The Sandfather Page 14

  Remembering that he’d turned it off, Hal delved into his pocket. As soon as he’d entered his code, the symbol for Voicemail came up - two messages.

  The first from Mum: ‘Hal, call me, please. Soon as you can.’

  And the second from Aunt Jude: ‘Hal, where are you? Ring me as soon as you get this. Are you on your way back? I’ll come and fetch you if not. And leave your phone on, this time.’

  What was the fuss about? It seemed to have happened a long time ago - the confrontation with Wesley, the call to Mum, the stomping off. He wished he could forget it, wipe the whole Wesley thing from his mind. Wesley wasn’t his dad. So what? A week ago he’d never even heard of Wesley. This weird scene with Don made it all seem slightly unreal.

  He didn’t want to be fetched. Didn’t want to go back yet, either. There were more important things going on here.

  ‘I’ll stay and—’ he began, then realised he was speaking to an empty hut. Don had gone.

  Standing on the doorstep, Hal gazed in all directions. He saw a few dog-walkers down on the beach, someone flying a kite, a family playing volleyball. No sign of Don. He hadn’t gone down for a swim, then - his yellow oilskin would have been conspicuous, left on the beach. Wasn’t walking along the coast path, either.

  Hal’s first thought was that he was out of his depth, here. Didn’t know what Don might do. Best to ring Aunt Jude and get her to come down and take charge.

  But maybe Don had only gone for a pee, in the bushes behind the hut. Hal knew that Don often did that rather than walk along to the public loos, some way back in the promenade car park.

  Deciding to straighten things up a bit while he waited, Hal went back to the chaos of paintings and wrappings all over the floor. Moony lay there, compelling him to gaze at it, pulling him towards the moon’s cratered surface.

  What now? He couldn’t leave it there, visible to anyone who happened to glance through the door. He cleared away the tatters of bubble-wrap, the spawn-like shreds of it, and found an old Tesco bag for rubbish. He swathed the painting in corrugated card, folding and patching, securing it with parcel-tape.

  Next, the boards Don had scrawled over. Hal thought he’d better get them out of sight, or Don might start again, defacing more of his work. These were small enough to fit into a large plastic bag, which Hal stowed on the lower shelf. Then he replaced all the rest, all the sketches and paintings he and Don between them had hauled out.

  He began on the table-top, tidying as best he could. He threw away the cigarette packet and the pencil sharpenings, stood the paintbrushes in a jar and the pencils in a mug, put all the newspaper clippings and postcards in one heap. A kitchen broom was lying behind the sofa; Hal swept the floor, swept out the sand that had been trodden or blown in to gather in corners and in the cracks between the floorboards. He even took the rug outside and gave it a shaking. He washed the mugs in cold water from the big plastic bottle Don used for topping-up, then filled the kettle, ready to make a hot drink when Don came back.

  He felt quite proud of all this sorting and tidying. Mum would have been astonished.

  But still no Don.

  Looking out of the door, Hal saw Czeszka wandering along the tideline, trailing a piece of orange netting in one hand. He was about to go back in and pretend not to have seen her when she looked up and waved.

  How determined she was! He’d cleared off and left her, yesterday, but she seemed to hold no grudge. Apparently she’d decided they were friends, and nothing he did could shake her in that. She hurried up, trailing the netting; she smiled her wide smile.

  ‘Is your grandfather? This artist man?’

  ‘No!’ Hal moved aside, letting her see in. ‘He’s not my grandfather. He’s - a friend.’

  ‘He is artist, much famous. Gregor tells me,’ Czeszka said solemnly.

  ‘Yes, but—’ Hal couldn’t begin to explain the gulf between Don’s reputation and the shambling, tearful figure who’d been sitting here on the sofa. ‘He’s not here now. And he doesn’t like people calling him famous. He’s a bit moody.’

  ‘Moody?’

  ‘Up and down.’ Hal made a wave-like motion with his hand.

  ‘Ah. And the other man. Your father. Where is he?’

  Hal shook his head, looked down at the ground. ‘He’s not my father. I got it all wrong.’

  Czeszka frowned. ‘Not? But how you don’t know? Family is so much important. You have family here, yes?’

  ‘Sort of.’ He wasn’t going to start explaining. ‘Let’s go and see what the tide’s brought in.’

