Slime

by John Halkin

  But the trouble was, she just didn’t believe it herself.

  While they were scanning the beach for jellyfish that morning Tim commented on the twin tracks of children’s footsteps crossing the wet sand. He’d have photographed them, he said, if he’d had a camera with him. It was the kind of subject competition judges liked – footsteps in the sand.

  Jacqui agreed with him. ‘If the light’s right.’

  ‘I don’t see much in it,’ said Jane bluntly. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t help us find jellyfish. How come they’re never around when we’re looking for them?’

  They were all properly dressed for the job, as Tim had noted approvingly when they set out from the hotel. Jacqui had surprised him by coming down to breakfast in jodhpurs and riding boots; he’d never thought of her as a horsy type, though she was short enough to be a jockey. Jane sported Dick Whittington thigh boots over her jeans. Both girls wore gloves; they were taking no chances. Nor was he.

  A contract for Jane to work as a researcher on the jellyfish documentary was one of the conditions Tim had laid down. Alan Brewer agreed to it readily enough; it seemed he’d already made enquiries about her and had a summary of her background on file. As Tim was beginning to discover, he was a man who did his homework thoroughly. Perhaps that was why, despite Jackson’s pressing invitation, he’d refused to join them at their spartan lunch.

  Back at his flat, Tim had found no message from Sue on his answering machine; no messages, in fact, from anyone. Instead, the second post had brought a lawyer’s letter from Exeter asking for the name of his solicitor. It was an opening gambit, he tried to persuade himself, just to demonstrate that she was serious. He dialled the theatre, only to be told she was not available to speak to anyone. She wasn’t giving him a chance.

  Then he’d called Jane to give her the news about the contract and who to ring if she was interested – which she was. Television was the great magnet, he reflected as he put the phone down again; no one could resist it. Except people like Sue, who were afraid of it. Rightly, too: it was like a great jellyfish itself, holding its victims paralysed, then treating them as so much fodder.

  Which was all he was himself – not an actor any more, not in the real sense, but mere fodder for the small screen.

  But Jane had no inhibitions about it. Within half an hour she was ringing him back to say it was all agreed, and he heard the excitement in her voice.

  The following day she’d driven him down to Wales in his own BMW, after loading the boot with all the gear her sister had recommended for catching and transporting jellyfish specimens – shovels, reinforced shrimping nets, two vicious-looking pronged implements, and four round metal containers equipped with snap-clips to hold their lids firmly shut. To pay for it all, she’d called on him for the money, insisting airily that he’d be able to claim it back from the company.

  By arrangement, they’d met up with Jacqui at the Grand Hotel where it had all started. They had dinner there, just the three of them – her PA, a tall willowy girl named Dorothea, had gone off to see a friend in the town – and she’d outlined the programme for the next couple of days.

  ‘The crew’s arriving tomorrow after lunch, and we’ll be shooting your introductory sequence first,’ she’d explained. ‘I’ve knocked together some sort of script which I’ll show you afterwards. It’s mainly the straightforward story of your own encounter with the jellyfish. We’re playing this a bit by ear, as it’s largely going to depend on what sort of footage the other teams can get, but Alan will be co-ordinating all that.

  ‘I’m in your hands.’ He’d smiled at her, thinking how much more confident she sounded now she was working on a documentary again. Yet she must have asked for the move to drama, and she’d obviously convinced somebody she could do it. Jackson, perhaps?

  It had not been a very successful meal, though. The restaurant of the Grand Hotel had, as usual, laid everything on in style with little flower bowls on the tables, stiff white napkins and a hovering waiter in a black bow-tie; but the cabbage was too wet, the potatoes soggy, and the stringy meat had been doused with a thick, unpleasant gravy. They’d ordered wine, but even that tasted sour.

  ‘What do I do?’ Jane had asked, laying down her knife and fork with her food only half-eaten.

  Jacqui had regarded her coolly. ‘Whatever you like. There isn’t all that much for you.’

  She clearly considered Jane to be an interloper, a hanger-on who’d somehow managed to worm her way into the programme and now had to be tolerated.

