The Poor List Chapter 8

The Poor List Chapter 7 “In the subway, there’s no longer any trace of the screen of embarrassment that normally impedes the gestures of the passengers. Strangers make conversation without making passes. A band of comrades conferring on a street corner. Much larger assemblies on the boulevards, absorbed in discussions. Surprise attacks mounted in city after city, day after day. A new military barracks has been sacked and burned to the ground. The evicted residents of a building have stopped negotiating with the mayor’s office; they settle in. A company manager is inspired to blow away a handful of his colleagues in the middle of a meeting. There’s been a leak of files containing the personal addresses of all the cops, together with those of prison officials, causing an unprecedented wave of sudden relocations. We carry our surplus goods into the old village bar and grocery store, and take what we lack. Some of us stay long enough to discuss the general situation and figure out the hardware we need for the machine shop. The radio keeps the insurgents informed of the retreat of the government forces. A rocket has just breached a wall of the Clairvaux prison. Impossible to say if it has been months or years since the “events” began. And the prime minister seems very alone in his appeals for calm.” ‘The Insurrection to Come’ “So tell us about the VCS outfit, McCabe. Who were the VCS people?” “We know they were a front for the main characters McCabe. Don’t fuck us about. What did they get you to do?” “I can’t remember. I’ve tried honest to fuck.” “Let’s try to get you to remember a bit more thoroughly shall we?” ‘Greaves and other intermediaries’

The morning of that same day and two hundred miles away in a terraced house in Fairrock, Wales, a man and a woman were sat at a table in their kitchen. The woman was leafing through a pile of papers by her plate and drinking from a bowl. He was reading, distractedly, a newspaper from the day before. A radio on a shelf played some floaty music over the humming clatter of traffic noise outside in the rain. ‘I had that dream again, ‘ he said looking at her, folding the paper. She put her bowl down and ran her hand through her short hair. ‘I’m running through some streets trying to get to the place. People keep stopping But the thing is, I haven’t learnt my lines’ She grunted something without looking up from her work. ‘The thing is, I’m not really sure what I should be learning. Then someone tells me I’ve got twenty minutes to learn Hamlet. Not the King’s part or that jester fucker, but bloody Hamlet the man himself all that I wandered lonely as a cloud speech.’ A small older woman entered the kitchen carrying washed and folded linen. Upstairs, a child was crying. ‘This is the day, your life will surely change.’

‘See to Jack first will you Rizalia. That noise again.’ the woman said. The maid looked baffled. The woman pointed at her own eyes. “Go. See Jack.” The man bit into some toast. The woman watched the maid leave the room then sighed. “Go easy on her Liz.” She looked at the clock and then at her watch and began, quickly to get organised, ‘You mean “To be or not to be”’. “What? Just checking you were listening. So I’m panicking and rushing through this town I don’t know, and more and more things keep getting in my way and it’s getting closer and closer to curtain up and this goes on and on for like ages, til I turn this corner and. . .’ he held his hands out, ‘I wake up. God.’ A half hourly news broadcast started up on the radio and they heard the washing machine’s banshee wail sheared through the wall and away from over the railway cutting, quietly, a low frequency hum that throbbed to an irregular rhythm. “I’ll be late back tonight.” We’re going to have to let Rizzla go aren’t we?’ She stopped what she was doing. “Not unless you do something about it…” “But. Ay? I thought we’d agree all that…” “Look James, we’re going to have to sort all this out one way or another…” “But it’s a chance in a lifetime Leese.” ‘And it’s Rizalia not Rizzla for God’s sake.’ She gathered her things. The tilted her head at him. “Seriously though, you’re going to have to accept it. I mean, this, any of this… well, it wasn’t what we wanted James was it?” She put on her coat. “You know, when we got married?” He followed her out of the room. He waited by the foot of the stair. At the end of the hall she stood for a moment framed in a morning lit doorway. He smiled, “It’s not so bad.” ‘James…if you can’t see…’ She had her foot on the porch’s top step. “Look we’ve been over all this. Speak to Wendy about it. Ok? I’ve got to go already late. Love you. You really did think that Hamlet said I wandered lonely as a cloud didn’t you?” “It was a dream.” She shook her head. ‘Remember Jamie tonight. Don’t let Danlyston lead you astray.” She waved, briefly, and closed the door and the smile evaporated from James’ face. He heard Rizalia, singing to the baby, upstairs. He walked back into the kitchen and didn’t notice the tiny arrow on the screen moving the yellow symbols and files about. He called Nick. “Jamie hurry up will you. Homework!! Nick! How’s it going? Where are you? There already? Great yeah! I’m on my way right now. Don’t worry, they know us it’ll be smooth as cream on a plate but…Uh hu. Look…the thing is. I think you know what I’m going to say…” He took a deep breath. “It’s looking a lot like we’re going to have to take, the North contract.” He held the mobile away from his ear then cupped his hand over the end and shouted up the stairs, “Jamie come on! What are you doing?”

