Bones Under The Beach Hut (2 page)

    Renting
one of Smalting's beach huts was just another symbol of how deeply they were
digging their roots into the new environment.

    And
then one day at the beginning of May, Mark had walked out. That was all the
information Carole had. Maybe Jude knew more, but client confidentiality or
perhaps a wish to protect the woman's privacy had stopped her from revealing anything
else. What

    Carole
did gather, though, was that her boyfriend's departure had not only shattered
Philly emotionally, but also left her in dire financial straits. There hadn't
turned out to be much freelance work for a graphic designer in West Sussex and,
having lost Mark's substantial contribution to their mortgage payments, Philly
felt the threat of repossession looming.

    As a
result, she was trying to realize the value of any assets she could. The Range Rover
was sold and replaced with an eight-year-old Nissan. The sailing dinghy was
advertised for sale, but had yet to find a buyer. And Philly had confided to
Jude that if she could recoup any of the annual rental they'd paid for the
beach hut - some six hundred and fifty pounds - that too would be welcome.

    Needless
to say, it was Jude who'd suggested the idea to her neighbour. Up until that
point Carole would have reckoned she had no need for a beach hut. She could
never see herself as a 'hutter' (as the users were inevitably called). Beach
huts were for visitors, families from London perhaps, who needed somewhere to
store all their impedimenta for days at the seaside. For someone like her,
living only a few hundred yards from the sea at High Tor in Fethering High
Street, renting a beach hut would be a pointless indulgence.

    But
that was before Carole knew that her granddaughter Lily was coming to stay in
Fethering for a week that summer. Lily was the new element in Carole's life,
whose existence had gone some way to thawing the permafrost of her
grandmother's emotions. Not blessed with natural maternal instincts, Carole
reckoned she had failed in the upbringing of her only child Stephen. He had
reacted to her emotional distance - and perhaps to his parents' divorce - by
building up a carapace of his own. Burying himself in his work (which involved
money and computers in a relationship his mother could never quite understand),
he too had minimized engagement with his fellow human beings. But marriage to
the vivacious Gaby had changed all that, and the arrival of Lily had also
contributed to the humanization of Stephen Seddon. He was never going to be the
relaxed life and soul of any party, but family life had saved him from the
route of total desiccation on which he seemed to have been set.

    And
though Carole was very cautious in assessing her emotional reactions to
everything, what she felt for Lily did seem wonderfully spontaneous. Somehow,
without the worries about her competence as a parent, which had dogged her
during Stephen's childhood, Carole did have the feeling of starting something
new, the possibility that her instinctive attraction to her granddaughter
represented something that she had never experienced before - uncomplicated
love.

    A visit
from Stephen and family to High Tor on Christmas Day had been successfully
achieved, and now a pattern had emerged of their meeting up every six weeks or
so, either in Fethering or at Stephen and Gaby's house in Fulham. At times
Carole still couldn't believe how well she got on with her daughter-in-law, but
Gaby had a generous and inclusive personality.

    While
recognizing that Carole was not necessarily easy, she managed to achieve a
relaxed relationship with her mother-in-law, whose basis was their mutual
adoration of Lily.

    Happy
with the way things were going, Carole was still amazed when Gaby proposed that
she and Lily should come and stay in Fethering for a whole week. At the end of
June Stephen had a work commitment that was going to take him to New York, and
his wife reckoned Lily was just at the age to appreciate a seaside holiday. The
little girl was starting to toddle and although the flat, slow gradient of
Fethering Beach didn't offer any rock pools, it still offered sufficient riches
of wavelets and worm casts and seaweed to fascinate a two year old.

    Carole
made no prevarication when the suggestion was made. She told Gaby it was a
great idea, but once everything had been agreed she went through much anxiety
about the forthcoming visit. Carole Seddon was one of those people whose forays
into society had to be shored up with periods sequestered in High Tor with only
Gulliver for company. The thought of someone - even someone as easy as Gaby -
sharing her home for a week was a troubling one. Would the two of them still
get on after such sustained exposure to each other? And would there be enough
going on in Fethering to satisfy the demands of a toddling two year old?

    It
was just after she had begun to ask herself these questions that Jude suggested
her taking over Philly Rose's beach hut. The timing was perfect. Philly had
proposed her paying for just a month to see how the arrangement worked out, but
Carole, in an atypical moment of extravagance, had said no, she'd pay for the
whole year. Given her financial situation, it was no surprise that Philly
didn't argue.

    These
negotiations had been conducted through Jude. Carole had yet to meet Philly
Rose, and she was happy about that. She suffered from that very English
unwillingness to conduct financial dealings face to face, which is of course
why estate agents in England do so well.

    But,
with the agreement made and her cheque safely in Philly Rose's bank account,
Carole felt she could treat
Quiet Harbour
as her own. Though she still
had some anxiety about the legality of the subletting arrangement, she did not
ultimately regret her decision. According to local Fethering gossip, beach huts
along that part of the South Coast were highly sought after, and there was a
long waiting list of aspiring purchasers and renters.

    And
now, rather to her amazement, Carole Seddon was about to become a hutter.

    The
deal with Philly Rose was concluded at the beginning of June, but it took a
couple of weeks before Carole plucked up the courage to visit her acquisition. A
new owner of a beach hut in Smalting must of necessity be an object of
curiosity for the more established users. Everyone would be bound to look at
her.

    But
eventually Carole had to overcome her misgivings and bite the bullet. It was a
Tuesday in mid-June. Gaby and Lily would be arriving for the start of their
seaside holiday on the following Sunday week. If Carole was going to look
vaguely competent as the denizen of a beach hut (would she ever get to the
point of thinking of herself as a hutter?), she needed to have a few dry runs.
And she had nearly a fortnight to make it look as though beach-hut life was
second nature to her.

