Slime

by John Halkin

  ‘Maybe they don’t, in nature’s eyes. For most creatures, it’s eat or be eaten. Sharks, octopus, big fish, little fish…’

  ‘Oh, that’s horrid!’

  When they caught up with the crew, they found the director and the cameraman arguing over the next shot. He held up his light meter at arm’s length, squinting at it; then, grudgingly, he agreed, if they could go for the take without wasting too much time.

  Tim eyed the thug speculatively as she issued her instructions. He was solid bone and muscle. It was just possible he had not realised his own strength, Tim thought; hadn’t intended it, in fact. But then he saw a gleam of amusement in the man’s eye and realised he was wrong. That blow had been deliberate.

  ‘On the word Action,’ Jacqui-thing was saying, ‘I want you to run to the boat.’ A few yards off, the bay curved into a small estuary where a boat lay stranded on a sandbank close to the water, and she pointed to it. ‘You intend to push it into the water, but Tim is right behind you. Before you can actually move the boat, he catches up. You struggle – and that’s it. We cut there, and then go into close shots.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ grunted the cameraman, listening.

  ‘Let’s just see, shall we?’

  He shook his head doubtfully. ‘The close shots will have to be tomorrow.’

  Impatiently, she turned back to Tim and the thug. ‘Right, is that clear now?’

  ‘When do I push the boat in the water, like?’ the thug wanted to know.

  Much to Tim’s satisfaction, he detected a note of irritation in her voice as she went over it all again. Whether the thug really hadn’t understood, or whether he was playing her along, he couldn’t judge.

  The make-up girl offered him a comb to get the sand out of his hair, while Audrey – in charge of costumes – brushed some of the muck off his clothes. As she did so, he made a passing remark about realism, and she gave him the answer he deserved. She was right, too. Gulliver was a glamour show, Britain’s answer to Dynasty: not a hair should be out of place.

  They took up their starting positions, he and the thug, but there was a further delay while the director and cameraman went into another deep discussion. He wanted a rehearsal, but she was insisting they should take it first time while the wet sand was still free of footprints. She was getting flustered, Tim noted; he began to feel a twinge of pity for her. It couldn’t be easy, being the new girl. They had all become so accustomed to working with Molly, the previous director, who had been on the show since the beginning.

  ‘Took yer a while to get up again,’ the thug said smugly as they waited. ‘Often watch this programme. Wondered ’ow tough yer really was. Now I know, don’ I?’

  ‘I’d not count on it.’ A nut-case, he thought; another bloody nut-case. He’d not yet made up his mind what to do about it. ‘This time, remember you’re being paid to act. That means pretend – get it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Yeah.’

  ‘So when we get to the boat, I grab your shoulder, swing you around, and pretend to throw a punch. So just leave it at that, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  Tim regarded the thug suspiciously, but his face betrayed nothing. Who the hell had booked the idiot, he wondered; surely there were plenty of experienced people available. The last thing they could risk was an all-out fight. Even a black eye could set production schedules back a week or more.

  ‘OK – stand by!’ the director shouted, turning away from the cameraman. She sounded fed up. ‘Roll ’em.’

  ‘Rolling.’

  ‘Action!’

  The thug ran heavily towards the small boat. Tim waited, giving him a lead of three or four yards; then, on a signal from the director, began to lumber after him. ‘And not too quick – you’re exhausted, you’ve been in a fight,’ she’d instructed him unnecessarily. Even had he wanted to, he couldn’t have gone any faster; his body still protested, and the ache beneath his ribs was with him again.

  Already before he reached the boat he had noticed the thug was making no effort to push it towards the water. He merely stood there, motionless. As though hypnotised.

  ‘For Chrissake, do something!’ Tim snapped as he arrived.

  ‘See that?’ The thug nodded in the direction of the creek. ‘Didn’t expect that. Nasty.’

  In a hollow of the sandbank not far from the boat lay a body, face downwards, its feet towards them, its head and shoulders still in the water.