There was an indiscernible reply. “Not you Nick for fuck’s sake.” James said gathering files and papers. “Look we’ve no fucking choice… The charges and with those fees… I’ve seen Tom and the accounts…It’s no use getting like that! We’re getting hemmed in all over. We’ve been in touch with them, they know the…In the cupboard!…Alright…alright! Nick look, it’ll be good we got an option on them. Look I got to move it I’m seeing Bryanston at half eleven. See you tonight like we said?’ Jamie shrugged down the stairs. “Yeah, I’ll bring him along.” The maid up on the landing, leaning against the banister, stared down at them. James caught her eye but she had already looked away. He stepped down and stretched himself by the sea front’s railings. Music played from the van’s radio. He closed the door, sniffed and spat a glistening oyster of phlegm seaward. “Fucking Bryanston bastard.” The glob blew back in the damp breeze and fell somewhere on the beach. He put the mobile back in his pocket and sneered at the sea. He glanced at his watch. It was early and so was he. An indeterminate dawn had slowly bleached layers of low formless cloud. A train rattled by as it picked up speed behind a row of hotels and diffused light reflected off windows behind him. The promenade was practically deserted. A straggle of traffic revved past somewhere in the mist. The cafes would be open in half an hour or so. He started to whistle and headed towards a gap in the handrail. He hunched over half of one of last night’s cigarettes and lit it. He walked slowly down the steep sandy steps holding on to the railing. He coughed and rubbed his chest and stopped on a rectangular rocky outcrop that acted as a sort of landing. He took a small bottle of pills from his jacket pocket and wheezed out the last of the smoke and assessed a faded Urban Assurance Centre poster on a notice board above a bench. He twisted the cap off the brown bottle after a struggle and tipped two little dark green capsules into his hand. A dog barked in the distance. He threw the pills into his mouth and swallowed dryly. A coin operated telescope stood bowed amongst the weeds. He walked over. It had been painted dark green and was covered in dents and graffiti. The metal casing was cold and covered with a film of water. He drew and skull and cross bones in the condensation then rooted in his pocket for a twenty five pence piece and dropped it in the slot. The aperture opened with a whir and a click and he gripped the handles and leant to look through the eye pieces. He turned the box from left to right. A misty vista rushed past. He caught sight of the far end of the promenade through the mist and the road as it rose and dematerialised into the foggy headland. There were only a few people about and, from this distance, they looked like spectral assemblages of washed out colour. He followed an old couple as they walked arm in arm passed an amusement arcade but lost sight of them behind a wall. He coughed and swore. Magnification is so strange. He peered through the machine’s lens again and briefly caught sight of the south pier’s skeletal structure that had leant twisted like that for years now. Barely visible through the mist, he caught sight of a row of deckchairs, their canvas seats billowing in the breeze. Further out giant seagulls circled. The aperture shut with a whir and a click. He leant on the railing and picked off some layers of paint that covered the rusted metal underneath and looked over towards where the south pier must be a mile

away in the misty distance. A car revved somewhere behind him. He ambled down the rest of the steps. The stone merged unevenly into the beach’s sand at the bottom . He turned and weaved between odd collections of objects on the dry coarse sand for about a hundred yards and then started a half jogged run towards the sea. Further on, the beach was even more of a mess. He ambled between boat-junk, rope, a dead seagull and three abandoned plastic dwellings. Then he stopped, out of breath. The sea sighed slowly some way off at the edge of the sandy blankness. He headed towards it and kicked a bottle full of sand in his way. Music played. He stopped and took his mobile out of his pocket. “Yep? Hi Denise, yeh Nick. Have you got the Held details? Yeah I’m alright, just been for a jog, you know. What? Yeh. Send the letter you took yesterday. London’s off, yeah…looks like it. Next year maybe.” He kicked the bottle again and it bounced away its contents spinning out over the hard sand. He bit the nail of his left index finger, winced and spat. “…Tell Bryanston he’ll have to wait. No don’t give him this number just fob ‘im off you know. Yeah I bet you do. Course yeah. See you later.” Touched the glass square