  He wanted to shove everything out of his mind again, to run down over the stones, to feel the wind tugging at his hair and salting his face. He threw a clump of seaweed at Czeszka and got a damp faceful in return. He picked up a bit of driftwood and thwacked at the flies that gathered on the drying weed, until the rotting wood split and crumbled into pieces.

  Below the high-tide mark, the sand stretched smooth and unblemished, asking to be written on. With a splinter of wood, he scored letters into the sand.

  USELESS

  RUBBISH

  CRAP

  Czeszka stood back to read each word aloud. She looked at him in puzzlement.

  ‘What is this? Rude words. Angry words. Why are you so much angry, Hal?’

  He said nothing, felt his mouth doing its strange twist.

  ‘Who make you angry?’ Czeszka repeated.

  ‘Everyone. No one. Myself.’ Hal was still holding the sharp wood fragment. He began making a shallow, twisting pattern in the sand.

  Czeszka marched up to USELESS and swept her foot back and forth, obliterating the letters. Faster and faster she stamped. It became a dance, her feet scraping, stamping, skipping. Hal couldn’t help laughing, watching her; then she pulled him in, and he began to stamp and scrape too. Soon nothing was left but a welter of footprints.

  ‘Now. I start again.’ She picked up the stick Hal had dropped, and moved to fresh sand.

  HAL, she wrote. NICE FUNNY FREND.

  Then she signed CZESZKA, and drew a flourish underneath.

  ‘Better. Yes?’

  Hal nodded, though he couldn’t see that it made any difference at all. They were only words. They’d be washed away by the next tide, whether they were good or bad, true or false. And what on earth made her think he was nice and funny? He didn’t feel nice. He only felt—

  His mobile jingled in his pocket. Aunt Jude. Damn! He should have kept it turned off, but now she’d know she wasn’t getting Voicemail. Reluctantly, he accepted the call.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hal, it’s me. Where are you? Didn’t you get my message? Has your mum rung you back? Are you on your way home? Or with Don? Are you on your own?’

  Firing such a barrage of questions, she couldn’t expect answers to all of them. Hal limited himself to the most convenient.

  ‘Uh. At the beach. Near the hut. He was here. Now he’s gone.’

  ‘Don’t go away,’ Aunt Jude instructed him. ‘Stay where you are. I’m coming down.’

  18

  DAMAGE

  Hal and Czeszka were sitting on the hut’s deck, feet on the steps. Czeszka sat hunched, chin and nose tucked inside her zipped front, hood pulled down, so all that could be seen of her was her eyes; Hal’s hands were balled up inside his sleeves. It was too cold to sit doing nothing. He was about to go inside, and in any case he didn’t see why Czeszka was hanging around; he hadn’t asked her to. Then he saw Aunt Jude hurrying along the row of huts, head bent, red scarf flying out.

  ‘Here she is,’ he told Czeszka. ‘My aunt.’

  Aunt Jude looked disconcerted to find someone else with Hal. ‘Oh. I don’t think we’ve met, have we?’

  ‘I am Czeszka. Hal’s friend,’ Czeszka said importantly.

  ‘Chesska?’

  ‘Czeszka. Franczeszka. Full of zs,’ Hal explained.

  ‘Oh! Well, hello, Czeszka,’ said Aunt Jude, in a no-one’s-told-me-about-this sort of way; then she turned to Hal.
‘Have you seen him? Don? The hut door’s open, so I suppose he must be around.’

  ‘I unlocked it, though. He leaves the key under that stone.’ Hal showed her where. ‘It’s stupid, with his paintings in here, the moon one and everything. Anyone could get in here and nick them.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Aunt Jude said sharply. ‘The moon?’

  ‘Yeah, the Moony painting, the famous one. It’s on the shelf there.’

  ‘What? It can’t be! It went missing years ago. I’ve never even seen it. He must have done a copy.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s the one.’ But Hal felt less certain now. ‘At least, he didn’t say it was a copy. He just said it was a heap of old tat.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Aunt Jude was inside now, looking at the easel and the table, bending down to the shelves. ‘What an awful mess! I can’t think how he works in such chaos.’

  Huh! She should have seen it before.

  Carefully, Hal manoeuvred out the heavy painting and tore at the parcel-tape he’d taken such care with. Getting it all stuck round his hands, he reached for the Stanley knife and sliced with that instead. At last the painting lay there, revealed. Aunt Jude moved round to study it from the best angle.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m no expert. Can’t tell if it’s a copy or not.’

