Stickle Island Read online

  In Devon and Cornwall it poured unceasingly. It was biblical. So much rain fell that good Christians threw up their hands and started building mini-arks in their back gardens in an effort to save their pet hamsters, goldfish, pythons, and pit bulls, their rug rats and ankle biters, and their wives. They pleaded to their invisible deity for salvation, but if those feet ever did walk England’s green and pleasant land, he was wearing thigh waders. It was a deluge. The floods raged for weeks. Country lanes became unnavigable torrents; major roads a hydroplaning nightmare of mangled metal. Embankments collapsed, carrying away railway tracks, telegraph poles, signal boxes, and all that infrastructure we always take for granted. Rivers burst their banks, and everything from car showrooms and trailer sites to entire small villages was swept down to the sea in great heaps.

  In Wiltshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, and all those other ’shire-type places—the “stockbroker belt counties” that are almost in the country, where no one from the actual country could afford to live anymore and where life was lived quiet and safe, primped and cleaned by a small army of domestics and gardeners—even those most peaceful of shires weren’t exempt from the mayhem of that summer. Dozens of mini-earthquakes rocked and rippled through the glorious south. Down came conservatories, carports, and children’s playhouses. It wasn’t chaos in the Krakatoa-west-of-Java sense, but it did force several merchant bankers, stock market traders, and advertising executives to take a day or two off to tidy up.

  On the other hand Kent, the so-called garden of England, basked through April with just enough rain for the crops. May was as calm and peaceful as it should be in myth and reality and in the Darling Buds of —. And June? The beginning was as beautiful as any living creature could hope for, and Kentish folk watched their TVs and all the strange meteorological happenings up and down the country and smiled at their own good fortune and that of their county. They felt safe and a little smug.

  Then the winds came, howling, to Kent. Ten days without respite. Cyclones, mini-tornadoes, hurricanes, whirlwinds, twisters—all tempestuous and violent. Across the county, high-sided vehicles toppled and were blown into piles like giant Jenga blocks. The motorways were closed. Roofs disappeared. Cars were upended. Stables, garages, and anything that wasn’t nailed down just blew away. Crops were flattened, ripening fruit ripped from bushes and trees, and like those old-time pictures of First World War battle scenes, whole areas of woodland were torn up and left desolate.

  On the coast the devastation was far worse. The ferry ports to the Continent were completely closed. Holiday towns like Margate, Herne Bay, Ramsgate, and Broadstairs were battened-down ghost towns. The roller coaster in Margate’s Dreamland was reduced to firewood, and a brace of intrepid anglers on Herne Bay Pier were swept to their death. Nothing particular happened in Ramsgate or Broadstairs, but then nothing ever had. Everywhere else along the coast, fishing boats, yachts, and all forms of small craft were flung onto promenades and beachfronts, smashed willy-nilly to matchwood against harbor walls. Thousands of swanky beach huts were trashed. It was ten days of total mayhem. There were no oysters for sale in Whitstable.

  On the eleventh morning the residents of Stickle Island were waking, relieved the battering had finally ceased. They yawned and stretched, and some went back to sleep and some made tea and thought of this or that and some thought about sex and some had sex and some who thought about sex but couldn’t have sex masturbated instead, and the truth was, being Stickle, for most people there was nothing much to get up for anyway. And they liked it that way.

  Situated in what amounts to the English Channel, Stickle often had bad winters. In winter, wind chill was a real factor, and people had always naturally built low, and most houses were surrounded by high blackthorn hedges or tough stands of stunted oak and ash, which, apart from helping cut out the wind, gave the individual islanders a sense of privacy. A couple of chimneys lost pots, but mostly all was well. It seemed Stickle Islanders had been prepared for a hurricane for close on a thousand years.

  And in that empty, early eleventh morning, Si Newman was driving a tractor and trailer along the beach field track. A herd of black-and-white cows was waddling along behind. Si was a big, easygoing guy, the only son of John Newman, one of the island’s two farmers. Si had the remains of a bacon sandwich in one hand. At the gate he stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and jumped down to let the cows into the field, and as he pulled himself back up into the cab, he glanced down the track toward the beach at Fishtail Bay.

