The Kingdom by the Sea (6 page)

Harry’s arms just moved of their own accord. He grabbed the fence-post with both hands, raised it high above his head, and hit the farmer. He meant to hit him on the head, on his bulgy cap; but he missed and hit him in the small of the back.

The farmer gave a terrible yell, and fell down. The gun went off along the ground, raising an enormous cloud of dust and grass, cutting a long swathe through the stubble of the field. But Don was no longer anywhere near. Don was off and running, his ears down.

There was a silence. Then the farmer slowly turned his head.

“Christ, kid… I think you’ve broken me back.” He didn’t look insane now; he looked very pale and ill and feeble. The freckles stood out on his nose like spots of blood. He tried to raise himself on his hands, managed about six inches, and fell back. “Kid, help me,” he said. He
had little sandy eyelashes on thick white eyelids. Harry hated him. He was a disgusting object. He’d tried to kill Don, and now he was pleading like a baby. But he’d try to kill Don again, given half a chance…

“Get lost!” shouted Harry. He turned away and grabbed his blankets and attachè case, and ran off down the road. Don, thinking it was a game, came racing past him.

“Kid,” shouted the farmer desperately. “Kid.” He shouted many times, but Harry just kept on running.

Quarter of a mile further on, at the bend in the road, he looked back.

The farmer had managed to haul himself to his feet against the tractor, but was just standing there.

At least his back
wasn’t
broken.

Harry ran on, reached a crossroad, and took the turning for Newbigin-by-the-Sea. His dad had told him about Newbigin; it was a fishing port. It didn’t seem a place that a farmer would go. Soon after he crossed the River Wansbeck, he left the road and headed down to the sea.

He found what he was looking for; an old upturned boat on the beach, bleached grey with age and splitting at the seams. Making sure nobody was watching he got the dog under it, and tied him firmly to a thwart, by his lead. They lay there for the rest of the day, while Harry watched through the cracks for farmers and policemen. There wasn’t a sign of either. Only one
old man, beachcombing for sea-coal, who went home with a full dripping sack, when the sun had begun to set.

It was the smell of real fish and chips, wafted on the northeast breeze from Newbigin that finally lured Harry out after dark. He left the dog tied up, and followed his nose till he found the chip shop. The shop was nearly empty, and the old lady behind the counter was so busy chatting to her crony that she served him without a glance. He got another bottle of Tizer too.

The fish was smashing; but then Newbigin was a fishing village where the boats still went out every day, for rock salmon and rock turbot. The dog enjoyed his fish as well.

On the edge of sleep, Harry thought how right it felt, to be bedding down under a boat again. With the dog. It felt like the only way he had ever lived now. Other bits of him seemed to have dropped off during the day. He tried to think of Dad and Mam and Dulcie and the old days, but the pictures wouldn’t come. But he didn’t worry. They were buried somewhere, deep and safe in his mind. He’d be able to think about them again. Some day. For now he had the sound of the sea, and a full belly, and warm blankets. And Don. And for the first time, that was enough.

The rain caught them on the move. They were travelling by night now, since the business with the farmer. Harry’s fear of farmers and policemen was very great.

The rain didn’t catch Harry without warning. There was a warning in the change of sounds, in the silence. Every noise came to him as clear as a bell, as they struggled along the fringe of the beach in the dark. A dog barking; voices in the kitchen of a fisherman’s cottage; the very breathing of the sea. And the silences in between were cushioned, velvety.

And then there was a warm damp pressure on his left cheek. He knew that rain was coming. But there was nowhere to run to. No upturned boats, no abandoned
sheds, not even a shallow cave in the low cliff. Nothing. He tried to hurry in the dark, but that just meant he tripped up more often.

The stars were wiped out one by one, starting with the ones in the west. When half the stars were gone, the first huge dollop of rain smacked him in the face.

He stood, for a moment, full of rage and despair.