and then wiped it with his sleeve. The device played the opening bars of an old dub tune again and a woman’s wavy pixilated face appeared on the tiny screen. The image yawned. “Where are you?” He rubbed the side of his round face and held the mobile closer to see her. “Wotcha. On the beach.” “… bad connection,” the apparition said, with a heavily filtered voice. The screen froze for a moment. “Is that you smiling?” “Still there?” “Are you ok? I said ‘Where are you?’” “On the beach. Just seen a dead porpoise.” There was a loud boom from somewhere far off. “Your porpoise has no life.” “Eh? Funny.” ‘Nemind. What time are you meeting them? Do you know what it’s all for yet?’ her lips lagged her words. “This afternoon, tonight. Not sure. Jim’ll tell us later…” “You should have stayed last night…” The picture froze and the screen went blank. He typed, ‘I’ll call you’ and put the mobile in his coat pocket and started to put a cigarette together. In the distance thirty yards away or so, a tiny red light glowed through the drapes of mist. He waited and frowned and spat into the damp air and carried on through the swirling fog squinting at his in-box contents and leaving dark footprints in the sand. He felt its soft crust yield pleasingly beneath his feet. He walked on uncertain of where he was going then stopped. He frowned and closed his eyes, and a succession of emotions passed over his face, registering ire, self-regret and weariness. He set off again. He half tripped and pulled his coat about him. He scuffed some sand worms’ curled sandy casings. The beach was plastered with them. He felt he should have been rich not only by now, but a long time ago. He checked his pocket for the tiny plastic bag and its contents. He had walked quite a way and thought of all the misfortunes and missed opportunities. He stopped by a pool of agitated water to catch his breath. He felt cold and blank. He looked about and drew on the last of the roll up and flicked it onto the dank sand. He ran a hand over his grey close cropped hair. He had walked without heed

and, without realising it, had lost whatever sight he had had of the old ruined pier. He mouthed snippets of the conversation he had just had, sourly, and carried on. Apart from that and the low sound of uneven sea and the swish of his feet on the sand, it had fallen quiet. He shivered. The sand had started to undulate here and no longer had the friendly yielding crust, in which he had left deep foot prints, but had turned into hard, wavy ribs with small glistening pools and seaweed here and there, in between. His stomach rumbled. He stopped by a sea smashed radio and wiped his damp stubbly face and swore to himself. He realised he had lost sight of the hotels and road embankment too. Far away he heard a bored bingo voice start to commentate, indistinctly, over a loudspeaker. It had to be that way then. He scanned the ground as best he could for the traces of his outgoing path and wiped his cracked lips. He turned around and headed back the way he thought he had come. He walked quickly trying to avoid the dark puddles in the heavy sand. The bingo voice grew fainter. ‘Fucking cockle picking nightmare.’ he said. The breeze wafted currents of mist about him. He plodded on trying to locate the voice again. His other prints must be around here somewhere as well. But after more five minutes the sand became more saturated and he stopped once more. Other footsteps, far off but distinct, stopped a second or so after his own did. He frowned and looked about. The promenade had to be to his right. He turned and walked on fondling the sample bag of substance in the pocket of his jeans. He looked at his watch and realised he hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. The other footsteps, a second or so out of time with his but otherwise matching with his step for step, splashed closer. “Yay!” It was a strange hoarse voice, with an accent or a intonation Greaves had never heard before. Through, some trick of the fog, it had seemed close yet, somehow, a long way away. He stopped and waited, then raised his eyebrows for a second and hunched his shoulders against the damp. The sun, discernible now but only as a faintly luminous disc, seemed to hover just above where the horizon was. He put his hands in pockets and started walking again. Seagulls cawed and the mist attenuated their noise. He coughed and spat into a sizable pool sending tiny wavelets over his broken looking reflection. He hurriedly skirted the edge. He remembered this spot. That big Fanta bottle next to the half compressed blue plastic barrel there. Slower now, he walked on. But where had his footprints gone? He kicked the wet sand and looked up, hoping to see something familiar. Instead there was still only the, almost, blinding precipitation. He rubbed his paunchy belly through his flimsy jacket, his face taut. