Bones Under The Beach Hut (22 page)

    Carole
had the decency to take Gulliver for a walk along Smalting Beach before
subjecting him to the ignominy of being chained up. She had brought a bottle of
water with her to fill his bowl and after a couple of thirsty slurps from it he
lay down in the shade, apparently reconciled to his fate.

    Carole's
preparations had not only included the water. She had brought with her her
customary smokescreen of
The Times
crossword and also a bag of chocolate
brownies that she had made that morning. This was most unusual behaviour.
Carole Seddon didn't have a sweet tooth and she rarely baked anything. She
also, from her childhood onward, had Calvinistically resisted the wicked crime
of
eating between meals.
But the chocolate brownies had been made with
two purposes in mind. One was the imminent arrival of Gaby and Lily on the
Sunday. Both her daughter-in-law and granddaughter were suckers for anything
containing chocolate.

    And
the second purpose of the brownies was to act as an ice-breaker to the young
woman in
Shrimphaven.
After erecting a base camp on
The Times
crossword
by filling in a couple of clues, Carole picked up her bag of goodies and
steeled herself to the challenge of being affably sociable. It was something
that she knew Jude would do more naturally - and better.

    She
had noticed that the doors of
Shrimphaven
were open when she'd walked
Gulliver back. And she'd even directed a kind of 'Fethering nod' to its
interior, though she couldn't say whether any response had emerged from the
shadows. But she had definitely seen the outline of the girl she now knew to be
called Katie Brunswick, hunched as ever over her laptop.

    Carole
took a deep breath and stepped across to block the daylight from
Shrimphaven'
s doors. Inevitably Katie Brunswick had to look up at her.

    'Good
morning,' said Carole in her best attempt at affable sociability. 'Since we're
kind of beach hut neighbours I thought I'd say hello. My name's Carole Seddon
and I was about to have one of these chocolate brownies I've just made. And
then I thought maybe you would like one?'

    She
was now close enough to get her first proper view of Katie Brunswick, seated on
the bench at the back of what was an otherwise very empty beach hut. Probably
in her thirties, the girl had large round glasses and black curly hair pulled
back untidily into a scrunchy. Her slight figure was dressed in a plain white
T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops.

    She
didn't exactly look pleased to be interrupted, but was too well brought up to
be positively rude. 'That's very kind of you,' she said in a voice that had
also been well brought up.

    Carole
stepped into
Shrimphaven
and proffered her paper bag. With something
like reluctance, Katie Brunswick shifted her laptop on to the table by her side
and accepted a brownie. Carole also took one out and bit into it, an indication
that she was going to stay until the cake was finished. Katie was again too
well brought up not to gesture Carole to sit on the bench beside her. There
were no other chairs in the hut.

    'Would
you like some coffee?' she asked, gesturing to a large thermos on a white table
through whose paint little aureoles of rust had worked through like acne.

    'No,
thank you. I've just had some.'

    The
girl seemed relieved at this response, perhaps because it suggested Carole's
visit was going to be eating-a-brownie length rather than eating-a-
brownie-and-drinking-a-cup-of-coffee length. Or maybe she'd carefully
calculated the contents of the thermos as her coffee supply for the day.

    'I'm
sorry, I don't know your name,' Carole lied. Katie Brunswick identified
herself. 'You're rather a woman of mystery on Smalting Beach.'

    'Am
I? Why?'

    'Everyone's
intrigued by what you do here all day.'

    'Oh?'

    'Do
you know Reginald Flowers?' The young woman shook her head. 'He's the President
of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.'

    'I
haven't joined that.'

    'Anyway,
he's worried that you might be running a business from here.'

    'Hardly.
Is he the man with the beard and the beach hut that's full of naval stuff?'

    'Yes.'

    'Oh,
I remember him coming to ask what I was doing, but I was embarrassed to tell
him. He did actually ask if I was running a business.'

    'Well,
you do seem to spend all day on your laptop.'

    'That's
not running a business. I wish it were.'

    'Oh?'

    'I
hope ultimately to make money from what I'm doing, but I think that's still a
long way off.' Carole hoped that silence would prompt more revelation, and was
rewarded when Katie Brunswick went on, 'I'm writing something.'

    'Oh?'

    'A
book.'

    'Ah.
Is it going to be published?'

    'I
hope so. I've got the interest of an agent.'

    'That's
a good thing for a writer to have, isn't it? I'm sorry, publishing is not a
world I'm very familiar with.'

    'Yes,
if you're a writer it's good to have an agent.'

    'So
at least you've got one of those.'

    'Well,
I haven't exactly got one. I've got the
interest
of one. I met her at
the Truro Literary Festival. And she said she'd read anything I sent her.'

    'That
sounds good. She must have liked your work.'

    'No,
she hadn't actually read any of my work.'

