The If Game (7 page)

‘I haven't made any plans,' his dad said.

‘Aren't you due for some time off?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Then can't we go somewhere? I'd like to go to the sea.'

‘It's late to arrange anything.'

Stephen thought, but didn't quite say, Then why didn't you think of arranging something before now? But he didn't. There was no point in annoying Dad when he was trying to get something out of him.

‘Couldn't we go for a bit? We could camp,' he said.

‘Camp in what? We haven't got a tent or anything.'

‘I could borrow a tent,' Stephen said, not at all sure if he could or couldn't. But he knew that Mike's dad had a tent. He had taken Mike camping in it the summer before last. If Mike's family didn't need their tent this summer, they might lend it to Stephen for a short time.

‘Camping's not that simple. You have to find somewhere they let you put the tent up.'

‘Have you ever gone camping, Dad?' Stephen asked.

‘A long time ago. Rained most of the time.' But his dad laughed as if, in spite of the rain, he might have enjoyed the experience.

‘Dad! If I can borrow a tent, can we go?'

‘I'll think about it when you've got your tent,' Dad said, and Stephen had the sense not to go on with the subject. He knew how Dad worked.

The next day, he tackled Mike. ‘You going away this holidays?' he asked.

‘We're going on a package. Spain. Sea'll be warm. I can't wait,' Mike said.

‘You going camping there?'

‘No, stupid. I said it was a package. We're flying there and it'll be a hotel. This year my mum said, “No more cooking over a camping stove and sleeping on the ground.” She wants a proper holiday, where she doesn't have to do all the work. She bullied Himself till he agreed. I can't wait,' Mike said again. Himself was Mike's dad. That was how his mum generally referred to her husband.

Stephen was terribly envious. He'd have loved to fly to Spain and stay in a proper hotel, something he'd never done. But the news was good for him. He said, ‘You won't be using your tent, then?'

‘I said we're going to a hotel, didn't I? What would we want to take a tent for? On the aeroplane and all,' Mike said.

‘Could I borrow it?' Stephen asked.

‘The aeroplane? Or the hotel?'

‘No, the tent.'

Mike looked serious. ‘Dunno. It's my dad's, see? I don't know what he'd say.'

‘I'd be careful. Extra careful. Really.'

‘You know how to put a tent up?'

‘My dad does. He's done it before.'

‘You mean you and your dad are going away?'

‘We might. If we can have a lend of a tent.'

‘Where'd you go?'

‘We haven't thought yet. Not far. Because my dad can't take much time off. Somewhere by the sea, I'd like.'

‘Your dad's a careful sort of bloke, isn't he? I've seen him. He looks as if he'd be careful.'

‘He's careful. He's extra careful,' Stephen said, thinking that this was hardly strong enough for the sort of careful his dad was.

‘I'll ask,' Mike said.

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.'

The next day, Mike met him with, ‘It's all right. My dad says, you're welcome. And if you come round Sunday, he'll show you how it goes up.'

Stephen reported this at home. ‘Mike's dad's going to lend us his tent. And he'll show us how to put it up if we go there on Sunday.'

‘I know how to put up a tent,' Stephen's dad said.

‘Are they all the same? I mean, if you know how to do one, can you do them all?'

‘It's like driving a car. You can work it out, once you know one.'

But he did go with Stephen on Sunday. He said it would be only right. Stephen was anxious. His dad was not a talker and generally found it difficult to get on with people. But Mike's dad was so different, so easy and so friendly, without seeming to notice that his friendliness wasn't immediately returned, that the two dads got on surprisingly well. And Mike's dad was better than his word. He not only lent them his tent, but he added most of the equipment they would need. A ground sheet, two sleeping bags, a camping stove, insect-proof boxes to keep food in, a roof rack, canvas bags for extra clothes.

‘It's chilly in the night. You'd better take all the sweaters you've got. And take something to keep the bugs off you while you sleep. First time I went camping, the mosquitoes or something like them made a meal of me.
My face swelled right up so that Dolly said she wouldn't have known me.' Dolly was Mike's mum.

‘He's all right, isn't he?' Stephen asked his dad as they drove home.