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He massaged his chest and frowned. Something tall in the distance on the other side of the pool, coalesced through veils of mist, a leaning patch of grey, silhouetted in the watery dawn-light. He paused, squinted in the direction of where the thing was, then, hesitantly, moved forward. That hadn’t been there before. He shrugged, but his heart started to beat faster. He would have noticed a tree or bit of rubbish as big as that. He splashed clumsily into a deep pool. ‘Fucking hell.’ He must be heading out to sea. He rubbed the tops of his jeans under his pockets and sniffed. I can’t even fucking swim. Forty years old, skint near enough and can’t even find my way off a beach. The tops of his trainers were wet. The sea’s ragged rhythm was louder here and the smell of seaweed stronger. He turned to

walk the other way, farted resoundingly, heard its echo and glanced over his shoulder as . A metallic taste in his mouth made him swallow and half gag. The slanting shape gathered clarity but then was lost as a denser wall of fog seemed to claim it. He splashed on, in the opposite direction, through more shallow water, but now each step felt heavier than the last. The steps tracked his moves. The mist had got denser and even his feet had started to fade from view. He breathed in heavily. His hands, face and clothes were drenched by now. He pulled his coat’s collar round his ears and swore as he accidentally bent his cigarette on the side of his head lightly singeing the skin. He breathed in deeply a few times. Despite the cold, he felt sweat seep into his shirt. He looked up from the near whited out sand and stared. Ahead of him the same shape only this time the front of it lit by rays of diluted light. He moved his hand up to his face. The fog played some optical tricks because the thing seemed to turn to face him. It couldn’t be driftwood. He felt adrenalin in his chest and walked on. The figure, definitely staring at him now, lurched and then moved towards him in the mist as if it were floating on the water’s surface. It was wearing a long dark coat that billowed gently in the headwind. Greaves bent his head and plashed laboriously through the ribbons of water between the uneven sand. He coughed and put his hand to his throat then pulled out his mobile and tried to call James, then Denise, then Anna. Nothing. He massaged his chest again and swayed in the mist. He slipped his mobile back in his pocket. What sounds there had been began to fade from his consciousness. He wiped water from his eye. There was a muffled noised that hummed in his head. The figure moved towards him at the same even pace. Greaves saw it as if from the end of a long tunnel. You’d think you’d be left alone on an April Sunday morning on a fucking beach, for fuck’s sake. He stifled a sob. As the man’s watery footsteps trudged closer, Greaves lurched to his left, nearly dropping his cigarette. The man swerved to his right at an identical angle then turned left at the same time Greaves turned right. What was this cunt playing at? A cold constriction in his throat forced him to cough. There was barely five yards between them now and Greaves could make out what the man was wearing. He avoided his eye but at two yard’s away he looked up, had to. Greaves limbs became heavy and he felt detached from them and the rest of his surroundings. All seemed hopeless. The business, his work, the future. It had to have been expected. The drink, the drugs, the ignored doctors’ warnings. And all of that was compressed into the time it took for him to face the apparition. “Shit. Heart attack.” He thought And stared blankly into his own face. It was not quite a replica of his own face, but something very close. Both men stopped. Greaves stepped back and watched as the other did the same. The figure made a noise as if it were going to vomit. It slowly opened its mouth into a fearful parody of a yawn. Then snapped its jaws closed and pursed its pale thin lips then quietly said, “ded la eederla roy?” The man lifted his arm slowly and with great effort said the same thing again. “Fucking what?”, Greaves said slowly. His heart raced and his mouth went dry. Each syllable became a heavier, leaden weight. The other Greaves, for that was the only way to think of it, looked aghast. It’s strange eyes widened and its mouth opened. It breathed in heavily and then put a cigarette to its lips, mimicking Greaves. Greaves’ hand trembled a little as