  ‘Find more jellyfish, if you can,’ she added grudgingly. ‘But if you do, just tell me where they are and don’t touch them.’

  ‘Leave that to you?’ Thinly veiled sarcasm.

  ‘I take the decisions,’ Jacqui said, misunderstanding.

  ‘Like last time?’ Jane’s question was heavy with barbed sweetness.

  After the meal they’d drifted into the bar where he ordered brandies, but that evening the two girls had their stilettos out for each other. He stayed with them for ten or fifteen minutes until, murmuring something about needing an early night, he’d made his escape. In the hall, he’d stopped for a chat with the manager before going upstairs. The thought of trying to telephone Sue had crossed his mind – but what was the use?

  The hotel had given him the same feudal room on the first floor from which the view alone more than compensated for the lousy food. He’d been about to unlock the door when Jane’s voice called him from the end of the corridor.

  ‘Tim!’ He’d waited for her to join him. ‘Tim, we haven’t really said goodnight.’

  ‘We haven’t, have we?’ He’d brushed a long stray hair back from her face. ‘I’m sorry Jacqui’s been in a bit of a mood. I suppose it must be quite a rush for her, getting everything organised at such short notice. This has been rather pushed on to her.’

  Jane had smiled, touching his cheek with her fingertips. ‘By this time tomorrow,’ she’d told him softly, ‘I’ll have her eating out of my hand, see if I don’t. Tim, I am grateful you got me this job. I suppose –’ She’d hesitated, her eyes mischievous. ‘I ought to find a way of repaying you.’

  ‘No, that’s not necessary – ’

  She placed her fingers over his lips, stopping him. ‘Like – going to bed with you?’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘But I’m not going to. Goodnight, Tim. See you in the morning!’

  And with a swift kiss which landed on the side of his mouth, she’d left him.

  Had she guessed he’d be relieved, he’d wondered as he went into his room. With Sue on his mind, it couldn’t possibly have been successful. Yet he’d not told her about Sue, not so far, though no doubt she’d regard it as a big scoop for that article she still claimed to be writing. No, probably the truth was she’d not been thinking of him at all, but of some hang-up in her own mind. And that, he’d told himself firmly, was her problem, not his.

  Or maybe she was no more than a tease. Plenty of those around.

  The sky that morning was a pale, unbroken white, and the sea was silvery, glistening like polished metal. That silver sheen also touched the long stretches of sand on which the surface water lay thinly, unable to drain away. Yet there were no jellyfish visible. However carefully they searched, all three of them spread out in a line, they found nothing.

  ‘Not even the ordinary kind,’ Jane grumbled. ‘It’s a dead loss.’

  She and Tim carried a shovel apiece, plus one of the containers. Earlier that morning she’d spoken once more to her sister Jocelyn, who’d said they were welcome to film at her laboratory if they liked. So far she had two jellyfish sliced up into segments and preserved in formaldehyde; the other she was keeping alive in a tank. It fed voraciously on anything she gave it.

  ‘We’ll wait and see,’ Jacqui had said. ‘We don’t know yet if it’s worth filming.’

  Tim stared around him over the wide expanses of flat sand. Again he was intrigued by those children’s footsteps. They led so purposefull
y towards the headland to the north of the bay. ‘Wonder what could be over there to attract them?’ he thought aloud. ‘Those kids must have been aiming for something.’

  ‘Take a look, d’you think?’ Jacqui suggested. ‘There’s nothing doing here on the beach.’

  ‘What about the harbour?’ Jane objected. ‘I said before we should look in the harbour.’

  She turned to Tim for support, but he merely shrugged.

  This morning it was her turn to be in a foul mood. With an irritated exclamation, she threw her shovel down and pulled off her glove to try and do something about her tangle of windblown hair which was getting in her eyes.

  Jacqui pointedly ignored her. ‘Tim, I think I saw those kids when we came down here,’ she was saying. ‘They can’t be all that far ahead of us.’

  ‘We’re half-way there already,’ he agreed.

