Fortnight of Fear (19 page)

He called Roger Herbert, his sales manager in York,
and said that he wasn't feeling well, and that he would spend one more night on Jersey. Roger sounded irritated but there wasn't much that he could do about it. “Wasn't something you ate, was it?” he asked. “You should watch the shellfish. My mother was almost killed by a whelk.”

Bryan bought himself a L'Horizon sweatshirt and pair of baggy running shorts and went for a walk across the beach.

This morning, children were building castles and roads out of the same sand from which the man had fashioned his monster crab. Bryan knelt down by the rocks and self-consciously made his own crab, only a small one, but as realistic as he could manage, patting the sand smooth and hard. He sat and watched the crab for almost twenty minutes but it didn't stir. Of course the man had told him that the sand only came to life at night, but it had been worth a try.

He spent the day sightseeing. He visited the dank warren of whitewashed tunnels that the Nazis had used during the war as an underground hospital. Then he wandered around a shoddy decrepit selection of plants and plaster statues that was supposed to be Gardens of All Lands. It was unbearably hot and stuffy inland, and so he drove to Jersey's north shore and stood on the cliffs and watched the sea.

Far below him, down on the beach, he saw a small Highland terrier dashing and up and down, just like the dog that his uncle had given him when he was a boy; and that gave him an idea.

Darkness seemed to be reluctant to fall that evening. Bryan took a can of beer on to the beach and sat on the rocks and waited. At last the pedaloes were dragged ashore; and the last of the topless girls came in from the surf, a huge-breasted blonde accompanied by a spiky-haired boyfriend who looked as if he would gratuitously garrotte anybody who even so much as glanced at her.

Then it was night, and Bryan was alone on the beach, on the sailors' sand, with the man's torch and a blue plastic spade that he had bought from the souvenir shop. He wedged the torch in the rocks, so that he could see what he was doing. Then he knelt down, and began to dig. It took him about quarter of an hour to fashion a small terrier out of sand, sitting with its paws neatly in front of it, and its ears perked up. He carefully drew its fur with a discarded lollipop stick, and gave it wide, appealing eyes. When he had finished he stood up and admired it.

He opened another can of Tennent's and stood beside the dog and waited. The wind from the sea was dark and warm; more like a restless dream than a wind. He checked his watch. It was only ten past ten. He wondered how drunk he had been last night. Maybe he had imagined that man and his monster crab. Pink champagne had always made him a little mad; even madder than Tennent's, or Carslberg Special Brew.

He waited an hour and nothing happened. The terrier remained a sand terrier. In the end, growing chilled and hungry, he left the rocks and walked back to the hotel. He went up to his room and changed into his navy-blue blazer and gray slacks. Before he went down to the bar, though, he went out on to his balcony and stared out at the darkened beach. He whistled, softly at first, then a little louder. “Come on, boy. Come on, boy!”

The sea shushed; the wind made the strings of lights dance. He closed the balcony door and went down to the bar to see if he could find himself a spare bit of talent to chat up.

Shortly after two o'clock that morning, something woke him up. He opened his eyes and listened intently. It wasn't the sea. It wasn't the awning over the hotel balcony, ruffling and slapping in the breeze. It was more like a
scratching
noise.

He sat up. He heard it again.
Skrittch
,
skkrittch
,
skkritch
at his bedroom door.

He climbed out of bed, and walked across to the door in nothing but his pajama bottoms. He listened again.
Skrittch
,
skkritcch
,
skkritch
, and a high-pitched whining.

He opened the door with a cold feeling of delight and alarm, and there it was. The sand terrier; still sandy-colored; but alive; and real; and sitting up to beg.

He knelt down in the corridor and cautiously stroked the little dog's head. It jumped up and down and wagged its tail and tried to lick his hand.

“You're real,” he whispered. “I made you, and you're real.”

He felt extraordinary; sober and strange and incredibly elated. “Here, boy,” he called the terrier. “Here, boy, come on boy!”