  ‘Is amazing! Beautiful!’ Czeszka said, bending close. ‘Amanda tell me about this. She show me and Gregor in a book. Now I see it real, and is better. She would much like for the gallery, I think.’

  Hal explained, ‘Czeszka’s brother works at that new lifeboat centre. Amanda’s the person who came here looking for Don that time.’

  Aunt Jude nodded. ‘I can’t believe Don would ever do a copy of something he’d sold - he’d never do the same thing twice. But fancy him keeping it here like this! How did you know, Hal?’

  ‘He showed me, but then he - uh—’

  Aunt Jude jumped into the pause. ‘He what?’

  ‘He - started going at it with the knife.’

  ‘No!’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘While you were here? He didn’t, though? Didn’t do any damage?’

  Hal shook his head.

  ‘When was this? How long ago?’

  Hal thought. ‘Hour ago? Maybe less?’

  ‘And it was that knife he had, that one there? He hasn’t got a knife with him now?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’ Hal began covering up the Moony picture again.

  ‘I’m going to look for him.’ Aunt Jude was already moving towards the door. ‘D’you want to come with me, Hal, or stay here with, er, Czeszka?’

  She must have thought better of throwing Don out, forgotten the blazing row Don said they’d had. She wanted him back after all.

  ‘I’ll come,’ Hal said, picking up urgency from her tone.

  Aunt Jude jingled the keys in her pocket. ‘We’ll take the car. Czeszka, can I give you a lift home?’

  ‘Thank you, no. I promise help Gregor.’

  Hal locked up, putting the key back under its stone. They walked back to Aunt Jude’s Focus, parked as near as she could get it to the beach huts, and Czeszka set off towards the lifeboat-house.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you’d made a friend.’ Aunt Jude started the engine, and looked over her shoulder before reversing.

  ‘Oh, I’ve met her a couple of times. She hangs out at the beach.’

  ‘Your mum phoned. She told me you’ve been to see Wesley Prince.’ Aunt Jude’s voice was carefully matter-of-fact.

  ‘Don told me you’ve had a blazing row,’ Hal countered.

  ‘Did he? Oh, dear . . . yes. Put your seatbelt on, Hal.’

  ‘He says you’ve chucked him out.’

  She glanced at him. ‘I - I said some awful things. I—’ But she stopped there, biting her lip, shaking her head rapidly. It unnerved Hal. She was always so much in control, so sure of herself.

  Hal had no idea where they’d start looking, or how being in the car would help, but Aunt Jude turned along the narrow road that ran behind the beach huts, heading away from town. She drove slowly, while Hal scanned the scrubby bushes and trees to the landward side.

  ‘He’ll be back. He’ll turn up when he feels like it. I might as well go home and cook the lunch, really, but - Hal, this is all my fault!’

  ‘What is?

  ‘I got it all wrong. I’m sorry, really sorry. I thought Wesley Prince was your father. It was my mistake, Hal. I started all this.’

  ‘He isn’t,’ Hal said, as if the idea were stupid.

  ‘No, I know now. Tina rang me straight after she’d spoken to you. She didn’t know anything about Wesley being here, and I - like a fool - I just assumed. I’d known about Tina and Wesley - they were going out together when I was still here. Then I left for Portugal, and she went off to Manchester. When she told her parents she was pregnant, there was a big row, and she cut herself off from all of us. So I didn’t even know, till the funeral, that your father’s black. When I saw you, I just took it for granted that Wesley was your father.’

  Hal tugged at his seatbelt. ‘But you told Don!’

  ‘I know, and I shouldn’t have. And he had no reason to doubt it. That’s why it was so unfair of me to—’

  They’d arrived at a public parking place, a gravelly area with low cliffs below. Aunt Jude pulled in, got out of the car and scanned the shore in both directions.

  ‘To what?’ Hal prompted, since she’d left her sentence unfinished. ‘Unfair to do what?’

  ‘I lost my temper - really lost it. Told him to get out of the house. Told him he was an interfering old fool, for stirring things up, encouraging you to find Wesley. Said I didn’t want him cluttering up my life anymore. I said . . . awful, horrible things, Hal. And now look!’

  ‘So - that’s all because of me, too?’ Hal said. ‘The row? Because of me going after Wesley?’

