SUNK (2 page)

I slip out of the back door and through the model village. Mum and Grandma have been working hard. All the hedges are trimmed ready for the summer season and they’ve laid fresh gravel and cut the grass.

Mum’s had loads of time to help Grandma this time because the whole magician thing has gone wrong. We moved here because Mum and Dad wanted to be stage magicians. They gave up perfectly good jobs, a perfectly nice house and some perfectly lovely friends to move
here, to be with Grandma, so that we could all live next to the model village. The plan was that they would become stage magicians, tour the country, do the odd cruise, get a telly series, write books and become household names. The reality turned into a free show at the town hall, three children’s parties, a sixtieth birthday party, a disastrous ruby wedding anniversary and the disappearing cabinet finale, where they actually disappeared someone. Not even enough to pay for the rabbit food.

Which is why Dad is now working at the school and Mum is looking for another career.

I just hope she’s not thinking of working at the school too.

I stumble through the model village, drop down to the Dingly Dell Crazy Golf and clamber over the gnome-covered wall onto
the promenade. Huge puddles stretch over the tarmac and under the glass shelters that line the seafront but there’s no one hiding inside them. It’s simply too wet.

I stop under the amusement-arcade awning and study the beach.

It looks utterly deserted. Out at sea some moored yachts bounce on the waves and in the harbour others jostle and groan against the jetties. A couple of people fight their way along the pier, brollies flipped inside out and coats flapping.

Perfect.

Breaking free of the amusement arcade I dash over the tarmac and race down to the beach steps, water splashing up my trouser legs every step of the way.

Vast heaps of seaweed have been thrown up onto the shore since yesterday and for a
moment it looks as if everything has been swept from the beach by the storm, but then I see Albert Fogg, the man who looks after the deckchairs, crouching at the back under an oilskin and a huge umbrella.

Flip.

He’s manning the deckchairs. As if on a day like this you’d have to.

I slow down and saunter over the pebbles. A length of seaweed wraps itself round my foot and I spend an unnecessarily long time untangling it, taking the opportunity to have a good look at Mr Fogg.

Normally he wears a navy-blue sweater and the oldest, most faded jeans I’ve ever seen. His skin is the colour of old crab claws and his eyes are hidden so deeply in the crevasses of his face that I couldn’t say if they had a colour at all.

Today he’s wearing the full yellow sailor waterproofs and, despite the rain, seems to be washing a deckchair down with a watering can.

Snatches of his song escape through the rain. ‘Put him in the scuppers …’

He fills the watering can from the beach tap, scuttles back over the shingle and goes at the deckchair with a broom. ‘Take that – and that!’ he says and then bursts into song again. ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor …’

I straighten up and wander past. It’s hard to look casual when there’s a gale blowing. When I’ve reached the end of the beach, I shelter under the pier and look back.

I can’t work out if this is the deckchair that attacked Mr Bissell. They all look exactly the same, but then why would Mr Fogg single out a lone deckchair for a scrub when he must have a shed full of them?

Above me, the pier whizzes and pings as the unplayed machines try to attract attention. Someone’s feet sound on the boards and then thump along to the seafront. The same person pulls their coat close round them and marches along to the set of steps nearest to the beach tap. They trot down the steps, and start to talk to Mr Fogg.

I can’t see who it is. They’re wearing too many waterproofs. But I can hear some words. ‘Not … safe … secret … newspapers … not a bean left … important … vital.’

Mr Fogg nods and pulls his cap.

The wrapped-up person struggles up the steps and into the town, disappearing into the storm.

Mr Fogg opens a door behind him. He places his empty watering can inside and I see a cave that seems to go deep into the solid front of
the seafront. He locks the door again and folds the deckchair flat, leaving it lying against the front of the store.

I wait, trying to make myself as thin as one of the pier supports, until he rolls up the steps, along the sea wall and in through the front door of the Trusty Tramper Café.

It’s not easy to tiptoe on pebbles, and frankly it’s not actually necessary in a gale, but I do tiptoe until I’m over by the deckchair and hidden under the lee of the sea wall.

There’s nothing to see. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one, as there’s a tear in the cloth where I seem to remember Mr Bissell turning and attempting to bite it. Otherwise it looks disappointingly ordinary.

Experimentally I try to lift it. It’s quite heavy, but not impossible and I half carry, half drag it along the beach to the very end.