He picked the dog up and it wriggled wildly in his arms, its tail lashing against his chest. “You're terrific,” he told it. “You're terrific. What the hell am I going to call you? How the hell am I going to get you back to the mainland? You're amazing!”

He was just about to go back into his room when the night porter appeared at the end of the corridor. “Sir?” he called.

Bryan kept on stroking the terrier's head. “Everything's fine, thanks.”

“I'm sorry, sir, but no dogs permitted.”

“Oh … I didn't know. I'm sorry. He's only a little one, very well behaved.”

The night porter looked at the wriggling terrier, unimpressed. “I'm sorry, sir. Hotel rules. No dogs; not even by arrangement.”

“Well, what am I going to do with him? I can't just let him go.”

“We have a kennel downstairs, sir, in the luggage room. I can take him down there for the night, but
you'll have to make alternative arrangements tomorrow.”

“All right, then,” Bryan agreed, handing the little dog over. “You'll make sure he gets something to eat, though, won't you?”

The night porter gave him a tightly-stretched smile. “I believe the grill room has some hamburgers left over, sir.”

With that, he carried the dog away. Bryan closed the door of his room, and thought: I've got a dog. I've actually got a dog. I made it out of sand, and it came alive and found me.

He switched on his bedside light, and then opened up his mini-bar and took out a beer. Who cared if it was two o'clock in the morning. This called for a drink!

He was standing by the bed, swallowing ice-cold beer out of the can, when his gaze wandered across the room to the copy of
Men Only
lying open on the desk. A blonde with breasts even larger than the girl on the beach was smiling back at him, her thighs wide apart. He swallowed more beer. He didn't take his eyes off the photograph.

Early the next morning, he went down to the porter's office to collect the little dog.

“I've come for my dog,” he told the sandy-haired porter.

“I'm sorry, sir?”

“The night porter took my dog last night and put it in the kennel in the luggage-room.”

“Oh, certainly, sir. Please wait.”

The porter disappeared, and then returned looking flushed. “I'm sorry, sir. Your dog doesn't seem to be there.”

“You haven't let it out?”

The porter shook his head. “The luggage room has been locked all night, sir. It always is.”

“Let me take a look,” Bryan insisted.

He went behind the counter and into the luggage room. At the far end stood a large green-painted kennel, with a wire door, fastened with a loop and a nail. Bryan knelt down in front of it, and peered inside.

“As you see, sir,” the porter remarked. “No dog.”

But on the floor of the kennel was a half-eaten hamburger patty; and in the opposite corner, a small heap of dry white sand. The terrier
had
been put in here; and it hadn't escaped. But it looked as if the sailors' sand could only live and breathe by night.
Yours till morning
, the man had said.

“Do you want me to make some inquiries, sir?” the porter asked him. “I could talk to the night porter, if he hasn't yet gone to bed.”

Bryan shook his head. “No … don't worry. I think I know what's happened.” He spent all day lying on his bed staring at the girl in
Men Only
. Belinda, from Staffordshire, 40D, likes sculling. Sculling? That must be made up. But she was just the kind of girl who really appealed to him. The face of a princess and the body of a stripper. Fine cheekbones, provocative blue eyes.

And if he were to sculpt Belinda from Staffordshire out of sand, she would be real, and she would be his. She wouldn't belong to some belligerent oick on the beach; or some middle-aged businessman in heavy-rimmed glasses. She would be his. For the night, at least … and in the morning, she would be gone, leaving him without any responsibilities whatsoever, except to brush away the sand he had used to create her.

He stayed at the hotel all day, swimming and exercising and taking saunas. The day seemed to last for ever, and during the afternoon the sun seemed to be staying permanently high in the sky, as if it was refusing even to think about setting.

But at last he was out by the rocks, in the warm and
welcoming darkness, with his torch and two spades and plenty to drink.

He took his time. Belinda had to be perfect. He marked out her height on the sand, 5ft 4ins, then he carefully dug and smoothed and patted and shaped. It was almost half-past eleven by the time he had finished. He knelt in the sand beside her, and lightly ran his hand over her breasts and her stomach. In the slanting torchlight, she looked almost alive already.