“No,” he shouted. “Oh, no.” But there was no one to hear, no one to help. All he could do was press on.

The dollops came more often, and then they came in a drumming roar on the sand. It was like having a hose-pipe turned on you. His hair settled in streaks across his eyes, dribbling slightly salty water straight into his mouth. The water began to get inside the collar of his raincoat, then it ran down his back. It broke in through the raincoat at his shoulders, where the strap of the blankets pressed, making his goose-fleshed skin crawl and shudder. Soon it was running down his legs, and sloshing in his shoes, and everything was sodden. There came a time when he gaspingly knew that he couldn’t get any wetter. His clothes began to chafe his flesh like wet ropes; the handle of the attachè case grew too slippery to hold, so he kept on dropping it. He knew the blankets must be getting sodden too, for they grew heavier and heavier, and the strap cut more and more.

Don just plodded along beside him, occasionally shaking himself to get the water out of his coat.

Everything was melting away. All his plans, all his hopes, all his sense. Except a stubborn voice that went on telling him to keep going, keep going…

He would have walked straight past the place in his misery; he had given up looking around, the rain beat in his eyes too much. But the dog stopped, and looked left, and sniffed. So Harry looked too.

There was a dip in the low cliff, a sheltered tiny cove with a little leaping stream, and what looked like three or four small abandoned railway carriages, without their wheels, dotted about. There were no lights in them; no smoke coming from their chimneys. The night sky showed through their big windows.

A last savage burst of energy drove him up the bank of the stream, slipping and slithering. His foot went into the stream and didn’t feel any wetter, though the mud on the bottom sucked at his shoe treacherously, and he almost lost it. Then he was in the lee of the first carriage; the rain stopped battering in his face, and he came to his senses.

He tried a door on the first carriage, but it was locked. He tried all that carriage’s doors; they were all locked. But he could see, through the carriage windows, tantalising objects in the gloom. Beds and heaps of blankets, a cast
iron stove, a box of knives and forks.

He ran across and tried the next carriage. That was locked too. But he saw deckchairs piled, and aluminium pots and pans on a paraffin stove, even a pile of foodtins in an open cupboard. There was shelter in there, and dry blankets and food. So close. Only a sheet of glass away.

He crossed to the third carriage, and the wind and rain hit him with renewed ferocity, so he staggered and fell down. His mind was a roaring turmoil. He would die… the dog would die. They had a right to live… as much right as these people who owned these holiday railway carriages. They had another home somewhere. They weren’t out in this storm. He made up his mind he would smash the glass on the last carriage, if it was locked.

The door opened as he turned the handle. He splashed back for his bundles.

“Come on, boy!”

The dog needed no second telling. They were out of the storm with the door shut in a flash. The storm was only screaming round the corners of the carriage, and the rain lashing harmlessly against the great windows, and drumming on the roof. The whole place smelt musty, as if nobody had lived there for a long time.

There was a great brass paraffin lamp, hanging from the ceiling. He knew the sort; his gran had once had one just
like it. He swung it; plenty of paraffin glugged inside. He lifted out the glass funnel carefully, because he was shivering all over. Remembered which way to turn the little brass wheels, so the wicks came up, instead of vanishing down inside.

He groped the attachè case open, and felt for the matches he’d had so long ago. They were still dry; it was a good attachè case. But his hands were wet, and that might spoil the matches. He found something in the dark to dry them on; it took a long time to dry them; the rain seemed to have soaked right inside them, as if they were a sodden dishcloth.

A golden light sprang up and lit the carriage. And he immediately panicked about the blackout. But there were thick, thick curtains. He felt their dusty dryness as he drew them. Safe.

It was then he saw the piece of writing, propped up against a flower vase on the little table. It was on a piece of thick white cardboard, probably cut from a shoebox. It said,

There was a framed photograph by the side of the note, propped up on its little leg at the back. It was of a vicar in his dog-collar and his wife and two little girls. They were all smiling at the camera, in a broad friendly way. They looked nice.