  ‘No, you mustn’t blame yourself. I was out of order, the way I ranted. I ought to know he wouldn’t put up with that. Why should he?’

  For the second time, Hal found himself trying to reassure an adult. ‘He’ll be back. He won’t have gone far. I’d have found Wesley anyway, whether Don said or not.’

  ‘I know - all because I’ve been stupid. I shouldn’t have taken it out on him. Perhaps he’s back at the hut by now? Or at home? We’ll drive along a bit farther, then go back. He might have set off on one of his long walks. How did he seem?’

  ‘Oh, you know. A bit, like, flaky. Then he seemed to cheer up, and next minute he was gone.’ He couldn’t tell Aunt Jude that Don had been crying. That had shocked Hal more than he liked to think.

  What he’d said was enough to scare Aunt Jude into silence as they drove back the way they’d come. Any minute now, Hal thought, they’d meet Don shambling along the road, and he’d exchange a few insults with Aunt Jude, and everything would be back to normal.

  Aunt Jude parked in the same place as before, on the sandy slip-road that led down towards the huts. Hal ran ahead, but could already see that the hut door was closed. He pressed his nose against the glass. Inside, everything was just as they’d left it.

  Hal waited for Aunt Jude to catch up.

  ‘Still not here?’ Her face sagged with disappointment.

  ‘Hasn’t he got a mobile? Couldn’t you leave him a voicemail? ’

  ‘No,’ said Aunt Jude, with an effort at smiling. ‘He’s far too pig-headed to have anything so useful. I bought him one for Christmas and he gave it to someone he met on the beach. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Yeah, I can.’

  ‘He’ll be back,’ Aunt Jude said resolutely. ‘He’ll turn up.’

  The more she kept saying that, the more Hal saw how worried she was. How she was only trying to convince herself, to sound like nothing was really wrong. What did she think had happened? Might Don just keep on going, whichever direction he’d taken? Hitch a lift to Portsmouth and get on a boat for France? Simply walk out of their lives?

  ‘He doesn’t usually carry money on him, apart from a bi
t of change,’ Aunt Jude said, as if reading Hal’s thoughts. ‘No bank card or anything like that. He can’t go far, only on his own two feet.’

  ‘What about the police, then? Should you call them?’

  Aunt Jude looked startled. ‘Police? No, no. What would I say? A man’s gone for a walk? They’d tell me to get a grip.’

  ‘P’raps he’s back at home now.’

  ‘Yes.’ Aunt Jude seized on this; she took out her phone, pressed keys and waited, the eagerness on her face fading to despondency. ‘No answer. But he’s quite likely not to pick up even if he’s there, if he’s got himself in a state.’

  ‘Why don’t you drive back and see?’ Hal suggested. ‘I’ll wait here.’

  ‘But I don’t like to - oh well, all right. I’ll come straight back if he’s not there. Your mobile’s on?’

  She hurried to the car. Hal waited in the hut, getting cold all over again. An electric heater stood in one corner and he considered plugging it in, but was too restless to stay. He wanted to produce Don like a prize for Aunt Jude when she returned. He wanted to get something right.

  Outside, he gazed along the length of the beach. They might have missed something, from the car; Don might be meandering along the shore. His eyes strained; he willed Don to appear.

  A splash of brightness leapt out at him. Something yellow, dumped on the pebbles.

  Don’s oilskin! He must be there, swimming, probably, cold though it was. Joyfully, Hal bounded over, skidding on the stones. The tide was coming in now, washing over the words Czeszka had inscribed.

  Hal could already picture Aunt Jude’s relief, and hear the volley of insults she’d fire at Don.

  He gazed out at the sea. Cold, grey and uninviting it looked; but then, Don was used to it. He was as mad as those people Hal had seen on TV, breaking ice to swim on Christmas Day. Hal narrowed his eyes, searching for Don’s bobbing head.

  Immediately he found it - a small dark blob, far out. But he had the feeling that something was wrong. Don, if it was Don, didn’t appear to be swimming, just floating, or treading water. Hal held up a hand and peered again. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks: maybe it wasn’t Don at all, but a floating buoy, or a stray football, bobbing, sometimes hidden in the hollow of the waves. But if that wasn’t Don, then where? Was this what Aunt Jude feared - that he might simply strike out into the vastness, never come back?