  At twenty-two years old, Si had the easy animal grace of a latter-day Seth Starkadder. Levi’s rolled up to the top of his heavy work boots, a crewneck sweater under a quilted body warmer, and a battered fedora perched on the back of his head, he seemed as he hung there to be posing, but he wasn’t, he was just looking. In a way, like the cows, he was merely happy to be out in the world again.

  And what a lovely world. Stickle Island at its best. Beautiful now after the storms. Calm and washed clean. The sea a fluid mirror of blue gray lapping gently on the strand. The sun just hovering above the horizon, still pale in a pale cream sky but already casting a beneficent glow over the whole old island.

  4

  Si pulled himself up—one arm on the cab roof, the other on top of the open door—and balanced. Half of his mind was focused on a second breakfast, but something had caught his eye, something on the stretch of beach below the field.

  Fishtail Bay almost explained itself. It was a sickle of perfect golden sand set between low, gracefully curving rocky promontories. Here, on this beach, things gathered. In earlier centuries, when need turned to must, Stickle Islanders weren’t above a bit of wrecking. In storms they would set lookouts to spy ships in trouble and light fires on the cliffs to lure distressed boats onto the rocks.

  Terrible perhaps, and obviously those days, like the days of Dr. Syn and smuggling, were long gone, although something of the spirit remained. Luckily the average man didn’t have to kill poor innocent sailors anymore just so his family could live, and anyway, whatever flotsam or jetsam gathered along the tide line these days was mostly rubbish, plastic ducks or shoes already ruined by salt water. Nothing worth murdering anyone for.

  Si drove the tractor and trailer along the track until he came to a gap in the dunes, where a wide sandy path cut to the beach. What he’d seen was a dark, almost black brick, getting on for a meter square. It glistened dully in the early-morning light. Once on the beach, Si immediately noticed the three other similar bales, scattered along the high-tide line. He studied the first of the bales. Covered in thick opaque plastic, it was impossible to see the contents. He gave it a shove with his foot. It was heavy.

  D.C. had already been on the beach for an hour or more. Fishtail Bay was where he usually collected his firewood, and after a storm was the best time. Today that task had been forgotten. D.C. watched Si from the rocks. Si was like a gift: young, innocent, always ready to lend a helping hand, and, even better, he had a tractor, a trailer, and a barn. D.C. needed all three. Slack tide had been over an hour ago, and the old rising briny would soon take this bounty back into its arms. Sure, he could probably drag them a bit farther up the beach, but D.C. didn’t fancy all that wasted effort when there was machinery at hand.

  Si strolled along the strand checking each bale, and D.C. followed behind, unnoticed. The fourth bale had a knife cut in its outer covering, and beneath the double skin of heat-sealed plastic was more plastic, then a covering of burlap. Si squatted and peered into the bale, which seemed to be crammed with some kind of vegetable matter. As he made to put his hand through the slash, D.C. tapped him on the shoulder.

  Too young for a heart attack, Si jumped and turned, eyes wide, like he’d been caught with a hand in the till. When he saw D.C., he pushed his hands into the pockets of his Levi’s like nothing was nothing. “Where did you come from?”

  With a friendly sneer, D.C. nodded. “Hardly Robinson Crusoe, are you? Friday would have fucking eaten you by now! I’ve been here
all the time. Didn’t you notice my footprints?”

  Si looked around on the sand. There were the footprints.

  “Anyway you’re lucky—I ain’t resorted to cannibalism yet. Still got a pig to slaughter come this autumn.” D.C. gestured to the bales. “What do you reckon? There’s a couple more up on the rocks there.”

  Si followed the direction of D.C.’s arm, and sure enough there were two more of the bales washed up on the rocky promontory at the far end of the bay.

  “Guess what’s inside.”

  Si shrugged. “Don’t know, looks like some kind of fodder or something?”

  With a shake of his head, D.C. pushed him out of the way. “Fucking farmers! All you think about is feeding or fucking your animals!” Shoving his hand inside the cut bale and drawing out a handful of dark green matter, D.C. held it up to Si’s nose. Si sniffed.

