The Sing of the Shore

by Lucy Wood

Bryce watched them until they disappeared round the headland, then he started walking back. He passed Nate’s tent, and slowed down. A thin sheet of rain was billowing in across the fields. The edges of the clouds were orange, almost smouldering. He looked around, then unzipped the tent and went in.

  There was hardly anything in there: a mat, a sleeping bag, a damp towel, a jumper rolled up for a pillow. There was a rucksack by the door and Bryce took everything out and laid it on the ground. There was a book, a torch, a few spare clothes, a pair of fraying socks that had been repaired with neat stitches. Half a bar of chocolate. Allergy tablets. An old bus ticket.

  He looked it all over carefully, then put every item back exactly as he’d found it, except he ripped a small corner of the book before closing it.

  Bryce was taking his rubbish up to the bins when the woman from the bungalow came out. She was wearing a long, baggy jumper that went past her knees, and rubber gloves which dripped water on the path. A small boy was watching from the window, his hands pushed up against the glass.

  ‘Are you Bryce?’ she asked.

  Bryce opened the bin and threw his bag in. He nodded.

  ‘We bought the house, a couple of years back?’

  ‘I saw that,’ Bryce told her.

  The woman glanced over to check on the boy. ‘Kensa’s talked about you.’

  As soon as she’d turned away again, the boy pressed his face against the window, squashing his cheeks and lips into fat white shapes.

  ‘She has?’

  The woman pulled at a loose thread on her jumper, but couldn’t hold on to it with the rubber gloves. ‘We sometimes worry about her, living out in that caravan – we …’ She trailed off and pulled again at the thread. ‘What I wanted to ask you was, would you both like to come over for dinner later?’

  ‘Dinner?’ Bryce said.

  ‘If you’re free.’

  ‘Later?’ He looked behind him, as if that would determine the answer. He looked at the house – the kitchen, the hallway. That kid was probably sleeping in his old room. He rubbed a finger over his eye. ‘We’re actually busy tonight,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that.’

  He waited for her to suggest another night, but she didn’t. She just shrugged and smiled and said that it was OK.

  He went back and told Kensa.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she said. ‘Now we have to go somewhere.’

  ‘Where can we go?’

  ‘There isn’t anywhere.’

  ‘We have to go somewhere.’ He glanced outside, saw the grass, the swing, his tent buckling in the wind. ‘We’ll drive to the pub.’

  ‘It closed.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  Kensa took two mugs out of the cupboard and sat down. ‘We’ll have to stay in here with all the lights off.’

  ‘We’re not doing that.’

  ‘Why?’

  Bryce went out of the caravan, scanned the fields, his car, then went up to the blocks. He paced around the kitchen. There was a pile of old driftwood in the corner, and a box of matches. He carried it all back down to the caravan, then found some tins of food, bread, a few cans of beer. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  They crossed the fields and took the path that sloped down the cliff. There was a ledge, and then another, lower ledge – a wide outcrop ringed with thrift, which trembled in the wind. The sea was still far below them, the tops of the waves cutting across like torn edges of paper. A flock of gulls glided out towards the deeper water.

  Bryce piled the wood up, rolled some newspaper and lit it. The wind blew the flame straight out. He tried again, shielding it with his back.

  ‘Let me try,’ Kensa said. She crouched down and blew into the middle of the wood. A flame sputtered and spread and a line of smoke twisted out.

  Bryce rested the tins on the fire and soon they were scalding. They waited for them to cool, then pulled up the lids and ate, scooping out meatballs and folding them into bread, drinking the dregs of sauce at the bottom. The driftwood spat out salt into the dark.

  Kensa sat forwards with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her head was slightly to one side, as if she was listening for something. She’d gone out again all that morning; he didn’t know where she went, what she did all day. Bryce started to speak, stopped, shifted on the stones. Sparks spat and went out.

  ‘When do you think we can go back up?’ he said.

  Kensa watched the fire. She opened the beers and passed one over to him. ‘Not yet,’ she said. She settled back against a rock.

