Stickle Island

by Tim Orchard

  With a shrug, Petal nodded toward the nearest bale. “You know, I’ve learned some things from you, Dad, but the one thing I learned most about is drugs. We’re here for the same reason as you.”

  Holding up his hand like a cop directing traffic, D.C. shook his head. “No way! You must be joking! It’s mine and Si’s. Finders keepers, right, eh, Si?” He put an arm around the young man’s shoulders and plowed on before Si could muster an answer. “Anyway, I was down here while you and Dip Stick there were still in your pit, and possession is nine points of the law.”

  None of her father’s bullshit was new to Petal. She wasn’t impressed. “His name is Dick, Dad! You don’t possess anything, and as for the law, this is illegal drugs and this is a public beach, right! Anyway, we’re here now and we were down here last night when this lot was washed up, so so much for your finders keepers.”

  D.C. didn’t want to argue. In fact, combative as he generally was, he didn’t know how to argue with Petal. Ever since Julie and he parted ways, it had seemed his relationship with his daughter had been on her terms. He didn’t understand exactly why, because he and Julie were still good friends. It was like a teenage-girl thing. Julie had told him, “With girls you ask them questions about the things they are interested in, what they think, their emotions. Be sensitive.”

  That much he already knew. He’d read the feminist books and lived with the reality. He didn’t mind. Everybody has to change up sometimes to stay alive. Guys need to get sensitive. Okay. So D.C. did or at least tried. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes with Petal it all went wrong. Like the time when she was thirteen or so and had come to see him in his trailer in a foul mood. Nothing he did or said was right. He didn’t know why. He tiptoed around her for a time, asked her stuff about school and other things he wasn’t remotely interested in, tried to divert her attention, and capered about the interior of the trailer, which wasn’t easy, but nothing moved her mood.

  D.C. thought about all the time he lived with Julie and how he’d noticed her moods and how they went with her menstrual cycle, and he thought about Petal and the age that she was and maybe that was it and maybe now was a good time to be the sensitive father. Let her know he understood. He didn’t. What D.C. found out was that thirteen-year-old girls don’t really want to talk to their fathers about their period. Petal had stormed out of the trailer. It was six months before she came again. It was one of the worst times of his life.

  Even now, four-odd years later, he was still unsure of where the boundaries lay. In all of his dealings with Petal he was afraid she wouldn’t see him anymore, wouldn’t talk to him anymore, wouldn’t, just wouldn’t. It was a loss he couldn’t bear. So, not knowing what to say, he floundered on: “Down here, while that storm was on? What do you think you were doing? That was dangerous. You could have got washed out to sea and drowned! You could have died! You could have caught pneumonia! Down here! All night!” He sounded stupid to himself, so he stopped speaking.

  Petal continued as though he hadn’t said a word: “We’ve got as much right to this as you. You can’t just take it, it’s not yours.” She stopped, thought a quick thought, and went on. “In fact, this stuff here should be for the community, for the people of the island. You know very well what the government wants to do—you were at the meeting when that man came over from the county council. In fact, you were the one who said we were going to start a co-op and make a deal with the ferry owner. What else are you going to do? Sit on the island and smoke this lot while they take away the funding for the ferry? They want to shut this island down and move us all to the mainland, and that means you as well, Dad!” She waved an arm at the bales on the beach. “This could keep Stickle alive. There’s plenty. We could do things, change things.”

  Without a thought, Dick said, “She’s right! We could become a collective!” Dick thought green-and-red hair and tight jeans would change the course of humanity. He was the kind of guy who aided the revolution in a radical, nonverbal kind of way by dressing cool. His political ideas were sartorial, and it was true that, to him, Maoist uniforms were cooler than the way the president of America dressed in his suits, and so it followed that collectivism must be better than capitalism, sartorially at least, but then again, he also went with the Dead Kennedys and the fact that a holiday in Cambodia, where everyone dressed in black, was basically negative. And he didn’t like the plastic bags over the head—that wasn’t a good look. Anyway, the world needed color, end of. He said, again, “Yeh, a collective.”