  It wasn’t as though Si didn’t recognize the smell or even what he was seeing, because that would have been ridiculous. It was circumstance. At that time, on this bright morning, Si was thinking only of cows and an auxiliary breakfast, and it wasn’t until D.C. pulled a joint from the top pocket of his combat jacket that Si truly understood. Waving the joint under Si’s nose, D.C. sparked it up and, after a pull, passed it on. “Best Colombian, same as that grass I got a couple of months ago when I was in London, remember?” Si sniffed the spliff and took a tentative pull.

  Si’s father, John Newman, was one of the very few people D.C. had true respect for. He was the first person on Stickle to sell land or rent cottages to blow-ins, and D.C. had been living on his land ever since he’d arrived with Julie and Petal.

  To Si, D.C. had always been like some dodgy uncle. Not dodgy in that wicked what’s-that-in-your-pajamas-type thing. No. It was books and ideas, but then again, it was D.C. who’d turned him on at his sixteenth birthday party with a pipeful of excellent hash, but then again, it was also D.C. who always reminded him he’d pulled a whitey. Being sick behind the couch isn’t a good move, even if it is in your own home on your birthday.

  As for D.C., the fact that he liked Si was irrelevant. He needed the bales moving. It was simple. They represented manna from heaven to him. Born with nothing and brought up in a series of foster homes, he came to adulthood still with nothing, and he’d lived on his wits ever since then, but then, if you’d asked him, he’d say he didn’t give a fuck. Not about this or that or any fucking thing. He didn’t like the past and didn’t trust the future. But he liked moments like this. To D.C., especially on that beach at that time, it was the only time that mattered, and this, this was the sort of luck he’d waited his whole life for. A personal, particular time, when the world turns and everything changes. That was what D.C. thought.

  What D.C. really needed was Si’s help, but when he asked, Si didn’t answer. The smoke had hit him and he plonked himself down on the nearest bale and studied the sea. It was hard for D.C. to control himself; he was so excited and was desperate for Si to be excited too. He needed that tractor and trailer. That barn. He spread his arms wide and jerked them about. “Some weird shit gets washed up on this beach! Remember all those plastic ducks?” He took a couple of breaths, looked about, and tried to imagine a brave new world. “But this, this, this is like—it’s like… ! This is like finding a gold mine in your back garden! A fucking oil well! Have you got any idea how much this lot is worth?”

  Si moved his shoulders; he didn’t seem to know and couldn’t care. Almost to himself, he said, “Tide’s on its way in.”

  D.C. saw the sea, but he also saw the future and for once in his life it was a bright place. That was a new feeling. It made him happy, silly. He wanted Si’s attention. He slapped his thighs, threw his arms out wide again, grabbed Si and, yanking him upright, almost did a little dance. “Si, this is like providence, you know? Like, we’ll never have to worry about money ever again! Can you imagine that?” Si was still looking out to sea. Stopping for a moment, D.C. followed his gaze and said, urgently, “You’re right, you’re right, I’d forgotten! The tide’s coming in. Get your tractor and trailer down here, man! You got the one with the forklift on the front?”

  Si nodded and took a couple more pulls on the spliff. He was unsure about what he was getting into. He said, “What are we going to do?”

  D.C. sighed, came close to Si, and, putting an arm around the younger man’s shoulders, drew him in slowly, affectionately, until their heads touched, and then quietly, but not without a modicum of menace, he said, “You’ve got a bloody great barn up there.” Si tried to pull away but D.C. held him. “This is a chance in a lifetime. We’ll figure out what to do later, let’s just get it all off the beach, for fuck’s sake!”

  The motorbike didn’t exactly shatter a silence, because on the beach that morning was a bunch of those argumentative seagulls caterwauling about this or that, and beneath their raucous cries, various other smaller birds were twittering and chirruping, and then there was the gentle roll and rumble of the sea that never dies, the relentless grind of gravel until it becomes sand. Under that was the softer sound of the breeze rustling the sedges and all, but the noise of the bike’s engine coming down to the beach overlaid all and every other sound as though it were silence.

