by John Halkin
‘How?’ She’d already seen what they could do. ‘Tell me.’
‘Fish it out again.’
‘You can’t be serious?’ Jane was aghast. She felt a shiver of goose-pimples rising over her entire skin at the thought. ‘You must be out of your mind!’
A man’s voice came booming down from the other end of the Nissen hut. ‘Good for you, Jane! I’ve been telling her that for years.’
‘Robin! You’re back!’
‘I’m back,’ he agreed, offering his wife a peck on the cheek and slipping his arm around Jane’s shoulders. ‘No sailing this week, by the look of it. Jellyfish all over the show. Can’t get near the moorings. Like the plagues of Egypt.’
Robin was a tall, bluff man with reddish-brown hair growing down either side of his face to meet his jawline, though thinning on top. A lecturer in poetry at the University and as unlike Jocelyn as it was possible to be.
‘Feeding the buggers, are you?’ He peered into the tank.
‘She will be if she tries fishing that meat out,’ Jane said with feeling. ‘Catch me putting my hand in there!’
‘Meat?’
‘Rabbit,’ Jane told him.
‘Not the rabbit out of the deep freeze?’ He turned on Jocelyn. ‘Bloody hell, I meant that for our supper this evening.’
‘I thought I’d just try it on them,’ Jocelyn explained absent-mindedly, her eyes never leaving the jellyfish as they flopped over the rabbit. ‘They can’t chew or bite, their tissue’s too soft for that, so I imagine they’re probably emitting a fluid of some sort to break down the meat into more easily ingested portions. It’d be worth analysing.’
‘Is that probable?’ Robin asked doubtfully.
‘Oh yes!’ Jocelyn straightened up and used the back of her hand to brush the untidy hair away from her brow. ‘We do it in our stomachs, of course, as part of the process of digestion. And to soften food before we swallow it we often use spittle. But many insects follow a similar procedure. For example, there’s – ’
‘Darling, spare us the gory details,’ Robin said hastily. ‘Thank God I’m a poet, not a scientist.’
‘So what do the poets tell us?’ she teased him fondly.
‘Not much. There’s Keats: With jellies soother than the creamy curd…’
‘Or Shakespeare,’ Jane retorted. ‘Out, vile jelly!’
‘Yes, that’s a damn sight more realistic,’ Robin admitted. ‘Vile jelly – I like that. They’re all the way up the Clifton Gorge, you know. On the mud on both sides. You can see them from the suspension bridge. Someone said they’ve penetrated as far as the centre of Bristol.’
In the tank, the three jellyfish were busy gorging themselves on the rabbit meat. Jane averted her eyes. The very sight of it nauseated her.
‘Oh, I wish we didn’t have to mess about with them!’ she exclaimed with feeling. ‘Why not just kill them and be done with it?’
‘The more we know, the more we’ll understand,’ Jocelyn said crisply. She drew on a pair of surgical rubber gloves. ‘Now, I think it’s time we retrieved that meat, don’t you?’
‘You’re not going to put your hand in there?’ Jane protested anxiously. ‘Oh, Joss, don’t be such an idiot! You don’t know these things. You’ve no idea what they can do.’
‘I’m not quite daft,’ her sister said calmly.
On the bench beside her she laid out an assortment of sawn-off broom handles and wooden spoons, together with a pair of long Victorian fire tongs whose ends had obviously been dipped into some sort of acid to clean them thoroughly.
‘It’s a bit makeshift,’ she admitted, ‘but the best I can manage for the present. If I use one of these as a kind of spatula to ease the jellyfish away…’
Holding the tongs in her right hand and one of the sawn-off handles in her left, Jocelyn leaned over the tank and attempted to prise the jellyfish away from the meat. Whatever fluid they emitted, it had certainly had some effect, for the rabbit’s hind quarters separated from the rest of the torso the moment she touched it. One jellyfish still clung to the leg, but the separation made her job much easier.
‘Divide and rule,’ murmured Robin, picking up the plastic box and holding it ready to receive the meat. ‘Whoops!’