“Belinda,” he breathed, in her ear. “Can you hear me, Belinda? I love you already.”

He had planned to wait on the beach until she came to life, and to help her back to the hotel. He had even brought a bathrobe to wrap around her. After all, she couldn't walk through the lobby naked. But after he had been sitting beside her for almost an hour, and nothing had happened, he was beginning to wonder if this was such a brilliant idea after all. Maybe the sands could only bring crabs and small animals to life. Maybe it was asking too much, to create a living, breathing human being.

He was still sitting there when he heard a shuffling noise, and he felt electric prickles all around the back of his neck. Then there was another shuffle, and the man in the brown corduroy trousers appeared from behind the rocks.

“You still got my torch,” he declared.

“Yes, I have. I'm sorry.”

“Well, I want it back.”

“Of course.”

The man came closer, and peered around the darkened beach. “What you doing out here? You aint making nothing?”

“No, of course not.”

“You shouldn't try making nothing. You'll never know what harm you can do, trying to make things.”

“I was out for a walk, that's all.”

“Long as you wasn't making nothing.”

Bryan had no choice. To divert the man away from his sculpture of Belinda, he took hold of his bony elbow and said, “Why don't you join me? I'm going for a drink.”

The man coughed, and spat, and sniffed. “Don't care if I do.”

Together they walked back to the hotel. The wind was rising, and it was growing chillier. Bryan glanced anxiously behind him. Let's hope that Belinda doesn't come to life before I can get rid of this bloody pest. Let's hope she doesn't start wandering around looking for me, stark naked.

He didn't notice the two joggers, panting their way across the sands in the darkness. Even if he had, he wouldn't have thought anything much about it, even when they jogged around the rocks, their training-shoes leaving deep impressions in the sand.

It took three pints of Guinness and a large Bells to get rid of his unwelcome friend. The man coughed and laughed and talked too loudly about the old days in Jersey, and how he used to play practical jokes on the Germans during the Occupation, letting down the tires of their motorbikes, and pouring yacht varnish into their coffee. Obviously he was a well-known local nuisance, because the hotel waiters treated him with contempt bordering on out-and-out hostility.

Eventually, he staggered off along the esplanade. Bryan waited until he was out of sight, then ran down the steps and sprinted across the beach. For God's sake, tell me I'm not too late. But as soon as he came around the rocks he could see that Belinda was still there – or what was left of Belinda.

The joggers had run right across her, plunging deep footprints into her stomach, her left breast, and her face. Where those big wide eyes and that upturned nose had
once been, there was nothing but the impression of a size-10 sole.

Dispirited, tired, Bryan picked up his discarded bathrobe and brushed the sand off it. There was obviously no point in trying to repair the damage. The sands might be the stuff of life for crabs and puppies, but obviously its powers didn't stretch to creating human beings.

He gave the sand-sculpture a last resentful kick in the knee, and then trudged slowly back across the beach. He could hear dreary, pedestrian dance music wafting from the hotel dining-room, half-swallowed by the wind and the sea. This time he didn't look back.

He drank a beer, watched half of
Three Men And A Baby
on video, then stiffly undressed and climbed into bed. Lying in the darkness, he kept thinking about the man with his monster crab, and the terrier that he had made. He could still remember what its tail had felt like, slapping against his chest. How that could have been fashioned from sand, and then fallen back into sand, he couldn't imagine.

Maybe the man had been right. Maybe there
are
miracles.

He slept. He dreamed he was walking along the shoreline. He heard the sea, dragging and shuffling its way across the sand. Dragging and shuffling, dragging and shuffling. It sounded almost like somebody dragging themselves along the corridor outside his room. Somebody maimed, somebody disfigured beyond all human imagination.

He opened his eyes. Was he still dreaming? He thought he had heard something softly collide with his door. He listened for a while, then he switched on the light and climbed out of bed. He went close to the door, and strained his ears. He was sure that he could hear breathing
outside, but it was more like an animal breathing than a human. Thick and distorted and infinitely labored.