The Sandfather Read online

  He picked up his pen, put it down again, began to feel so annoyed with the tock-tock-tocking of the clock that he could have tugged it down from the wall and stamped on its stupid face.

  ‘I hate you.’ He was speaking to his grandfather, and his words shocked him with their loudness, seeming to bounce back at him off the walls. ‘I hope you drop down dead in Spain and never come back.’

  Someone would know what he’d said. His words would re-echo later, and someone would hear them, and know. Edgily he looked around him, at the plum velvet curtains with their tasselled tie-backs, at the display cabinet full of china. He didn’t belong here. Wasn’t wanted. Everything in this over-neat, over-clean, over-silent room seemed to tell him so.

  He had to get out. If he stayed here he’d have to smash something. He slammed his maths book shut and thrust his chair back from the table.

  Aunt Jude had shown him the spare door-key, on a row of hooks near the back door, where old coats hung. Underneath, by the mat, stood walking boots and green wellies. Presuming the wellingtons were his grandfather’s, Hal kicked them over; they sagged sideways, green and limp.

  He could get back before Aunt Jude did. She needn’t know; she could think he’d been doing what he was told, slogging away at his maths. He didn’t fancy getting on the wrong side of her; the set of her mouth and the keenness of her stare told him she could be stern if things didn’t go as she expected.

  But, for now, he’d escaped. He felt a great sense of freedom as he jogged down the cul-de-sac and turned right into Laurel Drive, wider and tree-lined. It was cooler than he’d thought, the air carrying the unmistakable salty lure of the sea, and the cry of gulls. He broke into a run, feeling how his legs wanted to stretch and be strong, his feet carrying him fast down the road. A woman lifting shopping bags from a car boot gave him a curious look, probably wondering why he wasn’t safely locked up in school, on a Monday in term-time. Hal ignored her, his trainers pounding the pavement as he sprinted past.

  He had to get to the sea.

  At the main road, traffic signs pointed to Brighton one way, Chichester and Town Centre the other. Now he could see, over the roofs of bungalows in the street below, the huge stretch of sea, blue-grey, endless. Sunlight and cloud-shadow made its surface change and shimmer. Far out, a bar of golden light lay on the horizon.

  Across the road, a gravelly footpath led between two bungalows and down to the sea-front. This was the way they’d come back from their walk yesterday afternoon, Hal, Aunt Jude and Don. Don’s beach hut was along to the left, beyond the edge of the town, with rough grass and windblown trees behind. Hal was curious about Don, alone there and apparently quite happy with that, but now he wanted the sea to himself. The gulls’ screaming was loud and insistent: sometimes a drawn-out wail, sometimes a shrill repetition, that seemed to promise excitement not far away.

  He’d reached the coast road, the road Mum and Aunt Jude called the promenade. When the tide was at its highest, Aunt Jude said, waves had been known to rear up high, flooding the road. The tide now was halfway in, or halfway out: Hal couldn’t tell which, but then remembered that Don had said something about swimming at high tide later, so it must be coming in. Swimming! He must be a tough old boy. Hal had sometimes swum in the sea, but only in hot summer weather, not like this when wind gusted through the gaps in his clothing. And the sea looked so cold and vast, not bobbing with heads and coloured balls, lilos and swimming dogs, as on those summer beach days.

  Stones clinked and grated beneath his feet. Here, the power of the waves had made banks of shingle. At high tide, Mum had told him, the beach was all pebbles. He could see where the latest tide had reached, marked by clumps of red-brown seaweed, and a discarded plastic spade, bright blue. Below, the shingle gave way to firm sand, streaked with runs of smaller stones. Further still, smoothed by retreating waves, the sand was flattened and firm, with runnels and ripples and occasional small pools hollowed by the tide where a rock was lodged.

  Hal walked. Under his feet the grate and grind gave way to the crunch of gritty sand, then to ribbed firmness. Each footprint pressed out water, then quickly filled. Looking behind him, he saw his tracks following, large sure footprints that could have belonged to someone who knew where he was going.

  When he stood at the very edge of the sea, where the water was no more than a film, he watched how the tiniest waves lifted and surged, then fell back ready for the next push forward, leaving sandy bubbles. After only a few moments he had to pull his feet free and move inshore, or he’d be up to his ankles.

