway; not until the waiting was over.
But tonight Mark had something to tell the Londoner; it would have to wait.
The Major's dog gave a little yelp and began to pace backwards and forward as far as the tartan leather lead would allow. The Major appeared not to notice. He gazed out
to sea. As did Mark and his neighbors.
Fox paced faster, kicking up a spurt of sand every time he switched back in the other direction, never raising his eyes from the beach. The sea did not exist for him. It held one object too many.
Chewing his lip, Mark looked out across the sea which caught the last rays of the sun. It looked real, real peaceful.
But the seagulls, he noticed, were deserting the sky to flee inland. There was a bad storm coming.
The dog gave a yelping bark and twisted on its lead.
Mark chewed his lip-harder. Was this it? Was it coming?
All around him there were intakes of breath. They felt it too.
Mark sensed it oozing through the place. A kind of electricity that ran through everything. Right down to the sand crunching beneath his feet. So strong he could almost taste it.
Then it was gone. As quickly as it had come.
It was only an advance wave of the thing they all waited for. Even little Rosie Tamworth, moving wisps of blond hair from her little-girl face with a shaking hand.
The sense of anticipation waned. It would not happen tonight. Probably not even tomorrow or next week, but some time-soon.
The Major produced a tennis ball from his pocket and threw it down the beach. The dog, unleashed, leapt after it as if it had been fired from a mortar, the tension in its muscles exploding in a rush of energy.
"Evening, Tony," said Mark in his deep rumbling voice. "I've been wanting to catch you."
"Talk away."
"Have you heard about the old sea-fort out at Manshead?"
The Londoner shot Mark a startled look. "No. What about it?"
"Someone's moving in." Mark watched Tony Gateman's reaction. It was what he expected.
Pure shock. "Who on earth would do that?"
"A family. Met them a couple of days ago in the shop. They've got a little lad about six years old."
"They're moving in? Into the s-"
"Sshh ..." Mark's big tanned paw gripped Tony's forearm. Brinley Fox was heading toward them.
Tony used the pause to light a cigar.
When the Fox brother was safely out of earshot, Tony asked, "When?"
"Today."
"You are joking? The place is derelict."
Mark shook his head. "Took a walk up there this morning. They've put a static caravan in the courtyard. They'll be living there while they convert the place into a hotel."
"A hotel? Jesus wept ... Know anything else about them?"
"Just that they seemed like ordinary folks." Mark shot Tony Gateman a troubled look. "Do you think they know?"
Chapter Ten
"Hello ... Anyone there?"
Henry Blackwood chuckled. "Come out, come out wherever you are."
No reply.
Then he never expected one. Using the single oar at the stern, he sculled the boat across the ocean toward the bobbing plastic bottle that marked the position of the next lobster pot.
"You tell me, girl, if you hear it again."
He listened himself. The sound, three knocks on the bottom of the hull, like someone trying to attract Henry Blackwood's attention, did not repeat itself.
Singing softly to himself, he hoisted the pot up by its line. As he did so he talked.
"Beautiful morning, Suzy. It's going to be a champion summer ... Now .. What have we got here? Come out, my beauty, and into the box."
Taking care not to get crimped by the lobster's massive claws, he placed the creature into his catch-box.
"Seven already, Suzy ... It looks as if we're going to have a good day ... A bloody good day ... There you go-"
There was nothing he liked better. A glass-calm sea, the sun edging up over the horizon, a milky mist softening the line of the coast. And to talk to his beloved Suzy. He'd built her with his own hands fifteen years ago: twenty feet long, she was painted a brilliant white and resembled an overgrown rowing boat. He imagined even God Almighty himself couldn't have been more pleased when He stood back to admire His cosmic handiwork on the Sixth Day.
Suzy never answered back. Always faithful, always reliable. Suzy carried him efficiently away from the noise of his household full of teenage sons who never stopped arguing morning, noon and night, all the way ten miles down the coast, to where he fished the lobster and crab grounds.
"Tea break, Suzy." He sat on the bench seat and pulled out a thermos. "Mind if I smoke, old girl? Okay... I promise it'll only be the one."
Smiling, he poured the tea and lit the cigarette. He relaxed with the gentle bob of the boat and looked around, enjoying everything in God's creation. The seagulls scooting low over the water. A formation of geese flying high overhead.
He was all alone. No other boats. Not even a glimpse of a distant cargo ship.
Gradually the mist began to thin and he could make out the houses down the coast at Out-Butterwick.
Half a mile in front of him the lines of the old sea-fort were taking shape in the morning sunlight.
It wasn't always like this, though. The North Sea could be a rough old bastard. When he left school he worked the trawlers. One winter's day the boat had simply filled up with water and gone from under his feet. For twenty hours he hung onto the buoy that marked the deep-water channels.
When at last the lifeboat got him back to dry land a news reporter had gone on and on about Blackwood's superhuman strength; how he'd hung onto the buoy through a force eight gale that smashed boats into matchsticks.
Blackwood had grunted: "Of course you bloody well get strong, pulling in nets so full of fish that they weigh the same as a family car."
After that girls he'd never met before would come up to him in pubs and squeeze his muscular arms and giggle.
"You're not a silly giggler are you, old girl?" He patted Suzy's gunwale. "You're worth your weight in gold."
It happened again.
"Knock bloody knock-who's there?"
This time four slow knocks beneath his feet-he even felt the vibration through his sea-boots.
"Who do you think it is, Suzy? Mr Neptune? Davy Jones-up from his locker? Captain Bones looking for his booty?"
He chuckled and peered down over the side into the water.
Nothing but smooth green ocean with hardly a ripple to break the surface. Perhaps something had caught underneath the fishing boat. If it was a line or piece of discarded net it could foul the propeller when Blackwood came to start the engine.
"Right, we can't see anything-let's see if we can feel anything on you, old girl." Rolling up his sleeve, the fisherman knelt down at the side of the boat, leaned forward over the side and ran his hand along the hull below the waterline.
Carefully he worked his way to where the sound had seemed to come through the planking. Leaning so far over he was within an ace of rolling forward into the water, he felt the underside of the boat, fingers tingling with the cold now.
"Nothing ... You're as clean as a whistle, old girl."
It was as he began to pull his hand from the water that something touched him.