As she brought it to the surface, having apparently dislodged the jellyfish, several tentacles suddenly darted out, fastening themselves on to it again. She tried to shake them off, unsuccessfully, and was forced to scratch them away with the end of the wooden handle.
‘That’s one piece.’ Jocelyn examined it and an expression of satisfaction spread across her face at the sight of the sticky mess on the exposed flesh. ‘As I thought!’
‘It’s like a festering ulcer!’ Jane said in disgust.
‘Darling, leave the box on the bench and use the kidney dish for the next one,’ Jocelyn instructed, turning back to the tank.
‘You want more?’ He pulled a face at Jane; a secret message to let her know he shared her feelings.
‘Oh, yes. I need to take samples to study them properly.’
He found the enamel kidney dish and returned to the tank, holding it low over the surface of the water ready to catch the meat the moment she managed to fish it up. By now, all three jellyfish had arranged themselves around the forelegs and ribcage which was all that remained of the rabbit. Jocelyn had difficulty trying to slip the tongs beneath them, but at last she succeeded. With the sawn-off wooden handle she endeavoured to flick the jellyfish away. Then, unexpectedly, it slipped out of her hand.
Or had they tugged it away from her? Jane bit her lip, wondering.
‘Jane! Hand me one of those wooden spoons! Please!’ Jocelyn said urgently. ‘Any one!’
Jane took the nearest, then watched anxiously as her sister set to work on the jellyfish again. The sawn-off handle bobbed on the water only a few inches away from her fingers. Robin hovered near her with the kidney dish.
‘Here we go!’ In her concentration Jocelyn muttered the words, almost under her breath. ‘Ready!’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Robin swore, reeling back. The agony showed on his face as he grabbed at his right hand.
Jane could not be quite certain how it happened, it was all so quick. As Jocelyn raised what was left of the rabbit, one of the jellyfish drifted towards it again and was astride the tongs when they cleared the water. Simultaneously, she saw a second jellyfish beginning to wrap itself over the floating handle. A tentacle from one of them – Jane didn’t see which – darted out like a spring, lashing across Robin’s hand as he held the kidney dish.
The dish dropped in the water as he started back. Jocelyn, cursing under her breath, was struggling to keep her grip on the meat and at the same time get rid of the jellyfish. Then, irrelevantly, the phone began to ring.
‘Are you all right?’ Jane seized a lab stool and brought it to him. ‘Robin, sit down. Put your arm flat on the bench and let’s take a look at it.’
‘There!’ A note of triumph in Jocelyn’s voice indicated that she’d succeeded in pushing the jellyfish back into the tank and transferring the rabbit meat safely to the plastic box. ‘Are you hurt, darling? It must just have caught you. Let me see.’
After a shrewd glance at his hand she reached across to the first-aid box. ‘Jane,’ she called back over her shoulder, ‘answer that phone, please!’
Whoever the caller was, he was persistent. Patient, too. Jane picked up the receiver. It was one of those cultured voices which give the impression that their owners would be equally incapable of either panic or passion. Not the sort she could visualise in a room full of hungry jellyfish.
‘This is the Ministry of the Environment speaking,’ he purred in her ear. He asked if he could possibly speak to Jocelyn.
‘Of course. She’s not busy.’ Jane didn’t even bother to put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Joss – for you!’
The following morning Jane set out in good time for her drive to Totnes, aiming to arrive not later than eleven. She preferred to do her nosing around before the inter
view, just in case things went wrong. The thought nagged at her also that Sue might have phoned Tim and mentioned the appointment, although she’d tried to forestall this danger by calling herself Jo, not Jane. But Tim might easily put two and two together.
Her main problem was, she recognised as she pulled out into the fast lane to overtake a lorry, that she still doubted if she was tough enough to go through with it.
Towards Tim she was behaving like a first-class bitch. She’d said as much to Jocelyn as they’d sat having a drink together the previous evening. Robin was in bed by then. The numbness in his hand was already beginning to thaw and the doctor had given him a pain-killer, advising rest.
‘A real bitch,’ she’d said.
‘Then why do it, whatever it is?’