  It was because of the moon, he knew that. They’d done it in science. But he didn’t really understand how the moon pulled and made tides. Without the moon, all the water of the sea would just lie there. There’d be no waves, no surfing, no high and low tide. No sound. The sea was calm today, but still there was wave-sound: just the lift and wash, ripple and fall. It became part of his thoughts, regular, almost hypnotic. Its rhythm seemed part of his mind. Part of the blood pumping through him to his own heartbeat.

  He thought about wading into the sea, just as he was, in all his clothes. Perhaps he’d find he could breathe underwater, grow a fish’s tail, strong and muscular. He’d swim and swim and never come up for air.

  Just a thought. A stupid one. It wouldn’t be like that. But what if he just floated into the water, let it carry him away? Is that how it would be for Mum, having the anaesthetic? Where would she go? How would she get back?

  He wished Osman could be here - good old Oz, always easy, very rarely in a mood. Even Luke would be better than no one. They could find a little stream to dam, make a fire, search the tideline for stuff washed up. He didn’t feel like doing much on his own.

  Maybe he’d go along to Don’s after all. Just walk past, look in.

  He began to wander along in the direction of the beach huts. There was a row of wooden chalets, painted blue with yellow doors and window-frames, neat and simple as children’s drawings. Don’s, next to them, was more of a cabin, flat-roofed, with a ramshackle verandah on stilts, and steps up. The proper beach huts were locked up, but Don’s door stood open, with a wicker chair out on the deck. He’d be inside, painting. He painted every single day, Aunt Jude said; it was the only thing he really liked doing.

  Hal slowed, reluctant to face Don, such a strange man, with no one else there. What would he say, and what would Don say back, without Aunt Jude to take charge? Don would Kuh at him, would twitch and drop things. He might be cross at being disturbed.

  Turning away, Hal saw a flattened piece of wood marooned with the drying seaweed of the tidemark. Tiny flies swarmed up as he reached for it. It was some kind of narrow bat, used perhaps for a beach game and now forgotten or thrown aside. The damp wood had warped at the edges but it still had a tattered rubber grip around its handle.

  He didn’t know why he wanted it, but was reluctant to sling it back. He whacked it against his hand, then looked round in case there was a ball to be found as well. That was too much to hope for. Instead, he went down alongside the groyne to the sand, and tried using the bat as a flat spade to dig with.

  There was a satisfying gritty crunch as he pushed in, and scooped. The sand had just the right degree of dampness; each slice-mark stayed clean and firm as he dug. At first he just heaped at random, but then he realised how well the sand could be moulded and shaped. With sweeps and slaps of the bat, he began to sculpt.

  If anyone saw him, they’d think he was like a little kid, making sand-pies. But he wasn’t. He was thinking on a larger scale. He’d make a whale, perhaps - a killer whale. He’d seen them on TV; seen them thrusting through the water, sleek and sure, boldly black and white, streamlined as fighter aircraft. A sand whale would be washed away when the tide came in, but that wouldn’t matter. He dug and smoothed, patted and shaped, stood back and looked. But to make even a roughly-shaped killer whale, life-size as he wanted, would take more time than he had, with the tide coming in - already the waves had edged closer. To do it proper
ly he’d need to work out the best time: start while the tide was on its way out.

  Only now did he notice two people watching him.

  One was a skinny kid, a boy in a red hoodie and a black knitted hat. He stood on the shingle-bank with his fists pressed hard into the hoodie’s pockets, the zip drawn right up to his chin. How long had he been there? When he saw Hal staring, he turned and walked off towards the town. Not particularly hurried, not so that it looked as if Hal had seen him off; just as if he’d been going in that direction anyway.

  The other watcher was Don. He’d come out of his hut and was standing at the top of a short flight of wooden steps that led down to the shingle.

  ‘Hal!’ he yelled. ‘Hal!’

  Hal felt himself snatched back from wherever he’d been. He seemed to have worked on the sand-sculpture for several hours, though of course it couldn’t have been that long, or the tide would be fully in. But it had taken up his thoughts and actions in a way that - now he’d been jolted out of it - felt good, felt urgent and real. Now he remembered Mum, waiting in hospital, while he’d let her slip right out of his thoughts. And he was meant to be back in his grandfather’s dining room doing equations, waiting for Aunt Jude to come back from wherever she’d been. Irritation surged back, tugged at him.