  Dick Stick and Petal arrived, skidding to a halt in a shower of sand. Although New Wave was already almost passé, Petal and Dick were as New Wave as Stickle Island had ever had, but then again, in a community as small as Stickle, it wasn’t hard to be weird. Dick was punk’d up in skintight black jeans, a leather jacket, and Docs. His hair was green and red and stood up in little gelled spikes, and as the bike slid to a halt, Dick reached up in an almost compulsive gesture and touched the varicolored spikes. Petal didn’t have to do anything to look good in her tartan miniskirt, fishnets, leather jacket, and Docs.

  At seventeen, Petal knew it all and was already convinced most men were pretty stupid, and she wasn’t wrong. Once when she’d asked her dad what he was thinking about as he lay on the couch staring at the ceiling, he’d replied, “Pies.” So far in their relationship, she’d never dared to ask Dick what he was thinking.

  D.C. gave Dick Stick the evils. It was a dad thing. The way Petal was, wasn’t Dick’s fault—D.C. knew she was born stroppy and D.C. loved her unconditionally, despite and because of it. So, harshly, he said, “What you two doing here?”

  Petal wasn’t having any of it. Stepping off the pillion and pointing at her father, she said, “No! It’s what do you think you’re doing here!” Bunches of her pink hair were held at the sides of her head by fluorescent-green Go Go’s, and the fluffy bunches waggled when she spoke. Stoned, D.C. and Si began to giggle, and Dick, despite Petal’s warning glance, couldn’t help a little chortle.

  They made her want to stamp her feet in the sand, but she knew, even if she did stamp her feet in the sand, it wouldn’t have made any difference, and when she did, they just laughed some more. She said, “Don’t patronize me, you. Look at you, two middle-class farmers’ sons and my dad!”

  Pathetic. Petal believed she had the upper hand on most men because, in literature anyway, a good-looking, clever woman usually did have the upper hand. That was what clever women did. It is what most clever people did.

  Stoned as he was, Si had surreptitiously watched Petal from the moment she arrived, but his own feelings for her embarrassed him, and when, as she spoke, she turned her gaze full on him, he didn’t know what to do. It felt as though recently something had subtly changed. He didn’t know, wasn’t sure. Was she looking at him with those eyes? The three of them had been close friends for years. There wasn’t much to do on Stickle, but what there was they had done together. Nights sitting in front of the fire in Si’s room, stoned, music on, no problem. When Dick and Petal had got together it had seemed natural, despite his own want. Anyway, what could he do? They were his friends. He turned to Dick and, with a wonky grin, gave him a friendly poke on the arm. Dick smiled back and shrugged.

  D.C. sighed and started to walk about in tight little c
ircles, chewing his lip. Petal always had it over on him and he knew it and knew that she knew it. It was that unconditional love thing that he couldn’t account for, that no one can account for, and it always left him feeling like an idiot. She was precious and probably the best thing about his life, but still, he couldn’t let it alone because unconditional love does that to you. Castaneda was right, a child creates a hole in you, but as yet, he’d been unable to repair it. He pointed at her and waggled his finger: “Does your mother know where you are, where you’ve been? And anyway, why aren’t you wearing a crash helmet?” He kicked sand.

  When D.C. tried to play the heavy dad it just made Petal want to laugh. She sucked air through her teeth. “Stop it, Dad! Mum knows what I do, and anyway, we only came across the field!”

  Regretting it before the words left his mouth, D.C. stopped in front of Petal and said, “You been out all night? Where you been?”

  Narrowing her eyes, Petal laughed. “Where have I been? We live on an island, Dad!”

  D.C. shook his head. “Don’t look at me like that. I am your father, you know!”

  With a derisory giggle, Petal said, “Are you? You better talk to Mum about that—you know what you hippies were like with your free love and everything.”

  D.C. hated it when people called him a hippie. Fuck that! He never was, never had been! Petal could get away with it, but to D.C., being called a hippie was a total insult. He’d never belonged to any creed, religion, movement, social scene, or cult. All he wanted to be was himself. Everything else was decoration: a haircut, a style of jeans, a hat.

  A Polish guy he’d met one time had told him, “You can be sure who your mother is but you can never be sure about your father, unless he takes a paternity test.” In truth, D.C. didn’t care; it went much deeper than the lucky sperm. He tried again, in a softer tone. “All right, all right, but why are you here now?”