    'Ah.
Anyway, what kind of book is it you're writing? I mean, don't tell me if you
don't want to. I've heard that some writers are superstitious when it comes to
talking about "work in progress".'

    'No,
I don't mind talking about it. I always welcome feedback. You can get very
isolated when you're writing.'

    'I'm
sure you can. But at least here you're surrounded by people.'

    'Still
isolated, though.' She sounded almost proud of the fact. 'You're often at your
loneliest when you're with people.'

    'So
you use this beach hut as your writing room?'

    'Why
not? Where else round here are you going to get an office for six hundred quid
a year?'

    'That's
true.'

    'So
I've got a "room of my own".'

    'I'm
sorry? I don't get the reference.'

    'Virginia
Woolf said: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to
write fiction.'"

    'Ah.'

    'So
I've got the room.'

    'How
about the money?'

    'I've
got two years' worth.' Carole looked at her curiously. 'I'd saved enough for me
to survive for two years when I gave up my job.'

    'You
gave up your job to write this book?' To Carole that seemed a very odd thing to
do.

    'Oh
no. I'd already written it. In my spare time.'

    This
was becoming increasingly confusing. 'So why did you take the two years off?'

    'I
wanted to make it better.'

    'The
book better?'

    'Yes.
On a course I went on I was told that the most important part of writing was
rewriting.'

    'Oh.'
Carole supposed in a way she could see the sense in that. While she was at the
Home Office she had prided herself in the accuracy with which she marshalled
facts in memoranda. And that had involved a certain amount of redrafting. 'This
was a writing course you're talking about?'

    'Yes.'

    'But
I thought writing was something one either could do or couldn't do. It can't be
taught, surely? I don't quite see how a course could help.'

    'Oh, they
do. There's lots you can learn. I mean, obviously you have to want to write,
have an innate aptitude for it. Joseph Joubert said: "A fluent writer
always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural
facility and an acquired difficulty."'

    'Who
was Joseph Joubert?'

    'I
don't know. I heard the quote on another writing course I went on.'

    'Do
you go on a lot of them?'

    'At
least two a year.'

    'So,
Katie ... if it's not a rude question . . . have you ever had anything published?'

    'No.'

    'But
have you written other, unpublished books before this one?'

    'No.
I've really just been working on this one.'

    'For
how long?'

    'Well,
I suppose in this form for about twelve years.'

    'Ah.'

    'I
mean it came from an idea I had for a short story. And then I started writing
it in a different way. And then I submitted the first chapter in a First
Chapter Competition for the Godalming Arts Festival and it got commended.'

    'That
must have been encouraging.'

    'Yes.
But of course the first chapter now has changed quite a lot from the first
chapter as it was then.'

    'Right.'

    'Apart
from anything else it was a first person narrative and I've changed it to third
person.'

    'Ah.
So this is all improving the book?'

    'I
hope so, yes. There are some friends I get to read it, and some people in my
Writers' Circle, and a lot of them think it's getting better.'

    'And
when do you think you'll finish it? I mean, this draft?'

    Katie
Brunswick jutted forward a dubious lower lip. 'Ooh, hard to say. I mean it's
seven months since I gave up my job, that was just before Christmas, so I've
still got, what . . . seventeen months to go.'

    'So
that's your deadline?'

    The
girl still looked doubtful. 'I don't know that I'll have finished it by then.'

    'Look,
I'm sorry,' said Carole, 'I know I don't know anything about writing, but I
can't see why this book's going to take so long.'

    'Well,
I want to get it right. . .'

    'Mm.
Yes, well, I can see that would be a good idea.'

    'And
every time I go on a course, I learn new ideas.'

    'I
see.'

    'And
I want to apply them, you know, to the book.'

    'So
you start rewriting the book again, to accommodate these new ideas?'

    'Yes,
that's what I do exactly, more or less.'

    The
girl was silent. Carole didn't think it was the moment to comment that Katie
Brunswick's way of writing a book seemed a rather odd approach to any
enterprise, so she moved on to the real purpose of her chocolate-brownie
subterfuge. 'I was speaking to Curt Holderness this morning.'

    'Oh?'
Katie was alert, alarmed even.

    'He
was offering me various ways in which he could bend the rules with regard to
these beach huts.'

    'Was
he?' she asked cautiously.

    'He
did actually tell me that he's made an arrangement with you . . .'

    'Mm?'

    '. .
.allowing you to stay here overnight when you want to.'

    'Yes,
well, I went on this course where one of the tutors told me two important
things about being a writer. He said that you had to have a dedicated room of
your own to work in - just like Virginia Woolf said. A space with the minimum
of distractions in it.'

    'Which
you've got here.'

    'Yes.'

    'And
he also said a writer never knows when inspiration is going to strike, and you
must never ignore its summons. As soon as you have an idea you must leap to pen
and paper, or the keyboard or whatever else you use.'

    'I
see. So sometimes you need to stay here overnight when inspiration strikes
you?'