  He wasn’t doing anything wrong, so why was Don shouting?

  Getting no reply, Don stood for a few moments longer, then gave up and went back inside.

  Hal was colder than he’d realised. He licked at the damp saltiness on his lips, felt a shiver around his neck and his middle, and his face filmed with sea-damp.

  He plodded over the pebbles to see what Don wanted. He thought of chucking the old wooden bat aside, but then didn’t, and took it with him. When he turned to look back at the half-formed whale, part of him was sorry to leave it, but another part said that he might as well stop wasting his time. Nothing he ever did turned out the way he wanted.

  7

  FAMOUS

  For a moment, his steps slowing, Hal thought Don had called him over to tell him off, for playing about on the beach instead of staying indoors. But how likely was that? Don didn’t sound like he could care less about school or rules.

  Hal stepped inside the hut.

  ‘I’m having a brew-up,’ Don said. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Uh, yeah, go on then.’

  The hut was bigger than it looked from outside and smelled pungently of tar and spirit and coffee. It was well-lit through a skylight in the roof. An easel was set up, facing away from Hal, next to an old table spattered with paint and littered with jam jars, bits of paper and squeezed-out tubes. There was a battered sofa with a fringed blanket thrown over it, another wicker chair and a shelf of art books. Canvases on frames rested against one wall; the other was stuck all over with pencil and ink sketches and scribbled notes.

  On a little fold-up table at the back Don had a camping-stove with a kettle perched on top. Flames flickered blue, and the kettle let out a piercing whistle. Don turned off the gas, poured steaming water into two mugs, and stirred vigorously.

  ‘There.’ He handed one to Hal, and motioned him to sit on the sofa. ‘This’ll warm you up.’

  Hal sat. Fine grains of sand glinted on the floorboards and in the red-and-turquoise pattern of the rug. From the sofa he could look straight out at the sea. Don sat on the stool by his easel. He wore fingerless gloves, and a black fringed scarf tied under his chin, and a padded waistcoat with pencils and crayons sticking out of the pockets.

  ‘Saw you down there,’ he said. ‘Kuh. Looked like you were having fun.’

  ‘Uh. Is there—’ Hal hadn’t meant to ask directly, but now it seemed he was going to ‘—something wrong with you? I mean, you know.’ He found himself mimicking - thrusting out an elbow, jerking his head, doing the kkk and the nnng.

  Don looked at him. ‘Oh, that? I’m so used to it I hardly notice any more. Yeah, it’s got a name, Something-or-Other Syndrome. Fancy name for being a bit twitchy. Heard of it? I only do the twitching. With some people it makes them shout out rude words. I don’t do that - well, I do sometimes, but not because of the How-d’you-call-it.’ He gave a mischievous smile, looking for a second like a boy younger and naughtier than Hal.

  ‘There’s a boy at school does it,’ Hal said. ‘The calling out, I mean. Aren’t there pills or something?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s pills,’ Don answered. ‘If I want pills I can have pills. There’s always pills.’

  Hal wasn’t sure what he meant by that. He took a swig of coffee. It was stronger and darker than he liked, almost bitter. He noticed that Don had pulled the easel back so that there was even less chance of seeing the painting propped on it.

  ‘I can take the pills, or I can paint,’ said Don. ‘Can’t do both, and I’d rather paint. What was that you were making?’

  Hal shrugged. ‘Dunno. Nothing.’

  ‘Didn’t look like nothing, the way you were concentrating. ’

  ‘Just mucking about.’

  ‘It’s good sand for sculpting.’ Don stirred his coffee again, then sucked the teaspoon. ‘There used to be a chap came here and worked all day, made the most marvellous figures. Neptune, mermaids, sea-serpents. People took photos, but he - nnng - never did. Said the whole point of it was they’d be washed away when the tide came in and there’d be nothing left to show they’d ever been there.’

  Don got up and found half a packet of biscuits - ginger-nuts, gone a bit soggy - and they ate one each.

  ‘Prince Hal, your Mum calls you,’ Don remarked.

  ‘Uh.’ Hal was embarrassed. No one else was meant to hear. ‘And it’s Marbles at school.’