  Within ten minutes they had reached the headland and could observe how the sandy beach gave way to a tumble of sharp rocks. As they explored them, Tim noticed how some were thickly encrusted with barnacles; centuries of sea-life had found a home there. No jellyfish, though – not even in the numerous rock pools. They went from one to the next, finding nothing.

  In one pool Jane spotted an unusual shell. She squatted down and plunged her hand into the water to retrieve it, only to pull back with a sudden snort of disgust, her fingers covered with tar. Overhead the seagulls wheeled, screaming their mockery at her.

  ‘Thought I heard someone calling,’ Jacqui remarked. Her lips twitched as she watched Jane trying to clean her hand.

  ‘Birds,’ Tim said.

  ‘No. Be quiet a minute.’ She listened again, frowning. ‘It’s coming from over by the cliff.’

  ‘You’re imagining it,’ Jane told her. She swore under her breath as the tissue she was using stuck to her fingers and began to tear. ‘Oh, this stuff’s impossible!’

  Jacqui began to clamber over the rocks towards the cliff. Tim followed, unsure whether he’d heard anything or not. What puzzled him was the complete absence of jellyfish, both here and on the beach. After the press stories of the past few days he’d expected to find the coast littered with them. But perhaps Alan Brewer had been right after all; perhaps it was all over, bar the weeping.

  ‘Oh, please – somebody!’

  ‘Hear that?’

  Tim nodded. A child’s voice, almost drowned by the cries of the seagulls, coming, it seemed, from inside the cliff. He turned to urge Jane to follow. ‘Over here!’

  ‘Please!’ came the voice again, fearfully.

  Jacqui was ahead of him, making for a fissure in the cliffside. Tim disencumbered himself of the shovel and specimen container and went after her. Maybe the children were hurt. Or trapped. His feet slipped on the rocks as he scrambled over them in his haste to get there.

  ‘Please come!’ A different child this time. Younger. The voice rose to a scream. ‘Please!’

  The fissure was a sideways opening where the rock face had begun to split away from the cliff leaving a gap wide enough for them to walk through. Jacqui reached it first and was already half-way in when he arrived.

  ‘It’s all right – we’re coming!’ she called out encouragingly.

  ‘Oh, hurry…’ the child whimpered.

  Jacqui half-turned and grabbed Tim’s arm, pointing to something ahead of her. The narrow passage through the rock curved sufficiently to block their view of what lay before them, but there was no mistaking that glow of pale green light. Tim felt sick as he realised what must be causing it.

  ‘Let me go first,’ he said quietly, almost whispering.

  She looked at him contemptuously, shaking her head.

  Two more steps forward… slowly… To produce that amount of light there must be at least two or three of them. Big ones, perhaps. He kept close behind Jacqui, ready to pull her clear the moment he spotted them.

  One more step…

  With a sudden gasp, she stopped and he collided with her, catching hold of her to steady himself. She pressed back against him and he could feel her body shaking.

  ‘In there!’

  Directly in front of her was the mouth of the cave. He had to stoop a little to see inside; as he took it all in, his stomach churned. That cave looked like some hideous temple in a science fiction nightmare. At the far end, on an exposed ledge of rock resembling a primitive altar, stood a boy and a girl with their arms around each other, their faces betraying how frightened they were. And little wonder, for below them in the body of the cave were more jellyfish than he’d even seen gathered together before.

  ‘Must be twenty or thirty of them,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Thirty-two,’ Jacqui stated clearly.

  She was no longer shivering. Suddenly he understood that she’d been forcing herself to count them in order to keep a hold on herself, determined not to give way to hysteria this time. That uncontrolled look in her eyes died even as she spoke.

  ‘I’m going to get them out,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Carry them.’

  He stared through the opening into the cave once again, trying to work out a route through those menacing jellyfish. It would be like walking across a minefield, but he couldn’t leave the kids there.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Jacqui announced. ‘One each. You can take the big one.’

  Tim hesitated. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘D’you think I do?’ Her gaze met his challengingly. ‘Isn’t it better if there are two of us?’