Which is where it gets difficult.

The moment I stick my head over the parapet the wind doubles in strength and seems to change direction so that I’m blown back towards the sea.

‘Stupid thing,’ I say, pulling it against me. But the wind catches the fabric and tugs both me and the deckchair back down to the beach so that I have to lean the deckchair against the wall and stop to breathe.

Peeling the hood from my face, I let the rain beat on my skin for a minute. This seems ridiculously hard work. Surely it can’t be this difficult to move a deckchair?

I lift it again, and again, but I can’t quite leave the beach with it.

What?

I make a third attempt, this time with all my strength, but the deckchair becomes heavier
than me. I can’t actually lift it and when I let go the wind takes it back onto the pebbles.

I stand on the steps, looking down at it.

I’d swear it’s got a Tilly face on. Smug.

The rain beats on my head. I am now actually getting wet
inside
my waterproof, and I am officially cross. How on earth am I going to get a sample of this deckchair to Eric?

Back on the beach I check to see if any of the joints are loose. Sadly they aren’t.

So I search the tar blobs and fish heads scattered along the beach for something sharp. I find a mussel shell, a biro lid and a piece of slate.

The biro lid bends and the slate shatters but the mussel shell lets me prise the tiniest splinter of wood from the chair, and cuts me a thread of the cloth.

‘Ha!’ I say to the deckchair. ‘Ha! Serves you right.’

The deckchair falls flat on the beach and the splinter and the piece of cloth whisk from my hand and vanish into the wind.

I’d swear that the deckchair laughs.

‘OK then. If that’s the way you want to play it.’

I hold up my right hand, form an O with my thumb and my forefinger and …

Click.

The tiny deckchair is flipping about inside my pocket. I shrank it – it’s this thing I can do, but only here in Bywater-by-Sea. If I came round to your house, I wouldn’t be able to, and Eric wouldn’t be able to produce water from the end of his fingertips and Jacob wouldn’t be able to set fire to things.

We’ve all got strange powers because of the meteorites – the ones from the sky that we caught, and the giant one under the castle. We’re not the only ones with strange powers.
Grandma can shrink things too. She knows all about us, but Mum and Dad don’t and nor does Eric’s dad. It’s weird and wonderful, and sometimes gets very complicated.

‘Tom, enter.’ Eric’s dad stands in the doorway. He’s wearing pyjama trousers and a parrot-green Hawaiian shirt.

‘Hello, Mr Threepwood.’

‘Good,’ says Eric’s dad.

I stand in the hall, not quite knowing what to say. I never know quite what to say with Eric’s dad. He’s not like other people. But then Eric’s not like other people. Most people are not as nice or as clever as Eric or his dad.

‘Um,’ I say in the end.

Eric’s dad smiles and wanders off into the kitchen. I stand for a moment, my hand on the front door, feeling embarrassed.

‘Shall I go and find Eric?’ I say, but Eric’s
dad’s not listening. Instead of answering me, he picks up an enormously thick book about space travel and starts eating something that looks very like straw.

Upstairs Eric is playing Scrabble online with someone in Russia. ‘That’s “keckle” – K-E-C-K-L-E – it means to wind something up with a rope,’ he bellows at a tiny picture in the corner of the screen. ‘Oh – hello, Tom.’

‘I shrank the deckchair and brought it here,’ I say, staring at the Scrabble board, which is dotted with words I’ve never seen before. ‘What’s a “palpi”?’

A pained expression flickers over Eric’s face. ‘It’s not “a palpi” – palpi are the plural. They’re the sensitive bits on a crab – surely you know that, Tom?’

‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘Here it is.’ I place the tiny
deckchair on Eric’s desk. ‘This is
the
deckchair, or at least I think it’s
the
deckchair. Albert Fogg was washing it down, and talking to it, when it was big.’

The tiny shrunken deckchair looks like a very careful piece of model-making. It’s about the size of my little finger and harmless. In fact, I’d almost call it cute. Eric closes the laptop and peers at the chair. ‘Washing it down, you say. Unusual.’

‘Will you be able to analyse it? Even if I’ve shrunk it?’