they smoked in mirror image. Greaves’ copy took a lighter out of its pocket, touched the end of his cigarette which then went out. It took it from its mouth and spoke the noise again. Greaves himself, sighed deeply, feinted to go left then went right. Fucking nutters everywhere these days. He expected what happened next. They were nearly a yard from each other now. Both men frowned at each other. Greaves tried to speak. The taller Greaves’ words, though, seemed to come from the sea all around and, arm still out stretched, he stumbled forward, opened his mouth slowly and a groaned something in a long, loud, low pitched drone. Then gasping for breath it said, “Pasc town you. Ti ood twon!” I am having a mid life crisis. That’s what this had to be, Greaves thought. The heart attack would have been easier. The sea heaved and retreated close by and the high cries of seagulls served to underline the silence. Greaves stood and stared. He tilted his head and backed off. “You, ok?” he said after a long internal struggle, his own words feeling soft and inaudible. The other Greaves looked frantic now. “Pasc town you! Ti ood twon!” It spoke quickly, if the noise it made was indeed speech and as it finished its communication something flew into the form’s dark slash of a mouth. The jumble of incomprehensible words, repeated louder this time, grated and hissed from the duplicate’s spectral presence. The figure moved closer to Greaves who, paralysed by fear, remained fixed to the spot. The fog around the figure had started to glow. The approaching apparition, for surely it was that, began to look more and more like an absence of form rather than something actual and Greaves would later only remember its almond shaped eyes which were a light almost colourless blue. It was so close now Greaves could perceive its faint rank odour. It seemed to hover before him. Unable to counter it, Greaves felt his throat contract and he had to gasp and wheeze for breath. This was it, he thought. This is what deaf must be like. His mind reeled with shock and his feet froze in the ankle deep water. The periphery of his vision began to disintegrate and he felt a panic as the rest of his vision began to blur and fade into tiny blocs of colours as if his eyes were filling up with tiny crystals. Greave’s first thought was that he was going blind. Then he thought bitterly, ‘All that effort, time and money and I’m going to die on a deserted beach, get washed out to sea and eaten by fish and that’. Greaves saw fragments of his life flash before him. Scenes from childhood drifted by. In the garden with his sister. Then later. Signing the first big deal. Mother. He couldn’t breathe. He must have been swept away by the sea. That what must have happened. He was drowning. He felt a horrible panic. He’d never learnt to swim and now never would. If he had, he might have never met Mauve. Might have met someone more active, in a swim suit. Wasn’t that supposed to happen just before you died? He felt the noise in his head recede and a strange calm settle on him. He felt an eerie elation and then he heard the seagulls and the voice again. He turned. Something was happening to the other Greave’s face. The real Greaves, though feeling very remote from reality, began slowly to recover his poise. The coloured lights began to recede. The pressure dissipated from behind his eyes. The other Greaves came back wavily into focus. The sea’s limpid wheeze picked up again in his ears. Life seemed to return to his limbs and face. He was still staring at the other Greaves. How much time had passed? The figure was still talking to him. But

Greaves could neither understand what was being said, nor grasp the voice’s changing tone. The voice had changed in pitch and became for a moment very clear. He squinted at the form in front of him. Something was happening to it. It gave a prolonged shudder and half jerked to one side, then the other. Its head lolled onto its now twitching shoulders. Something fundamental was happening to it, something that Greaves, the real Greaves, could not grasp at first. Then it became clear. Through the thick mist Greaves could see the look of frozen anguish on his twin’s face. Then the muscles in its neck and upper torso relaxed and its face took on the appearance of a shuttered drunk. Something trickled out of the sideas of its mouth. But there was not the end of it. Before Greaves could prise himself away, the other Greave’s face, his face!, slowly, at first, began to fold and to crumple slowly with age. They were only a couple of yards away from each other but Greaves could see the lines round the other’s unfocused eyes deepen and extend round the side of its head and the laugh lines round its mouth deepen and furrow and spread until they looked like tributaries round the sea. Its hair, what little it had in the