  In the background Tim heard the director yelling ‘Cut!’ and then voicing her anger at them for messing up the shot. He turned and called back to her.

  ‘Come and take a look! Muscles here has found something.’

  ‘Name’s Arthur,’ said the thug unexpectedly, his eyes not leaving the body. All the colour had drained out of his face. ‘I reckon he’s dead.’

  ‘Better see.’

  It was not a task he welcomed, but the thug hadn’t volunteered and somebody had to do it. He went around the boat and approached the body gingerly. Male, he guessed. Bare feet badly lacerated and raw; in places, the white bone was visible. The jeans were undamaged, though there were wounds around the midriff below the T-shirt. Must be dead, Tim thought dully, trying not to throw up. He bent down to turn the body over, just in case.

  ‘Jesus!’

  A tangle of glistening gut spilled out through the deep vent across the belly. Startled, Tim took a step back, breaking into a sweat. He had to force himself to look at the face, only to see it was covered by some sort of shining, pink jelly.

  ‘Jellyfish!’ Jane exclaimed behind him, horrified. ‘Oh, my God, look at it!’

  Feverishly, she fished out the miniature camera from her jeans pocket and began to photograph the body, taking one picture after the next without stopping.

  The jellyfish shifted uneasily over the dead man’s face, as if disturbed by the flashes; then it began to glow with a speckled red and pink luminescence. Finally, as the head lolled to one side, it puckered up into a bell shape, withdrawing its tentacles, and slipped into the water. Within a few seconds it had gone.

  Of the face, there was very little left. No cheeks, no flesh of any kind; only the teeth set firmly in the jaw, and the pale, naked skull, and the eyes still loosely located in their sockets.

  By now most of the crew had dashed over to join Tim. Someone screamed – the make-up girl, he guessed – and he heard her being led away, sobbing uncontrollably. The cameraman, his face drawn, mumbled something about going for the police. The sound assistant ran off across the sands, heading for the cars.

  ‘Yes, get the police! That’s the next thing, get the police!’ Jane said, clutching her camera. ‘The tide’ll be coming in, don’t you realise?’

  Feeling sick in his stomach, Tim turned on her. ‘Did you have to take pictures? Couldn’t you leave off being a journalist just for once?’

  Instead of answering, Jane split away from him to be violently sick on the far side of the boat.

  The thug had taken good care not to go anywhere near the body. He stood a few yards off, attempting to light a cigarette. Tim glanced at him for a moment, then shrugged. He no longer cared about the punch. Let it rest, he thought.

  It was only then that he noticed the director had come over to stand next to him. She stared at the mauled body with a dazed, intense expression in her eyes.

  ‘Never finish now,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Hopeless. Not a chance of it working out. Not a chance.’

  ‘Come on, Jacqui.’ He placed an arm around her shoulders, and looked over her head towards Jane, appealing for help. She was in shock, that was obvious. ‘Come on, we’ll let the police sort this mess out.’

  4

  It rained next morning, which ruled out any chance of filming. Tim was not sorry. It couldn’t possibly have gone well, not with everyone’s nerves on edge after the experience of seeing that ghastly, mangled body on the sands. Seventeen years old, he’d been, according to Jane who’d been busy ferreting out the details to phone them through to Fleet Street. Unemp
loyed, of course. Here for a holiday, staying with his sister who was married to a local solicitor. Some holiday, poor kid.

  Most of the crew had gathered in the residents’ lounge of the Grand Hotel where they sat morosely gazing at the rain through large, wet window panes. Jacqui was not with them. She had come down for breakfast, taken one look at the weather, and then disappeared again, stating briskly that she was going back to her room to write letters. No sign left of the previous afternoon’s hysteria; in fact last evening she’d come up to Tim in the bar and actually apologised. Insisted on buying him a large scotch, too – much to his surprise.

  As for Jane, she’d rushed out somewhere first thing – trying to get an interview with the dead boy’s sister, he suspected – and said she might be back later.