  Before D.C. could reach over and strangle him, Petal cut in. “Exactly! Who do you think you are? This find should definitely be for the island. Anyway, as you old hippies would say, yeh, power to the people! This is the people’s stash. This could alter everything.”

  The people! D.C. didn’t give a fuck about the people, never had. Everybody was the people, and just like him, they would roll over anybody to get their bit. It wasn’t the law of the jungle; it was just the law. He wanted to explain but couldn’t be bothered, as time was tramping on, and anyway, because he’d started like a prick, he thought he’d finish like one. He pulled faces and made useless threats like some bad-tempered kid and shoved pathetically at the nearest bale. He wasn’t even fooling himself.

  As a favor, Petal cut him down from the tree before he could hang himself. “Don’t even bother, Dad.” She turned to Si. “We’ve just been up to the house, Si, we were going to get you to come down with the tractor and trailer, but your dad told us you were already out with the cows.” She let it hang a moment and looked at him. “We could load it up and hide it in your barn.”

  Too stoned to think, Si couldn’t look at Petal because she was too lovely. He turned away and plonked himself down on the bale again and watched the sea. After thirty seconds or so, he stuttered, “W-what about my dad?”

  In unison, Dick, Petal, and D.C. said, “What about him?” Then D.C. added, “We’ll put the bales down the back of the barn. We’ll put a tarp over ’em.”

  Si didn’t like to argue and he didn’t want to explain that he didn’t care about the grass the way the others seemed to. Si liked a smoke, but he cared about the cows and their hay and silage, about the sheep, about the chickens and collecting the eggs; he cared about the couple of geese he raised for Christmas. And although they argued the way fathers and sons did, he loved his dad and didn’t like to deceive him more than necessary. Lifting his chin in Dick’s direction, he muttered, “What about your dad’s barn?”

  Dick hemmed and hawed and blushed and said, hopelessly, “Come on, Si, you know what my dad’s like. If he found out about this he’d have us all in jail. That man’s got no mercy.” Dick knew that wasn’t exactly true, but it was an easy out.

  Looking over his shoulder at them, Si said, “Look, I don’t know. What if Paloney sees us? What if he catches us? That’s jail, isn’t it?”

  D.C. laughed. “He couldn’t catch a bloody cold! I’ll deal with Paloney. Anyway, Paloney was only sent here to keep an eye on us.” He poked himself in the chest with his finger and sneered, “Us poor misbegotten blow-ins. Look, whatever happens, you won’t get the blame. Fuck me, you little farm boys are safe enough. If anybody gets the blame it’ll be me, and for this lot, that’s a chance I’m happy to take.” He dragged Si upright. “Now get the tractor down here before anybody else arrives or the fucking tide comes in. We can talk about it later.”

  Petal smiled at her dad and he was happy.

  5

  Meanwhile, other people had been out early that morning. These men left London at about four a.m., as soon as the wind dropped. They drove a large panel van with a crew cab and a hydraulic lift on the back. Careful to follow all speed restrictions and rules of the road, they traveled down the old A20 into Kent. At Ashford, they followed a series of back roads through villages like Kingsnorth and Hamstreet and then out onto Romney Marsh. At Lydd, they turned onto a narrow, unpaved road that snaked across the butt end of the marsh to the isolated stretch of shore running up to th
e Dungeness power station.

  Dog-eared, unkempt, edged with the stunted blackthorns and the rusted wire fences of Romney Marsh, this forsaken spot of dirty, flat, rubbish-strewn strand, with its lonely birds and their lonely cries, was nobody’s holiday destination. The panel van backed off the track onto the edge of the beach, and a small forklift with rubber tires was unloaded and stood beside it.

  Four beefy guys walked up and down shouting expletives at one another: “What the fuck?” “Where the fuck?” “It ain’t fucking here!” “It’s got to be fucking here!” “It’s fucking not!” “Keep fucking looking!” They walked the length of the beach right up to the chain-link fencing separating the world from the Dungeness power station. Nothing.