‘It’s a job. A bloody important one. Oh, it’s journalism… Very few break through to the big time. The others spend their lives wondering why they never did. I’ve known too many of them. You see what I mean, Joss, don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ her sister said bluntly. ‘Not if you won’t tell me what you’re up to.’
‘No way. You’d try to stop me.’
‘Isn’t that what you want? Aren’t you just waiting for someone to stop you? That’s what all this is about, if you’re honest.’
Jane shook her head. She wrapped both hands around her glass and stared into it. ‘No, I’m not sure you would understand. You have to walk over people’s faces sometimes. Not you, perhaps – but in my trade you do.’
‘Oh, in universities it happens all the time!’ Jocelyn laughed. ‘I keep out of it.’
‘I’ve never really had to do it before, not this way. But when I think of Bill…’
She fell silent. That was a mistake – she’d not intended to mention him.
‘Who is Bill?’ Jocelyn asked.
Naturally.
So she’d told Jocelyn about Bill. Everything, more or less. What sort of person he was. The way he’d been torn between her and loyalty to his family. His feelings of guilt towards his wife. It was the first time she’d really been able to unburden herself, and it made her feel a bit better. Not much, though.
‘You always get yourself into such a mess,’ Jocelyn commented when she’d finished. ‘I suppose I don’t always understand. I live here in this backwater, doing work that interests me…’
Jane had laughed: ‘Jellyfish?’
‘Yes, even that.’ Jocelyn had unwound herself from the hard Windsor armchair to fetch a half-finished box of chocolates from the dresser. ‘D’you realise, by the end of all this we’ll really have extended our knowledge of the digestive system of the jellyfish? I’ll be able to publish a paper.’
‘If we live that long.’
Jane went over the conversation again in her mind as she left the motorway. It had done them both good to let their hair down a bit. As children, Jocelyn had always been the big sister – seven years older, which was quite a gap. Now, she felt, they were beginning to know each other at last.
There was comparatively little traffic on the road that morning. No tourist coaches at all, which was just as well. Big signboards along the verges warned drivers to stay well clear of all coastal areas. JELLYFISH HAZARD! The letters screamed out at her. Teignmouth, Torquay and several other towns were forbidden to everyone except residents. According to the local radio DJ, many had packed up and moved inland. There had been the inevitable looting, with an announcement from the police to make sure that all doors and windows were securely fastened.
Yet apart from yet another warning sign at the crossroade, Totnes itself looked quite peaceful and normal. She came upon the recently-built theatre just beyond the old church but drove on to leave the Mini in a small car park to the rear of some cottages. Her first task was to check out the address. The bijou public library had a street guide from which she discovered that the road was only a couple of hundred yards away.
The whole place was so small, it was impossible to get lost. Stepping off the narrow pavement she just missed being knocked down by a couple of cyclists careering past. Obvious holidaymakers to judge from their gear: rucksacks, the briefest of shorts, drooping handlebars and muzzled pedals. It was all so peaceful here, she thought; yet only six miles away some of the most popular holiday beaches in the country were cordoned off because of the jellyfish menace.
As one Torquay resident had said on television only the previous day, jellyfish lay bivouacked along the entire length of the sands like an army waiting to move.
Not here, though. Jane paused on the little stone bridge to gaze down at the bubbling River Dart. It looked so pure, she was tempted to jump in and drink. Down on its banks the two cyclists had dismounted and were slipping off their rucksacks as if about to picnic. A boy and girl, probably about her own age. They both wore glasses, and in identical frames.
Time to get on, she thought.
She went first past the theatre which was plastered with posters announcing their forthcoming production of Much Ado About Nothing. Sue was playing Beatrice, she noticed. That was useful. And the only Mark in the list was to take the part of Antonio. Hunting around the side of the building she came to a showcase containing photographs of previous productions that season and found the same Mark playing opposite Sue in an Agatha Christie piece.
Her next port of call was the flat which she found in a row of squat Victorian houses. The bell-push bore the legend, hand-printed on a scrap of paper and inserted slantwise under the plastic cover, Top flat: Mark and Sue. And that was all. No surnames to help the postman.