In answer, he opens a cupboard door. An avalanche of single shoes, game controllers, batteries and last year’s cracker presents cascades to the floor. He pushes them out of the way and wades into the debris. ‘There should be –’ he says, shoving aside a plastic skeleton – ‘a microscope here somewhere. I’m sure I saw it … Ah!’

Triumphant, he turns, holding a small battered cardboard package and laying it reverently on the desk. It’s covered in what looks like Chinese writing and has a picture of a huge spider on the front.

‘In here –’ he lifts the lid from the box, revealing a brittle plastic insert that’s cracked and clings to the object it encloses – ‘should be Dad’s microscope.’ Eric shakes off the shards of once-white plastic packaging and stands a small object on the desk.

‘That’s a microscope?’ I say. It doesn’t look anything like the microscopes we use at school.

‘It’s a bit old – Dad had it when he was a child. 1970s?’ He waves the plug at me. ‘Put that in over there,’ he says, fiddling with what might be the lens.

I plug it in and amazingly nothing goes bang.

‘If it isn’t a microscope,’ says Eric, ‘I don’t
know what else it could be.’ He takes the deckchair from my palm and places it on a dimly lit piece of glass.

I stare, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t so I sit down and squeeze some water from my trousers.

‘Yes,’ he says eventually.

‘What?’ I say.

‘This microscope is either not a microscope or it’s broken. We’ll have to try at school.’

Downstairs, Eric’s dad offers me a kelp and hempseed flapjack.

‘Er, no thank you, Mr Threepwood,’ I say, heading towards the front door.

‘Eric?’ he says, holding out the plate.

‘I’m good, thanks, Dad.’

‘Oh.’ Eric’s dad stares sadly at the plate of misshapen brown things. ‘Or a bulgar and
wheatgrass smoothie?’ He points into the kitchen towards the blender, which seems to have had some kind of green volcanic accident.

I shake my head.

‘In that case, take a poster.’ He hands Eric the plate and reaches into a wellington boot, pulling out a roll of paper. Striding to the kitchen table, he places a jar of molasses on one end and unrolls the rest.

He peels a sheet from the top and hands it to me. ‘Do you think you could put it up in the window of the model village?’

V
OTE FOR
C
OLIN
T
HREEPWOOD.

M
EDITATION FOR ALL AND FREEDOM

FROM CONSUMER TYRANNY

‘Or you could have this one, it’s snappier.’

B
E POSITIVE.
T
HREEPWOOD FOR MAYOR

I stand staring at the poster. ‘Sorry, I don’t quite understand. Are
you
running for mayor?’ I ask.

Eric’s dad nods his head enthusiastically. ‘Yes.’ He puts his arm round Eric’s shoulder. ‘I am, totally. Eric, my marvellous son, has persuaded me that I can do it. That I have a lot to offer our community, that I can help lead us into the new millennium with consideration and love and freedom from corporate globality.’

Eric stands by his father’s side and beams.

‘Right,’ I say, rolling up a poster and jamming it under my arm.

‘It’s all there, Tom. All there for us to take.’ Eric’s dad stares at me, his eyes big and round. ‘Because, Tom, here, at the heart of Avalon, the astral plane is vibrant.’

‘Yes, Mr Threepwood,’ I say.

‘You do understand what that means?’

‘Yes, Mr Threepwood,’ I say again, wondering what on earth he’s on about.

‘Anything could happen, Tom.’

I nod vigorously. With enthusiasm.

‘It’s a wondrous place, this place,’ he says.

‘Yup,’ I say, backing towards the door, clutching my poster. ‘Sure is.’

‘Tom’s got to go now, Dad,’ says Eric, opening the door behind me and shoving me out into the street.

‘Sure you wouldn’t like a flapjack?’

‘He wouldn’t,’ says Eric.

‘Pity,’ says Eric’s dad. ‘Pity.’

Eric’s dad running for mayor is unexpected. Although, perhaps it isn’t really. Perhaps it’s something he’d be brilliant at, but I can’t imagine him sitting in a boardroom discussing blocked culverts or parking schemes. He has a weird way of saying things, not like other adults. I don’t think most of it means anything, but sometimes some of it means something.

I’m wondering what an astral plane actually is, and about his warning that anything could
happen, when I pass a huge stack of newspapers outside the post office.

C
HILD EATEN BY HER OWN BUCKET
! in the
Bywater-by-Sea Guardian

W
ILD CARNIVOROUS PAIL CHEWS CHILD VICTIM
in the
Evening Echo.