  ‘Prince Hal’s good though,’ said Don, taking another biscuit. ‘As a lad he got into all sorts of trouble. Then grew up and turned into - nng - Henry the Fifth. Shakespeare’s play, I’m talking about. But I expect you know that.’

  ‘Mum told me.’ Hal didn’t want to say that she called him that because he was as important to her as a prince or a king; that was what he liked to think, anyway. It would sound stupid, even big-headed. Instead, he looked towards Don’s easel, and said, ‘Don’t you get, like, bored, here all day on your own?’

  Don looked at him hard. ‘No, I don’t. I get annoyed with myself, I get cross, I get frustrated, but never bored.’

  ‘What d’you do, then?’

  ‘I paint. And sometimes I just look. Or think. Or swim.’

  Hal nodded at the painting. ‘Can I see?’

  Don’s mouth compressed as if he was going to say No, mind your own business, but then he said, ‘If you want,’ and turned the easel round to show Hal.

  Hal had no idea what to expect, and didn’t know anything about art anyway; it was his least favourite subject at school. What Don had on his easel was a canvas that was nearly all grey, with two faint lines across it. The painted bits were of the sea: the top faint line was the horizon, and the lower one was the tide’s edge, and in between there was just a suggestion of the movement of waves.

  ‘Cool,’ was all Hal could think to say.

  ‘Nnng,’ said Don. ‘ ’Sall right. You don’t have to like it or anything. There’s nothing to like, yet. I might not like it myself. Probably won’t.’

  Hal looked again, and saw that what he’d taken at first for dull grey was actually alive with movement; the energetic brush-strokes were the surging power of waves; the colours were sunlight shifting on sea. Faint pencil lines outlined a walking figure, a plump woman, side-on. She looked a bit cartoony, but then she wasn’t painted yet.

  Hal shuffled his feet. ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘A woman I saw on the beach one day.’

  ‘Why’s she in the picture, then?’

  ‘Kuh. Because she looked like she was seeing the sea for the first time in her life. There she is, so ordinary, but she knows she’s looking at something quite - nng - miraculous.’

  Hal didn’t get that.

  ‘The sea.’ Don sounded impatient. ‘The sea can make
you mad. And the sea can make you sane.’

  Hal nodded, as if this made any kind of sense. ‘So what’s it for?’

  ‘For?’ Don gave him an amused look. ‘I dunno. Does it have to be for something?’

  ‘I mean, you know, do you sell them, or what? Are they worth a lot?’

  ‘That’s - k - two very different questions. No, I don’t sell them. They’re not worth a penny, not unless—’

  He looked up, annoyed, at the sound of feet on the wooden steps. Someone was standing on the deck, looking in - a youngish, dark-haired woman, well wrapped up in a purple coat, and trousers tucked into black boots. Her eyes flicked to Hal, but she was more interested in Don.

  ‘Please excuse me! It’s Mr Inchbold, isn’t it - Don Inchbold?’ She talked very quickly, breathily. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming to find you here, but I just—’

  ‘Kuh!’ went Don, sounding as if he minded a lot.

  ‘Oh, this is so amazing!’ the woman went on. ‘I had to come and see if it was really you. I heard you were living in Ryton - working here, so exciting! - and I couldn’t believe my luck - I’ve always been such an admirer,’ she added to Hal, as if he’d know what she was talking about.

  ‘Luck, how?’ said Don, chin jutting.

  ‘Sorry - I ought to introduce myself.’ The woman was inside now, though Don hadn’t said to come in. ‘I’m Amanda Farman. From the Lifeboat Gallery - I’m one of the directors. You must have seen what’s going on at the old lifeboat-house - the new extension?’

  Don’s face registered nothing.

  ‘Yes, we open on Saturday week,’ Amanda Farman continued. ‘First of November. It’s going to be just thrilling - a modern arts centre, a beautiful gallery space for Ryton at last - really it’s long overdue, just what the town needs—’

  From what he’d seen so far, Hal would have said that the town needed a multiplex cinema or a skateboarding park, not some poncey art gallery. He looked at Don, who rolled his eyes upwards and let out his breath in a small huff. Amanda Farman didn’t even notice, but Hal did, and couldn’t help grinning - it was exactly the way Luke signalled boredom in a tedious lesson, or when a teacher was having a go. Hal felt that he and Don were allies against the intruder.