  The camera assistant broke the silence. ‘No jellyfish could have done that to his face!’ he declared out of the blue. ‘Must have been something else.’

  ‘A shark,’ someone grunted from behind the South Wales Argus.

  ‘Eels,’ the camera assistant said. ‘Most likely eels.’

  James, his name was; or Jamie; or Jim: he answered cheerfully to any variant. He’d put his finger on the key question, Tim thought. Jellyfish didn’t normally go around eating human flesh, did they? Sting, yes – but eat?

  ‘Yes, eels would do it.’ James, Jamie or Jim warmed to his theme. ‘I read in a book by Günter Grass how they used a dead horse’s head as bait for catching eels. They tied it to a rope, dropped it in the sea, and when the eels came they fished them out and sold them to local housewives as a delicacy!’

  ‘Oh, for Chrissake!’ said the voice behind the South Wales Argus. ‘Go and get some more coffee, will you? Make yourself useful.’

  ‘Anyone not want coffee? No? OK, I’ll go and order it. Coffee all round.’

  Tim said nothing. He turned over the page of the paperback he’d picked up, but his eyes no longer took in the words. It was one of those old-style detective stories which are still found in the bookcases of seaside hotel lounges. The body of Sir Angus had been discovered in the window seat; there were suspects, questionings, and no doubt in the end the murderer would be unmasked. Nobody really gave a damn about the dead man, and that was where the book was so wrong. It treated death as no more than a puzzle for some clever dick to solve.

  Yet death wasn’t like that.

  Death was a seventeen-year-old boy washed up by the sea and then abandoned face downwards in the water, his flesh already destroyed, putrefying, breaking down to be recycled in other life forms, all his individuality gone, everything that went into his make-up as a person in his own right, as someone who once existed. Only seventeen years he’d had, that boy. Tim himself had lived almost twice as long, yet what was he doing with his life?

  Bloody Gulliver, that’s what. Bloody Gulliver.

  Sue – his wife – was right when she’d said he was getting stale; but then, Sue was always right, which was why it was so intolerable being married to her. These days they couldn’t even meet without quarrelling. Not that they saw much of each other, with her working in rep. down in Totnes and him mostly in London, but often away on location, which might mean anywhere. This time it was Wales; it could just as easily be Scotland, Spain, Italy…

  Yet at one time, he remembered, Sue had been the girl he couldn’t live without. They had been so close to each other, it was unbelievable. Perhaps Gulliver had killed that, too. Something had.

  He put his book aside and glanced out of the window. It was still wet. Heavy raindrops glistened along the railings in front of the hotel. He had to get out. He couldn’t face staying in that lounge a moment longer, not with those bodies slumped inertly in the chintz-covered armchairs, the air sour with cigarette smoke. He felt stifled.

  Stepping over the sprawling legs, he reached the door and emerged into the hall to discover with relief that Jane had come back. She was in the box, busy telephoning, her slim fingers brushing the hair back from her ears as she talked. Finding that body must have been a stroke of luck for her, he mused. She’d been freelance for a few months only, after having been made redundant when her local paper started cutting down on staff; a story like this could put her on the map if she played it right.

  Attractive too, he thought, leaning against the reception desk to wait for her. No one else in the hall, nor even in the office at the back; it was the dead season. She turned and saw him; then waved, with a quick smile, before beginning to dial another number.

  It was a couple of weeks already since he’d been introduced to her at that noisy party. Impossible to talk then, of course, not with that row going on in the name of music, but she had rung up the following day to ask if she might write a feature about him. On spec, she’d added – though she was sure she could place it with the right magazine. So he’d arranged to meet her in the pub, bought her a drink, then lunch. Now she was here on location with him, although what progress she was making on the feature he’d no idea.

  She came out of the phone box, tucking her notebook away in her bag. ‘You look fed up, Tim! I’ve been trying to ring my sister, but she’s not answering.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. ‘God, there’s nothing worse than the Welsh seaside in the rain.’

  They made a dash for his BMW which was parked at the side of the hotel. The engine purred contentedly as he headed out of town, following the bay around in the direction of the sandhills. The rain was easing, and there was a clear break in the clouds.