And on a copy of the
Bywater Globe
: B
RAVE
B
EVERLEY’S BUCKET FRENZY
!

A couple of women are staring open-mouthed at the headlines.

Bucket?

I wonder about nipping back to Eric’s but I remember the smoothie volcano and head on round to our house.

Grandma’s got the TV on full volume and after we’ve sat through an item on knitted road signs and another one about novel sandwich fillings, the announcer gets on to Bywater-by-Sea.

‘
And finally, just at the beginning of the holiday
season, in the sleepy town of Bywater-by-Sea a young girl had a narrow escape. It’s unclear about the events leading up to the accident, but it seems that six-year-old Beverley Woodruff of Bywater Regis was enjoying a wet afternoon on the beach when she managed to jam a bucket on her head. At first her parents tried to pull it off, but then an anxious passer-by called the fire brigade. Sergeant Bradley Thomas of the local fire station said, and I quote, “In all the years I’ve been a fire officer I’ve never come across a more peculiar case. It was as if that bucket was alive”
…’

‘Well I never,’ says Grandma, dropping her knitting. ‘Know anything about this, Tom?’

‘No, Grandma.’

She stares at me very hard over her glasses. ‘Sure?’

‘No – I really don’t, honestly.’

‘I’m not eating that,’ says Tilly, pushing her plate away.

‘But Dad spent hours cooking it,’ says Mum.

‘Don’t care,’ says Tilly, scratching her head furiously. ‘It’s disgusting.’

‘Well, I’m not cooking you anything else,’ says Dad, doling out the pumpkin pie.

‘All right then,’ says Tilly, standing up. ‘I’ll make my own supper.’

‘That girl,’ mutters Grandma after Tilly has left for the kitchen.

‘She’s her own worst enemy,’ says Mum.

‘Bless her,’ says Dad.

‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘It’s just a phase. Such a difficult age. Although I wish she could see things from another person’s point of view – just sometimes.’

‘Complicated girls,’ says Dad. ‘Not like us, eh, Tom?’

I nod. Tilly is certainly complicated. Whether it’s because she’s a girl I couldn’t say.

There are terrible sounds of pans hitting other pans and things boiling over while Dad, Mum and Grandma scrape their forks on their plates and clear their throats.

‘Very nice this pumpkin pie, dear,’ says Grandma eventually, chewing hard.

‘Lovely,’ says Mum, glugging several glasses of water.

I look at the desiccated pumpkin pie lying orangely on my plate. ‘Aren’t pumpkins things you get in autumn?’

Grandma smiles and pushes a cindery piece of pastry around her plate.

‘Just using up the contents of the freezer,’ says Dad.

There’s a long silence, broken by the sound of Tilly shouting at the fridge.

‘Haven’t found a job yet,’ says Mum.

‘How about the ice-cream factory?’ says Dad.

‘Or the Royal Hotel?’ says Grandma. ‘I gather they’re likely to be under new ownership soon. The dear old Finch sisters have finally given up.’

‘I thought I could go into politics,’ says Mum.

‘Goodness,’ says Grandma.

Tilly drops something hard and large into the sink.

‘Did you know that Eric’s dad is running for mayor?’ I ask.

Grandma stops attacking her pastry. ‘Colin Threepwood! I don’t believe it.’

‘Really? How extraordinary,’ says Dad, getting up from the table and walking over to shut the door to the kitchen.

Mum sweeps her pie off her plate and into her napkin. ‘How interesting,’ she says, wandering past the piano and dropping the pie inside. ‘I wonder what brought that on.’

I shrug. That’s it from me in terms of conversation.

Psshshshshshsh.

A long, rising bubbling sound drifts out from the kitchen and everyone pauses to listen.

‘Ah ha!’ shouts Tilly. ‘Die, pasta, die – you have met your match – I am the queen of all things spaghetti. Melt in my cauldron and quiver …’

Briefly I wonder whether the food that Tilly’s making might be nicer than Dad’s.

Then there’s a crackle and a bang and what sounds like a saucepan hitting the kitchen floor.

‘Stop it! Stop it! You stupid thing!’ shouts Tilly. The back door opens with a crash and the faint whiff of burned pasta floats through into the dining room.

On the other hand …