    Because
of her disquiet about potential illegality, Carole had spent much time
consulting the website of Fether District Council to check local by-laws.
(Having for a long time resisted the lure of computers, she had finally
succumbed, and with the zeal of a convert was now in a relationship with her
laptop which made many happy marriages look inadequate.) She was relieved not
to find on the website any ruling that specifically prohibited subletting of
beach huts, and her researches also brought her another bonus piece of
information. Dogs were allowed on Smalting Beach.

    She
was quite surprised by this. Carole knew there were beaches in Bognor, Felpham
and Littlehampton where no dogs were allowed during the summer. And she would
have expected a place as refined as Smalting to be very strict in such matters.
The idea of dogs fouling their precious sand must have been anathema to the
gentry of the village. But according to the website there were no restrictions,
even in the summer months when the beach would be crowded with visiting
families. Carole eventually decided the reason for this anomaly. Most of the
inhabitants of Smalting probably were dog owners themselves and so would lobby
against anything that might curb their own pets' movements.

    Anyway,
she was cheered by the thought that she could have the support of Gulliver
during her first experimental day at the beach hut.

    Carole
had once again fallen into the error so common among shy people - the idea that
everyone is watching their every movement. But when she pitched up at Smalting
Beach with her tote bag and Labrador, nobody took a blind bit of notice. Though
the beach was quite full, mostly families with very small children taking
advantage of the relative calm before the schools broke up, they were all too
preoccupied with their splashings and sandcastles to register the newcomer
undoing the padlocks of
Quiet Harbour.

    The
blue double doors at the front went virtually the entire width of the hut.
Across them a stainless- steel bar was fitted into slots and padlocked at
either end. There was also a padlock on the staple and hasp where the two doors
met, so there were three keys on the yellow plastic-tagged ring that Jude had
got from Philly Rose. In spite of the protective rubber covers that fitted over
the slots, the salt air had got in and the keys were hard to turn. When she had
finally - and with difficulty - opened the doors, she fixed the hooks that hung
from them into the rings at the sides of the hut.

    Carole
dared to let Gulliver off the lead while she examined her property. Though he
was unfamiliar with Smalting Beach, she knew he wouldn't stray too far away
from her.

    The
interior of
Quiet Harbour
was very neat and not a little poignant.
Everything in it seemed to be designed for two: a pair of folded director's
chairs, a small camping table. From pegs on the wall hung two snorkels,
flippers, large for him, small for her, and a set of two plastic rackets with a
foam ball. On a shelf at the back stood a Camping Gaz double burner and a row
of sealed plastic containers, which turned out to contain cutlery and basics
such as tea bags and sachets of instant coffee. There were two large and two
small bright red plastic plates and a pair of mugs with humorous inscriptions:
'MR STUD' and 'SEXY LADY'. Everything in the hut was a celebration of the
relationship between Philly Rose and Mark Dennis; the relationship he had
walked out of.

    The
floor was covered by an offcut of newish- looking, clean green carpet, on which
Carole's flip-flops left sandy marks when she entered the hut. She opened up
one of the chairs and set it just inside the doorway. In time she would venture
out on to the beach, but she wanted to make an unobtrusive start. And the
position where she'd put her chair would get plenty of sun. It was a beautiful
June day, one of those which should have presaged a perfect summer. But Carole
Seddon had lived in England too long to be over-optimistic about that hope
being realized.

    Not
knowing that the burner would be there, she had brought a thermos of hot black
coffee with her and she poured herself a cup. Out of her tote bag she drew her
copy of
The Times
and turned to the back of the main section for the
crossword. She felt the familiar tug of annoyance at the positioning of the
puzzle. In the old days, before
The Times
went tabloid, the crossword
was always on the back page with the clues beside it, so that the paper could
be folded to reveal both elements at the same time. Whereas now, it was on the
penultimate page with the grid and the clues on separate halves so that, unless
you had the paper flat on a table you had to keep turning the folded sheets.
Why was it, wondered Carole in exasperation, that people keep wanting to change
things that were already working perfectly well?

    Even
as she had the thought, she realized how crusty she would have sounded if she'd
said the words out loud. But it didn't worry her too much. Carole Seddon was
getting to the stage in life when she reckoned a little crustiness was entirely
justified. And of all the things in the world to which a crusty response was
justified, meddling with
The Times
crossword stood head and shoulders
above the rest.

    'Tristram,
do stand up straight. Just because you're in your bathers, there's no need to
be slovenly.'

    From
her perch inside
Quiet Harbour,
Carole could not see the owner of the
over-elocuted female voice that issued this command from the adjacent beach hut
- called
Seagull's Nest
- but its addressee was in clear vision. A boy
of about five, wearing bright red shorts and a martyred expression,
straightened his shoulders. 'Yes, Granny,' he said balefully.

    'And
Hermione's right down by the sea! You really should keep an eye on her, Nell.'

    'Yes,
Deborah, all right.' A harassed-looking, chubby young woman in a one-piece
swimsuit appeared in Carole's eyeline, hurrying down to the edge of the wavelets
where a blonde-haired toddler in a swimming nappy sat doing no harm to herself
or anyone else. The child was absorbed in patting at the sand with a plastic
spade and seemed uninterested in her mother's appearance by her side. Soon her
brother, the one saddled for life with the name of Tristram, joined them and
the three got into a routine of splashing games. Carole began to feel almost
excited at the prospect of Lily doing the same, in less than a fortnight's
time.