first place, grew and receded at the same time, thinning and greying and lengthening until it turned bone white thicket that drifted around the apparition’s face and shoulders. Its clothes were falling to pieces as well. A thick ooze seeped through its flaking cotton trousers and shirt. Greaves watched speechless as the, surely now dead, other’s head shrivelled like an old balloon, its drooping arm still pointing. Greaves stared at its hand that aged forty, fifty years in a few seconds and for a moment the figure looked like his hospitalised father had done. Greaves remained transfixed whist the sea lapped round the bottom of his jeans. The thing, though, moved forward in urgency. It’s teeth now appeared enormous and luminous in its gaping mouth. The dissolving skin around its eyes tumbled downward and began to fall away exposing flesh and bone . What skin was left greyed and quickly withered. Its eyes sank down into their sockets and, whatever it was, it emitted a long sighing noise and at the same time it seemed to yawn again as it shoulder bones came loose and twisted downwards with a noise of tearing rotten material. The thing disintegrated completely now. There was a noise like fresh wet compost falling on tiles. Its mass listed to one side and slumped into the shallow sea arms outstretched, swirling the mist around it into a small vortexes. A dark, thick liquid of some sort oozed from beneath it and floated away on the rising tide. The smell was overwhelming . Greaves put his hand over his mouth. “Fucking hell.” The other Greaves’ shrunken head stayed above the waves and leaned on its arm as it half sat up in twisted supplication. The creature’s jaws still moved as it spoke the same incomprehensible words. They grew fainter and fainter and merged into one another filling Greaves’ head until the thing’s skull completely disappeared beneath the waves and dissolved in the water with a faint hissing and bubbling sound. Then the watery silence returned. All that was left of was its clothes that bobbed up and down in the water and slowly drifted out to sea and a stain on the water’s surface. Greaves, water now half way up his calve muscles, backed away, still unable to really speak. He stared after the clothes until they sank and then at the oily residue until that too disappeared beneath the advancing sea. He took a look around, turned and fled as fast as he could through the restless tide, looking over his shoulder a few times in blank fear. He ran desperately because the tide was now sweeping in. There were whirlpools and sinewy flows of water seething and

boiling around him and the water’s currents lashed around his legs like ropes. He ran, lifting his legs as high as he could, towards, what must surely be, dry land, the shock of what he had just seen fuelling his panicked flight. He looked up from his flailing path and saw the large dark shapes of the front’s hotels and houses through the mist, and the sea wall below them, but it was all a long way off. It must be a good five hundred yards away. He stopped and leant forward resting his hands on his thighs in the knee deep broiling sea and gasped to catch his breath. The water poured in at a frightening rate. He was not going to make it. Shivering he plunged on, regardless, his legs leaden with the cold and the exertion. Then, through the gloom, he saw something black, geometric and skeletal materialize and swore with joy. He twisted himself round but became entangled with something under the dark liquid, lost his footing and fell onto his hands and knees. Water drenched the bottom half of his jeans and his shirt. It was numbingly cold. He staggered up and coughed heavily, swearing and shouting with rage. The water pushed and pulled him about. With an effort he dragged himself towards the pier and its beckoning steps . He splashed and staggered through the deepening sea and heaved himself up onto the stairs. He clambered up the first seven or eight steps as fast as he could pulling himself up by the railings. The steps swayed to and fro as they took his weight and his frantic ascent made the rusted stairwell ring and creak to the frantic rhythm of his ascent. He was half way up the fire escape steps before he stopped. He leant on the railing and looked down at the noisy sea which was now a four or five feet deep expanse of thrashing white foam tipped waves. The sun was visible now and glinted on the windows and paintwork of the shelters and bandstand, through the metal bars, at the pier’s top. Looking towards the sea he noticed that he was near the end of the pier. The mist swirled about him and he felt sick and faint. He shivered and his teeth chattered as he swore to himself. Water poured down his face and his