  Bryce threw another bit of wood on the fire. Smoke billowed like a sheet. It crossed his mind that Kensa had probably sat in the caravan with all the lights off before, to avoid other invitations.

  ‘Remember when you almost stabbed yourself with that knife?’ Kensa said.

  Bryce looked up. ‘I thought it was that fake one.’

  ‘It wasn’t the fake one,’ Kensa said.

  ‘Where the blade slid into the handle.’

  ‘It wasn’t the fake one.’

  ‘I’d started pushing it into my stomach.’

  ‘I had to knock it out of your hand.’

  They drank their beers and watched the fire. Minutes passed, or maybe hours. Bryce could still feel the sharp point of the knife – there was a scar there somewhere, below his belly button, hidden now by a line of wiry hair.

  ‘Do you remember Nate?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nate, that guy who stayed here on his own, do you remember him?’

  Kensa put her can down slowly. The fire was almost out. She got up and stood on a rock, looking over towards the campsite. ‘It’s probably safe to go back up now.’ She used her boot to scrape ash over the last few embers.

  Bryce’s bedroom was small and tidy. It had a desk and a globe and his shoes were lined up by the door. There was a stain on the carpet in the corner, which he’d covered with a cushion, from when he and Kensa had mixed together baking powder and vinegar to make a bomb, but it had gone off too quickly. He could still smell the vinegar on hot mornings.

  He was just getting up – the long, empty day stretching ahead of him – when Kensa flung the door open, knocking over the globe. She was breathing hard, and her shoes and legs were flecked with wet grass.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said.

  Bryce folded the top of his duvet down carefully.

  ‘Did you hear what I said? Nate’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean gone?’

  ‘I went out there and he’s gone.’

  Bryce smoothed the duvet, then straightened and smoothed his pillow.

  ‘His tent’s there,’ Kensa said. ‘But none of his stuff. His bag’s gone.’ She was pacing the room now. The tops of her cheeks had gone very pale, almost white. ‘I told Mum and Dad but they’re not worried at all. They said he’d paid up yesterday and must have moved on. I said what about his tent, he wouldn’t leave his tent, and they said it was a crummy old tent and people leave crummy tents all the time. They were annoyed because now they have to take it down and get rid of it themselves.’ She paced over to the window and looked out. ‘Say something.’

  ‘He just left,’ Bryce told her.

  ‘But he didn’t say he was going,’ Kensa said. ‘He wasn’t meant to go.’

  Bryce went over to the window and stood next to her. He scratched at the paint on the frame. ‘Let’s go and hide in the field,’ he said. The day suddenly seemed not so long, not so empty. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Kensa stayed by the window.

  It was late morning and Bryce came down from the kitchen eating a handful of dry cereal and drinking from a mug of thick black coffee. He knocked on the caravan and waited for Kensa. He was going out to buy food and wanted to know if she needed anything.

  He knocked again, then went in. Kensa had already gone. There was a bowl and mug in the sink and a pan on the hob, which was still warm when he touched it. He went outside and stood on the step, thought he just caught a glimpse of her walking across the field
. He closed the door, turned, and followed her.

  He took the same paths they used to take, past the edges of the fields, where the barley was only just starting to come up. When he used to crawl through the stalks, the fields had seemed vast, stretching for miles in all directions, the rows like corridors that never ended, but now he crossed them in a moment, remembering the feeling of warm dust on his cheeks, the scratchy earth under his knees. He almost heard the sound of Kensa counting down, almost felt the old fearful tingle that meant she’d got to zero.

  He climbed the gate and turned towards the headland. The wind had dropped overnight and the air was warmer, denser. The clouds had a dark tinge to them, like damp behind a wall. The path edged down and he scanned the rocks below. The tide was in and the sea was gnashing at them, the white water roiling like a cauldron.

  He pushed on further. His knees ached and his T-shirt was sticking to his skin. He should have caught up with her by now, or at least be able to see her somewhere further along the path.