‘Talks too much,' his dad replied.

‘But it was good he's let us have all this.'

‘It's a bit much.'

‘But we'll need all the things he's given us. Won't we?'

‘We'll see. Anyway, it's lent, not given.'

‘I meant lent. So where'll we go, Dad?'

‘Have to think. Not too far.'

‘The sea?' Stephen prompted.

‘We'll see about that.'

Unsatisfactory. But at least he had got past the first step.

The long school term ended. At first it was wonderful enough not to have to get up in the mornings, not to have homework every evening. Then it became less wonderful. Mike was off on his package holiday, Dan was sometimes free, but more often not. He had cousins staying who took up most of his time. Stephen did not know how to fill up the day. He hung around his dad's garage until Ray and Sandy who worked there got fed up with him and told him to go off. Even when he offered to help, they didn't want him there.

He tried cooking, thinking that his dad might be pleased to come home and find a meal ready waiting. But after he had burned one saucepan beyond repair and wasted three eggs and nearly half a pound of butter in a cake that didn't rise in the oven and wouldn't stay together when taken out of its tin, he decided to give up experiments in the kitchen, except for the fry-up which he knew couldn't go wrong. He looked at the garden and meant to have a real go at it and make it as flowery and
scented as Mrs Nelson's, where her son-in-law came every weekend and worked for hours at a time. But Stephen got discouraged after half an hour of pulling up weeds. The sweet peas he had sown months ago had come up all right, but for want of watering had not flowered successfully and had produced only a few small, unsatisfactory pods.

He went to the High Street and bought enough milk chocolate to make himself feel uncomfortably sick. He walked round the shop that hired out videos and had computer games and longed for them. But he hadn't got a computer and with Mike away there was no chance of seeing a video or playing any of the games. He almost wished it was term time again.

That Saturday, his dad suddenly said, I'm taking a few days off next week. You'd better get packed.'

Unexpected. Stephen said, ‘Dad! When are we going?'

‘Could go tomorrow if you're ready.'

‘I'll be ready.'

‘We'll start early. Less traffic.'

‘What time?'

‘Seven. Got your alarm?'

He had. ‘Where'll we go, Dad?'

‘Somewhere on the coast. We'll have to look around to find where we're allowed to put the tent.'

‘Cornwall? Wales?' He had seen pictures of long beaches and high cliffs.

‘Too far. We'll try the south coast.'

He spent that day in a fever of excitement and indecision. Packed the kitbag lent by Mike's father twenty times and twenty times took everything out and re-packed. Couldn't decide what book to take in case there'd be time to read, which pullover would be warmest, whether it should be shorts or long jeans as spares, trainers or flip-flops. Kept on finding he'd left out something he knew he had to have, then filling the bag so full it wouldn't close.
Wondering all the time where they'd be this time tomorrow, what sleeping on the ground would be like, whether it would be proper sea with big waves and an empty beach, whether he'd be able to swim, what the weather would be like. He hoped the beach wouldn't be like some he'd seen on television, so packed with deck chairs and bodies that you couldn't see the sand. Thought, uneasily, how he'd get through whole days spent with Dad alone. If you have a father who doesn't talk except when he has to, you don't count much on him for company.

They got away at a quarter past seven. Not bad, considering that just on the point of leaving, Stephen realized that he'd forgotten to bring his swimming trunks. The front door had to be unlocked for him to go back and find them, which took time, because he hadn't an idea where they were. It was just chance that while he was searching, his eye fell on his jar of keys and he snatched it up, then decided that he was fed up with them. He left the jar by his bed, and ran out to the car. He'd expected Dad to be cross, but nothing was said, and they drove up the street, across town and out into the country.

It seemed a long drive, even though they weren't going to Wales or Cornwall. After the first hour they stopped at a service station and had a sort of breakfast which would do for lunch. Stephen was ravenous and ate sausages and bacon and eggs and mushrooms and fried bread as if he hadn't had a meal for a week. His dad ate less and studied the map, drinking coffee. Presently he said, ‘Martelsea.'

Stephen said, ‘What?'