  At that moment Jane arrived. ‘So what goes on?’ she demanded pushing between them for a clearer view into the cave. Then she gasped and her voice dropped to a chill whisper. ‘Bloody hell! Oh – those poor kids…’

  Tim interrupted her. ‘Jane, love, I’m going in with Jacqui to get them.’

  ‘But I can–’

  ‘No, listen!’ He spoke urgently. ‘I need you to stay here just in case something goes wrong. If it does – well, please, no heroics. Promise? Just run like hell to fetch help.’

  ‘OK, if you think… Oh, I don’t know.’ She looked at him, troubled. ‘Be careful, Tim.’

  He nodded.

  He went in first, stooping for the first few feet at the cave entrance. Once inside he was able to stand upright. The rough, uneven walls rose to a height of some twenty or thirty feet, he estimated. A shaft of daylight illuminated one side of the cave roof, but it was pale and diffuse compared with the more intense illumination from the jellyfish.

  Jacqui joined him, an expression of pure determination on her face. She was shit-scared, he guessed, and using all her will-power to suppress it. That greenish light added to the impression, giving her a pale, sickly hue. But she managed a smile.

  ‘So far so good,’ she said.

  ‘Keep close behind me,’ he advised. Then he raised his voice, calling out to the children. ‘Listen, you two. We’re coming to get you out of here, but I want you to stay absolutely still. Don’t try to run or anything. Wait till we reach you. All right?’

  He thought he saw the girl nodding.

  The pink speckled jellyfish lay in a sweeping half-circle around the plateau of rock on which the two children stood, as if deliberately barring their way out. Of course, his reason told him – not for the first time – such invertebrates can only move in water. They must have been left there by the tide, which meant the children would be in no danger so long as they remained where they were.

  And yet – in that case, how did the children get there in the first place? Had they walked between the jellyfish – for a dare, perhaps – and then found they hadn’t the courage to make the return trip? It didn’t seem likely.

  He turned to Jacqui. ‘Come on. But avoid treading on them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Between the first two jellyfish was a gap of a couple of feet, which gave him no problem, but then came two close together and he was forced to skirt around them to reach the next opening. As he went on, stepping from one clear space to the nex
t, he felt Jacqui’s hand from time to time touching his back; it reassured him. However much he tried to convince himself that the jellyfish were stranded where they lay, he could not quite believe it.

  One wasn’t so flat as the others, but had a slight hump in the centre. A hump-backed jellyfish, misshapen from birth perhaps… It wasn’t impossible – but when he glanced back the hump had disappeared and the creature seemed just as level as its neighbours: but was it in exactly the same position?

  He could have sworn it was not.

  A sudden gasp from Jacqui. Tim half-turned to see what was wrong, but she shook her head and motioned him on.

  ‘Don’t stop!’ Her voice was urgent; she was whispering, as though scared the jellyfish could overhear. ‘Let’s grab the kids and get out of here!’

  They reached the rock plateau. With a sob the girl threw her arms around Tim’s waist and buried her face against his anorak. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured, holding her. ‘It’s going to be all right.’ He glanced towards Jacqui who was looking after the boy. ‘Can you manage him?’

  ‘Of course we can manage, can’t we?’ She hugged him quickly. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘P-Paul.’

  ‘And is that your sister?’

  ‘Cousin.’ Gaining more confidence, he added: ‘She’s Barbara and I’m Paul.’

  Both children were barefooted, Tim noticed. That made it all the more remarkable that they had been able to get this far into the cave without being attacked. It also meant he and Jacqui had no choice about carrying them; it was too much of a risk to let them walk. He explained this to them, and then crouched down to allow her to sit on the crook of his right arm.

  ‘You’re that actor, aren’t you?’ the girl said. ‘In Gulliver – you’re Jon.’

  ‘That’s right. Now hold on tight.’

  ‘You’re not in Gulliver,’ Paul informed Jacqui pityingly. ‘You his girl friend or what?’

  ‘Jacqui’s the director,’ Tim told him. ‘The film director.’

  Paul looked her up and down. ‘That’s a boy’s name.’