  He skidded on a gritty slope and stopped. He looked around again. There was nothing, no one, just a buzzard keening overhead, a swathe of blue flowers like stitches in the grass, and then the low, dull booming, so low he almost couldn’t hear it, echoing across the rocks, the sea, the sky, as if it was coming from everywhere.

  Sometimes, when their parents had to go away for the day, Bryce and Kensa would be in charge of the office, answering the phone and taking down bookings. There was a pile of forms and pens, and an old chipped phone. The caravan was cool and musty. Thin spiders hung in the corners. There was a new chair in there that swivelled and Kensa sat on it behind the desk. Bryce sat at the top of the step, in a wedge of sun that came in the doorway. Clouds moved across and the caravan went from dark to light, dark to light, until the skin on his arms turned to goosebumps.

  Kensa spun slowly in the chair, staring out of the window. The phone rang but she didn’t move.

  ‘You have to answer that,’ Bryce said.

  ‘You do it.’

  ‘It’s your turn.’ They always took it in turns. Bryce hated answering the phone. He could never remember how much they charged each night, or if they had electric hook-ups. The voices on the other end sounded impatient and far away. They asked him how old he was and where his parents were. Sometimes Kensa answered all the calls. She would use a funny accent and make him almost retch with laughing.

  Bryce watched the phone. Eventually it stopped ringing.

  Kensa was still looking out of the window. ‘He wouldn’t have left his tent,’ she said. ‘If he didn’t have his tent, where would he sleep? He didn’t have anywhere else to go. He didn’t have anyone.’

  ‘We should have taken that booking,’ Bryce told her.

  Kensa spun the chair back towards the desk. She opened the bookings folder and flipped back through the pages, running her finger down the columns. ‘Here’s where he checked in,’ she said. ‘And here …’ She looked closer. ‘See, he didn’t actually check out.’

  ‘He paid the full amount,’ Bryce said.

  ‘He didn’t officially check out.’

  The phone rang again but Kensa didn’t look up.

  Bryce’s throat felt dry. It wasn’t his turn. What was he meant to say? Hello, you’re through to bookings? How can I help you? Welcome to …

  Kensa didn’t move. The phone kept ringing. Bryce picked it up and held it to his ear, and forgot to say anything at all.

  A car drove into the campsite and a woman got out. She was about fifty, and she was wearing wellies and a leather jacket. There were a lot of silver bracelets on one of her wrists. She stood by the car for a moment, looking round at the site, then started walking down to the office.

  Bryce had been washing the outside of the caravan, which was coated in a rind of mildew. The car’s radio was blaring as it came in and he recognised the song but couldn’t place it – the music sounded strange, too loud, like something half-familiar from a long time ago. He put the cloth down and dried his hands.

  The woman nodded at him, and looked around again at the site, following the slope of grass up to the blocks, down to the sea.

  ‘It’s warming up,’ Bryce said. He went inside and found a check-in form and a pen. He knew that, eventually, people would start coming. ‘We’ve got a lot of flat pitches. How big’s your tent?’

  ‘I don’t have a tent,’ the woman said.

  ‘Are you bringing a caravan?’

  ‘I’m not staying.’ She put her hand up as if to shield her eyes against a glare, even though it wasn’t bright. Her bracelets jangled. ‘I’m actually here to …’

  Just then Kensa came back from the laundry room carrying a bag of washing. When she saw the woman she frowned and shook her head.

  ‘You said you’d think about it again,’ the woman said.

  Kensa went inside with the washing, slammed a cupboard, then came back out. She took the cloth out of Bryce’s bucket and started thumping it against the caravan. Soap ran down the metal and onto the grass. ‘I told you last time,’ she said.

  ‘I’m offering good money,’ the woman said. ‘Take it off your hands. Like I said, I’d do the place up, look after it.’

  Kensa scrubbed hard at a thick patch of green. She plunged the cloth in the bucket and slopped it out again. The water turned grey.

  ‘You’re living in the office,’ the woman said.

  ‘I told you already.’