That's where we'll make for. Look! Here on the map.'

Stephen saw the name on the map. In small writing, not a big place, one side of a little headland sticking out
into the English Channel. Nothing to mark it out as different from thirty other places on the south coast. He said, ‘You been there, Dad?'

‘Not for years. It was all right then. Not touristy, undeveloped you might say. We'll try there.'

‘How long will it take us from here?'

‘About an hour. If you've finished, let's get going.'

It took rather more than an hour to reach Martelsea, and it was another two before they had found a place to pitch the tent. They had driven over heath and wooded lanes which wound up and down hills and finally came out into the town, which was small and old fashioned, two streets running down steeply towards the glittering steel-coloured expanse a little way beyond, which must be the sea. But before reaching that, Stephen's dad insisted they must find the place where they were to spend the night.

They were refused permission to camp more than once before they struck lucky. And it was luck. They had gone into a small shop, half grocery and fruit and veg, half post office, on the edge of the little town, to ask the man behind the counter if he could tell them of anyone locally who might allow them to camp on their land. He was vague and unhelpful and they were just leaving when a woman who had heard the conversation while she was buying stamps, asked Dad who else was with him and how long he wanted to stay. When she heard that it would be for three or four nights, and that he and Stephen made up the whole party, she offered the bit of ground at the end of her garden for their site. She explained that it was rough ground which her nephews had used for playing football when they were younger. She added that there was an outside toilet in her garden which they were welcome to use, and they could come to her door and ask for water if they needed to.

Stephen was anxious. His dad didn't like accepting favours, wasn't easy with anyone, especially strangers. But it was all right. Dad said, ‘That's kind of you. Should we pay a sort of rent?' and the woman laughed and said she wouldn't know how much to charge for three nights in a field. She came out of the shop with them and directed Dad to the road that went past her house.

‘You can take your things through my garden. You'll see, there's a gap in the hedge. The football pitch's the other side of that,' she said.

The place was perfect. A small area of rough grass, not as big as a real football pitch, separated from the woman's garden and from the road by thick hedges and young trees. Stephen was surprised by the way his dad got the tent rigged up, quick and unfussed, as if he'd been doing it all his life instead of once or twice a long time ago. He could tell from the way his dad went about it, and showed him how to help, that he was in a good temper, which made it easier for Stephen to say, when they'd finished everything, down to unpacking everything they'd need for the night, ‘Can we go and look at the sea now?'

‘What? Tonight? It'll be getting dark in half an hour.'

‘We could go in the car. That'd be quicker.'

‘What about eating? We've to eat some time.'

‘Couldn't we get fish and chips somewhere in the town? On our way back.'

‘We can't stop long at the sea.'

‘I don't want to stop long. Just to look at it.'

Dad said, ‘Right!' and they went back, through the woman's garden, with pale flowers that smelt more strongly now that it was twilight, into the car, down the hill past shops, mostly shut, towards the sea. Before they reached the shore, Stephen could smell it. It smelt of salt and of hot pebbles and old fish and drying seaweed. He drew long breaths in and wished he could hold them for
ever. They drove past tracts of empty land, covered with thistles and long grass and rubbish and came out on to what would, in a prosperous seaside town, have been the front or the esplanade. Here, in this neglected part of the coast, there was a road running parallel to the sea, with a few buildings on the land side; a dilapidated block of flats, a tired looking small hotel, and a row of beach huts. On the sea side there was the sea wall level with the road. The shingle on the shore was piled up almost as high as the wall. The further side of the shingle was the sea.

Now that he was close to it, Stephen saw that what had looked, from a distance, flat and still, was anything but that. It was still grey rather than blue or green, but it was a tumbled grey with moving darker shadows and light points that appeared and disappeared almost before he had caught sight of them. And on the shore below him small waves were curling in over the shingle, coming up, one chasing the wave before it, and then retreating before the next, with a slow rasping sound as the water pulled back between the stones. It was a wonderful noise, and as Stephen's eyes moved across the restless surface to the curved, empty horizon, he knew that it was a wonderful sight. He felt that he could watch the sea for ever.