Harry stared around. The carriage was just one big room, except for a plank wall with a door at one end; beyond the door was a little table with an enamel bowl and ewer, and a lot of hooks on the wall. All the railway seats were gone; but there was a wood-stove with paper and sticks and coal, a big table with plates, easy chair and bunk-beds made up with sheets.

It was weird, like Goldilocks in the house of the three bears. He was almost afraid to touch anything, except the family kept smiling at him from the photograph, as if urging him on.

A big shiver warned him to get out of his sopping clothes; besides, they were dripping on the floor, making puddles. He tossed them down in the enamel basin and wrapped himself in a brown blanket. After that, there was the dog to dry, the stove to light, a huge tin of baked beans to open and share. So much to do, and he was so
weary.
But at last he could crawl into a bunk, leaving all his wet things to steam on chairs round the glowing stove. It was on the verge of sleep that he remembered the bargain he had struck.

“Please, God, keep Jack, Harriet, Susan and Shirley safe.”

He had a fleeting image of their smiling faces as he lay with his eyes shut.

Then he had an image of his own house bombed flat, smelling of gas and burning with little low blue flames.

God didn’t seem to have anything to say in reply.

But then God, in Harry’s experience, never had.

He stayed two days; two days of endless rain. He stayed warm and snug. He got everything nice and dry, though his trousers seemed to have shrunk a bit. His old mates would’ve said they were flying at half-mast.

He ate the food; Spam, corned beef and endless baked beans. Even tinned peaches, which he hated and the dog wouldn’t touch. He felt very guilty, every tin he ate, but
what could he do? Every tin he opened, he looked at the family for reassurance. They went on smiling at him. He seemed to get to know them very well. He read all the girls’ comics. The little one must have read
Puck.
The eldest seemed to like boys’ comics, like
Hotspur
and
Adventure.
The mother had read
Woman’s Weekly
, but all the vicar had left behind was a big black Bible and a copy of
The Pilgrim’s Progress.
By the second afternoon he had read everything else, and was reduced to looking up the dirty bits in the Bible, where so-and-so lay with so-and-so. Then he looked at the ever-smiling family on the table, and felt deeply ashamed.

He found
The Pilgrim’s Progress
not much easier. But there was one bit that took his fancy.

“I saw a man clothed with rags… with his face from his own house… and a book in his hand and a great burden on his back. I looked and I saw him open the book and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled… and broke out with a lamentable cry saying, ‘What shall I do?’”

That was his own state really, wasn’t it? It was a slight comfort to realise people had been in this kind of jam before; that there was a name for it.

“I’m a pilgrim,” he said out loud, liking the word. “Pilgrim.”

The third morning dawned bright and clear. He got up the moment he wakened, the moment he realised the rain had stopped. He flung back the curtains, and the old blue sky was back, horizon to horizon. There was a mist out to sea, that meant it was going to be a really hot day. The dog pleaded urgently to go out, relieved itself, then began running madly in circles round the carriages. It was ready for the road, and so was he. But he left with care; piled his bags outside first, then cleaned out the stove, made the bed, swept and dusted. He thought it looked pretty good; just like it had been, when he arrived. He wrote a note saying, “Thank you. A pilgrim.” He hovered, undecided whether to leave a ten-shilling note under the photograph, or a pound. In the end he settled for a pound, he had eaten an awful lot, and it was on the ration.

He was just picking up the attachè case, when he saw the old man coming up from the beach. He was not in the least afraid of the old man. He had silver hair, and walked painfully with a stick. A puff of wind would have blown him away. It would be hours before the old man could get to the police…

“Morning,” said the old man, coming up to the door. “That’s a grand dog you’ve got.” The old man’s eyes were very sharp. Took in Harry’s face, his clothes, his luggage, and the pound note on the table, all in one glance. “Thanks for leaving the pound note.”