  ‘Get your interview?’

  ‘With Mr Fowler, yes. His wife’s under sedation. The doctor was still with her. I might go back later.’

  ‘D’you have to? Why not leave her in peace?’

  ‘It’s part of the story. The dead boy was her brother after all. It’s clear now what happened. He was out in their sailing dinghy – without permission – and it must have capsized.’ She frowned, puckering her lips. ‘Though that doesn’t explain his face. I asked the police if I could take another look at him, but they refused.’

  ‘Seeing him that once was enough for me.’

  ‘It’s my job, Tim.’

  ‘Morbid, I call it.’

  ‘You’re trying to make it sound as if I enjoy it. But I don’t. If you want the honest truth, Tim, I was relieved when the police wouldn’t let me view the body.’

  ‘I hope so.’ He found the whole idea repulsive.

  He parked the car facing the sea and turned off the engine. The tide had been in. In fact, it still covered the sandbank where they had found the boy, although by now it was pulling back. White fringes marked the breaking of the waves. Overhead, the seagulls wheeled; their desolate screams made him feel uncomfortable, as though he didn’t belong there at all.

  ‘I think the rain’s stopped,’ Jane said, winding down the window. ‘Let’s get out. Get some fresh air!’

  Before he could reply, she’d opened the door and was struggling into her anorak. He retrieved his own from the back seat and joined her. The air smelled damp; the breeze, stronger than on the previous day, was raw against his face. Out of force of habit he locked the BMW, although there was no one else about. Even the wooden refreshment hut was closed, its hinged counter folded up along its entire length and padlocked.

  They saw the first jellyfish immediately they crossed the line of seaweed which was spread out like dreadlocks around the sweep of the shore, indicating how far the tide had reached. It lay stranded on the smooth, wet sand – a flat, gleaming, blue jelly, perfectly round, decorated with four small pink circles in the centre, from which pink lines led off to its perimeter.

  ‘That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?’ She felt for his hand as they stood gazing down at it. ‘I dreamed about it last night. Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘It’s not the same kind,’ he said.

  ‘Does that make any difference? Oh, I know it probably does – but what if something else was responsible for that boy’s face? What if the jellyfish was just there by chance?’r />
  ‘D’you believe that?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s not a question of what I believe, is it? We have to establish the facts.’

  ‘Anyway, this isn’t what we’re looking for. The kind we want is pink with little red dots on it, and a big red star in the middle.’

  They split up to search the shore. Maybe the camera assistant had been right when he suggested the face had been eaten by eels, Tim thought. It was a possibility. Though when he remembered how the tentacles of that jellyfish had reached deep into the dead boy’s skull, he couldn’t really accept it.

  ‘I went to the public library this morning as well!’ Jane called to him as she came closer. ‘Spoke to the librarian. We checked the books he had, but there was nothing about jellyfish feeding on people. They eat fish, that’s about the nearest we could find.’

  ‘You saw it.’

  ‘I don’t know what I saw,’ she shouted back, ‘and nor do you. That’s why I wanted to see the body – in case there was some injury to the skull, something we’d missed. He might have been hit by a ship’s propeller, and the flesh torn off.’

  ‘Huh,’ he grunted.

  He had found another jellyfish and called her over. It was a pale brown, with a dark brown inverted-V pattern.

  ‘Did you think of that?’ she demanded as she approached. ‘His face could have been ripped off by a propeller, not eaten at all.’

  ‘Gruesome.’ He shivered; then put his hands on her waist. ‘I think you’ve made your point.’

  ‘Have I?’

  He kissed her, smothering her words. A long kiss, 24 hungrily tasting the salt on each other’s lips. The tips of their tongues touched for a brief, tantalising moment, but then she drew back immediately.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ He still held his arms around her. Tenderly. Needing her. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’ She freed herself and moved to the other side of the brown jellyfish. ‘Because I don’t want to, I suppose. Not right now.’