  The woman glanced at Bryce, then took one more look over the site. Her hair kept blowing across her face. She pushed it back behind her ears, holding the rest in her hand. A few staticky strands lifted, as if a balloon had been rubbed over it. ‘I’ll come back in a few weeks,’ she said. ‘Give you some more time.’ She looked once more at Bryce, then started walking back to her car. A daisy she’d stepped on sprang back up slowly.

  Bryce found another cloth and started cleaning around the back of the caravan. Grit worked its way in under his nails, and wet spiderwebs wrapped around his fingers. He stopped and picked them off – they felt tough but they were so thin they were almost impossible to see. He could hear Kensa banging and muttering to herself.

  ‘What offer was it?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve told her it’s a waste of time.’ Kensa started on the side window, thumping the cloth over the glass in wide arcs. Bits of dirt flew across onto Bryce’s feet.

  ‘You don’t have to stay,’ he said. ‘You could do something else. Go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You could go.’

  The banging stopped for a moment.

  ‘Something would come up,’ Bryce said. ‘You could figure it out as you went.’

  ‘Like you?’ Kensa said. Her cloth thumped again at the window.

  ‘Stop following me.’ Kensa turned back and waved her arms at Bryce. She was wearing her rolled-up overalls, and there were scabs and freckles like paint spatters up her thin legs. ‘Go home.’

  Bryce slowed down but didn’t stop. He kicked at the dusty path. ‘You’re going too far,’ he said.

  Kensa crossed over to the cliffs and looked down. The sea was very dark and very grey. A mass of tangled wood and netting drifted past.

  ‘You’re going too far,’ Bryce said again. ‘We’re not meant to.’

  ‘We used to go down here all the time,’ Kensa told him.

  ‘No we didn’t,’ Bryce said. He realised too late that she meant her and Nate. She’d been circling their old routes for days now – skirting the fields, the path round the headland, the rocks below. She’d been staying out later and later, coming back just in time for dinner, with mud and bits of stone stuck to her hands. She would avoid their parents’ questions, bend her head down to her plate and eat. She wouldn’t look at Bryce.

  Bryce stayed where he was. A seal dipped in the water and made a crying sound. It was hot and his T-shirt stuck to his skin. He waited until Kensa climbed back up. The next day she slipped out again before he was awake.

  The spring wind blew
in strange, sporadic gusts, like it was working itself up to something. The sky was leaden and low, but a shaft of sun broke through, sweeping across like a searchlight.

  Bryce came out of the shower, an old towel wrapped around his waist, the smell of rusty pipes and chlorine in his wet hair. He’d managed to work the controls now so that the water came out mostly warm, apart from the last freezing jet at the end. He’d glanced in the mirror, realised his hair was long and tangled round his ears, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. He needed to shave too – his cheeks and jaw were thick with dark bristles. He thought of himself aged nine; his arms were so thin he could reach behind the tumble dryer in the laundry block and find any dropped money.

  He was just in the doorway when the woman from the bungalow came past. When she saw him she jumped, but she tried to hide it.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. He kept hold of the towel. The wind went up there like a bastard.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting … I was looking for Kensa. Is she back yet?’

  ‘Back?’

  ‘Last night. I saw the torch. She’s usually back by now.’

  Bryce turned and looked at the caravan. The curtains were still shut.

  ‘It’s just something I need to ask her, about the house.’ The woman was looking everywhere except at him. She studied a crack in the wall, the way a dandelion was bursting out of it. ‘Tell her she doesn’t have to come in, it’s just those boxes she left in the loft – old clothes and household things, some of your stuff, I think – she said she’d clear them but she hasn’t yet and I sort of need the space.’ One of her hands was resting on her stomach, which curved out under her jumper. He hadn’t noticed it before.

  He shut the shower-block door. ‘I’ll tell her,’ he said. He crossed the field. He’d thought Kensa was still asleep. Her curtains were across, her door was shut, how was he meant to know she wasn’t in there? What did the woman say? She’s usually back by now. He didn’t know anything.

  He was almost at his tent when Kensa came up from the path. She looked tired. Her boots were wet and she was carrying the torch.

  Bryce unzipped his door but stayed where he was. ‘Been out?’ he said.