  After the days of storm there was plenty of flotsam and jetsam but not what they were sent to collect. Back and forth they went, moaning and bitching but unwilling to accept what appeared to be the truth. Especially Simp, who’d have to tell Carter when they returned. Eventually they trudged back to the vehicle and headed off, back to their beloved South London, empty-handed and empty-headed from too much sky and too much fresh air.

  Later, back in the city, Simp explained everything to Carter several times over and his head hurt. Carter always wanted everything right, but Simp knew things didn’t always go that way. Carter was like a brick wall with anti-climb paint. Simp tried to tell him, but the words just slid off. Now Carter was on the phone to Colombia and he wasn’t happy. “What do you mean, you can’t do nothing! We paid for a delivery and we ain’t got it!”

  The phone was on speaker and Simp could hear the Colombian’s soft, accented English: “What can we do? It’s a loss for us all. It’s the business we are in. It happens. I have spoken with the captain and he threw the stuff overboard as planned, but your weather… the weather was extreme.”

  Carter’s face became suffused with blood, and while he tried to control the anger in his voice, it didn’t quite work. “Why did he throw the bloody stuff off then?”

  There was a moment of silence before the Colombian replied, and when he did, his voice was so gentle, so sibilant, it was dangerous. “Ah, what was he to do, eh? Carry it to port and call you? He knows nothing except where to throw it overboard. We all have money invested. All you have lost is your deposit. We have lost a whole shipment. What can any of us do? We all just have to shrug our shoulders and accept our losses. In my country that is what we call an act of God, ha ha ha.”

  Carter heard the menace, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth. When the goodbyes were done, Carter threw the phone down and turned red-faced to Simp. “It just ain’t no good trying to argue with those South American types, they’re just fucking gauchos with an AK.”

  Simp wanted to say something that would help, but he’d known Carter since junior school and knew there was nothing but a random act of violence that would calm the man. As he was the only one there, he figured he may as well get it over with. He shrugged and said, “It worked all right the last time, boss.”

  Carter picked up the heavy-duty stapler on his desk and flung it at Simp’s head. It missed, bounced off the wall, and fell to the floor. “I know that—don’t you think I don’t know that, you cunt!”

  Carter pulled open the deep bottom drawer of the desk, took out a bottle of whiskey and a glass.

  Simp said, quietly, “Boss, it’s early, only just past midday. You know what your doctor said.”

  Putting the whiskey down on the desk, Carter picked up a large glass ashtray and, holding it like a Frisbee, flexed his arm in Simp’s direction. Simp backed up against the office wall, near where the stapler had fallen. He was a big man, but he was making constant, quick little movements, adjusting himself to the stretch of Carter’s arm, ready to duck. He felt in his jacket pocket for the bottle of Carter’s pills.

  Carter looked at his arm and the ashtray in his hand and, dropping it back down onto the desk, seemed to lose heart. With a sigh he poured himself half a glass of whiskey and swilled it down. “This ain’t no time to be listening to no quack! That deposit, that’s near a hundred fifty thousand pounds lost.” He poured another drink. After a couple of minutes, the alcohol seeped into Carter’s bloodstream and he began to think. Simp picked up the stapler and put it back on the desk. Letting out another a long sigh, Carter said, “All right, Simp, run it by me again.”

  Not wanting to be too close to the simmering volcano, Simp went back and stood near the door. “Well, boss, like I told you, me and the boys went down there, just like before. We had the truck and the forklift and we walked that beach, honest, backward and forward. We looked everywhere. Nothing.”

  Quiet for a minute, Carter sipped his drink. “All right, all right, so it wasn’t there, right? But like the sea’s the sea, right? Everything comes ashore somewhere, even those stupid bottles people fuck into the sea with some half-arsed note in it.”

  Simp said, “I know what you mean, boss, like what’s the point if the bottle ends up someplace where they don’t even speak English.”

  Carter slammed the glass down on the desk. “Shut it, you stupid cunt, I ain’t talking about bloody bottles! What I’m saying is those fucking bales must have come ashore somewhere, right?”

  When Carter was like this, Simp got nervous. A mood like this was all right when they had to hurt somebody. Simp knew exactly what to do then. This was different. He took a deep breath and said the first thing that came into his head. “It was that wind that fucked things up, boss.”