Jane pressed the other bell, which was unidentified. After a while the door was opened by a friendly-looking middle-aged woman with wispy hair. She wiped her hands on her apron.
‘You caught me washing my curtains,’ she said.
‘Mrs Barnes?’ Jane noted the wedding ring. She had checked the address in the electoral register at the public library and found Barnes was the only name recorded. ‘I’m told you let flats?’
‘Just the one upstairs, but I’m afraid that’s taken. For the time being at any rate. Actors, you know. They always move on.’
‘I’d not need it immediately,’ Jane pleaded. ‘I’m taking a job in Torquay, but I’d rather live outside.’
‘Can’t say that I blame you,’ Mrs Barnes said sympathetically. ‘Even when they get rid of those jellyfish, I’ll never feel safe there again. About the flat, I’m not saying it’s impossible, mind. In a couple of months, like.’
‘I couldn’t see it, could I?’
‘Well, they’re not in at the moment, and I never like to go behind people’s backs.’
‘But it is just the one bedroom?’
‘Bedroom, sitting-room, kitchen and bathroom. Your own meters.’
‘I’m single – you don’t mind? I mean, they’re a married couple, aren’t they?’ She pointed to the note on the bell-push.
‘Married?’ Mrs Barnes laughed comfortably. ‘It’s odd, a few years ago we’d have been scandalised. Now we take it for granted. I think she is. Her husband’s… oh, that TV actor?’
Jane looked at her blankly. It had not been so difficult after all, she felt. She wondered why she’d been so nervous about it. A straightforward job. No problems.
She kept up the pretence for another three or four minutes, making elaborate arrangements to phone Mrs Barnes the following week just to check. Not that she would, of course; she had all she wanted.
A drink, she decided.
Even without her interview with Sue her trip had already paid off. She’d something to celebrate and to hell with Bill. Oh, Bill knew his trade all right, no one better, but his inhibitions would always hold him back. Well, now she was in the fast lane and God help anyone who got in her way.
She headed for the four-star hotel by the river, ignoring the little pub which was nearer. Nothing but the best would fit her present mood. At the bar she ordered a large vodka and tonic which she carried over to a corner table. Save for a group of three or four
customers who had taken their drinks into the garden, the place was empty, but that suited her well enough. She began to sketch out a couple of paragraphs in her notebook while it was all fresh in her mind. Knowing innuendo – that was the style. Leaving readers to draw their own conclusions.
Two cyclists, a boy and a girl, were fooling around on the river bank just beyond the hotel garden. Their bicycles stood propped up together near the trees where they’d been picnicking.
Sue watched them idly as she sat with her drink at one of the rustic tables. It was a relief to escape from that theatre at last. And from that bloody director with his long-winded theories. Rehearsals had been going badly. For one thing – she couldn’t say this, not even to Mark – it should have been Tim playing Benedick, not the useless idiot they’d chosen. At least Tim had style. And he understood the play. In the early days, cooped up in their bed-sitter waiting for the phone to ring, they’d learned all the great parts: Beatrice and Benedick; Rosalind and Orlando; Antony and Cleopatra… They were going to be a famous Shakespearean partnership, she and Tim.
‘Don’t you think so, Sue?’ Mark interrupted her musings.
‘Er… yes…’ She hadn’t been listening. ‘Of course.’
‘Life has to go on, jellyfish or no jellyfish, I realise that, but all the seaside shows have been cancelled. Think what that means in terms of unemployment. Even here we’re playing to empty houses. Equity should insist on jellyfish relief money being available to theatres, just as to other businesses.’
Mark had been arguing with Adrian and Tony – as usual – about the latest Equity pronouncements. He was a dear, she didn’t know what she’d do without him, but he did tend to go on about it all. Union politics bored her, but he could never understand that. Unlike Tim, who’d always understood her. She still lay awake at night thinking about him, wondering if she’d done the right thing. Oh shit, why did it have to turn out like this?
But Mark had been there when she’d needed someone desperately. He’d been fun too, taking her out of herself. Not inspiring, the way Tim had been – but reliable, which Tim was not. And she could relax with Mark. Yet…