  Carter shook his head in desperation. “I know that—don’t you think I don’t know that. What I want to know is: Where is the fucking stuff now?!”

  At a loss, Simp stood by the door looking down at the floor, one hand down his track suit bottoms, idly scratching his crotch. It was a habit, like a tic, he’d picked up in prison, and it gave him comfort in fraught situations.

  Carter drank more, eyed him, and said, “Stop doing that, you’re worse than a bloody dog.”

  Simp straightened up and put his hands behind his back.

  Carter wasn’t what you would call a big man, but he was dapper and mean. He’d started young, him and Simp, mugging other kids at school for their dinner money. It had been his idea and it was simple. Kids scare easy, most adults do too. He’d based their career on it. Together, Carter and Simp had graduated from housebreaking to armed robbery, mostly post offices and security vans. No-fear merchants. They went in, they went out, they shook it about, and to Carter nothing had ever seemed to matter. Even when he married nothing changed.

  Then suddenly, when his daughter, Amber, was born, Carter—a man who’d always prided himself on his lack of sentiment—was stricken with love. It went against the grain and he didn’t know what to do with it. Simp told him to just be careful. At first Carter had been amazed by her helplessness and then by her beauty and finally by her simple needs, and he almost thought of going straight, though even as he thought it, he knew that it could never happen. Simp suggested they moved sideways into the relatively calm waters of drug dealing: hash, marijuana, amphetamines. He didn’t do street—other people did that for him. He kept several steps away, but Amber wasn’t stupid; she had it figured by the time she was twelve. As Simp had pointed out to him several times down the years, he could never be what the world called a good father. But he had tried in his own way. He’d spoiled her. Now she’d walked out of her school at exam time, refused to go back, and he didn’t know what to do.

  Carter said, “Get me a map.”

  Simp went out to the car, came back with a map and handed it to Carter, who spread it out across the desk. He ran his eyes along the Kent coastline and finally jabbed a finger at the shoulder of land between Winchelsea and the power station at Dungeness, where Simp and the boys had been that morning. The shoulder of land jutted out into the Channel like a natural breakwater, with the power station at its far extremity, and from there the land swept around into the long curve of St. Mary’s Bay, with Folkestone at the far end and Dymchurch in the middle.<
br />
  Running his finger along the coastline, Carter mused, “So, they were supposed to turn up here, right, and if they didn’t wash up there, where did they end up?”

  Not wanting to go through the whole story again, Simp tried to sound contrite: “I don’t know, boss, honest. Ask any of the boys, there was nothing there.”

  His line of thought broken, Carter glared. “That was what they call a rhetorical question, you fuckwit, it don’t need an answer.”

  Simp wasn’t stupid—far from it—but it had always suited Carter to have someone to roar at.

  Looking down at the map, at the curving coastline between Folkestone and Dungeness, he said, “Well, they must have turned up someplace. So either they’re still sitting on a beach somewhere or some clever cunt can’t believe his luck. I’m telling you, whoever it is, their fucking luck’ll change when I get hold of ’em!” He squinted down at the map and jabbed his finger into the middle of Stickle. “What’s this place?” Removing his finger, Carter bent over the little splotch of land. “Look at the end of that place!” He beckoned Simp over. “Look at that! The beach at the end of that island is like a fucking scoop. Fuck me, if anything gets fucking blown off fucking course, I bet it ends up there. Get the limo, let’s go to Kent and have a look.”

  At the door, Simp stopped. “Shall I get the boys?”

  Carter shook his head. “No. Let’s go down quiet like and have a gander, see what’s what. We can always send the boys down later.”

  6

  Using the forklift on the front of the tractor, Si loaded the bales onto the trailer. Dick Stick and D.C. waved their arms, but when he had to turn with the heavy trailer on the wet sand, he took Petal’s instructions, and she rode in the tractor with him back to the farm. One side of her was pushed up against him in the narrow cab. They didn’t talk, but Si was happy. In the barn, Si and D.C. covered the bales with a couple of big blue tarps.