paunch heaved up and down under his dank shirt. He heaved himself upwards. He had the powerful sensation of being followed and looked over his shoulder and slipped and nearly fell as he panted towards the top. There was a metal door at the end of the narrow space. He pushed it but it was locked. From down below he slow heard a slow heavy noise on the steps. He sobbed again. “Anybody there?” he shouted. “Hello. Look I’m stuck behind this door. Anyone open it for us? Fack it.” The noise on the steps got louder. He waited. He tried his mobile, frantically, but there was till no coverage He hammered on the door. Hollow metallic thuds reverberated around the skeletal amphitheatre of the pier’s labyrinthine support structure and startled some near by seagulls that scattered into the air around him in outrage. The huge birds, ten fifteen of them, circled and swooped around him. The clangs on the steps stopped. Greaves cowered into the door well cursing. He breathed in and yelled as loud as he could, “Hello! There must be somebody?” and then “God. I fucking hate the seaside.” He pounded the door. But there was still no response. Something made the stairwell clank and clang again. He looked round. He could not go back down. He leant over the railing by the door frame. His only option was to climb over the railing and the fence and get onto the pier and get back to the van. He must not be late. He looked down. Through gaps in the mist he could see heaving brine. He must be about forty feet up. Enough to break my neck if I fell. There was nothing for it. He would have to sidle the twenty yards or so along the outside guttering at the edge of the pier’s side and climb over the lower fencing further down. He

wasn’t going to be able to climb over the elevated section by the fire door, at least not in the state he was in. He tested the bottom of the railing with his right foot. It bent and yielded slightly under his weight, with a loud cracking sound. He waited ‘til the flakes of paint and rusted metal had fallen from view and shuffled along his knuckles bone white as he held onto every other of the evenly spaced railing tops, holding himself up from them as much as he could. The cold metal, coated with dew, uneven with rust and layers of paint was difficult to hold on to. He shuffled slowly along the edge head bowed against the metal poles as if in prayer. His hand slipped once or twice, making him stop and shake with fear. He had to dry them, one precariously by one, on the drier parts of his jeans. As often as he could he cried out for help. He made steady progress for about ten minutes and was about a yard from the nearest place he could conceivably clamber over onto the pier proper, sweating and swearing with the effort, when he heard a low whistling sound that gradually became louder. He tried to pull himself up over the railings but the guttering which this time he had put too much of his weight on, folded beneath him. “Oof.” He slid downwards with a cry, kicking out his legs wildly in front of him and trying to get a foothold. He clung onto the bottom of the railings where they had been soldered onto their holdings and bolted to the tiny ledge. His nose was pressed up against some wires and a dirt streaked plastic pipe. His flailing feet found a ledge of some sort and he stabilized himself before the strain in his wrists and fingers became completely unbearable. “Fucking hell! Help! Jesus.” He stayed in this position, occasionally crying for help for what felt like quite some time until he heard the whistle again and the noise of a small engine coming closer and closer. Then he heard the more regular metallic rhythm and shriek of the pier’s steam train. He shouted as loud as he could. The engine hissed and went quiet. “Hello. For fuck’s sake help me here will you?” “Hello? Who’s there?” “Over here. Hurry up. I’m hanging off the fucking edge of the pier.” Greaves heard footsteps thud at eye-level on the pier’s wooden beams level. “Well, Well. What do we have here?” a voice asked somewhere above Greave’s head and laughed. “Get a move on. I can’t hold on much longer here.” “Get you back over in no time. Hold on.” “Please hurry up. Can’t hold on much. Longer.” “You are in a right mess.” “Welcome to my world.” The driver of the train fetched a rope from tool cabin and came back with it over his shoulder wiping his hands. He quickly tied a knot round a flagpole and threw the other end over the side. Greaves grabbed hold of the other end and the driver hauled him up. Greaves dragged himself over the intricately railed fence and snagged himself climbing over the top. He slipped and fell over a bin as he finished his descent with a crash and string of expletives. The train driver looked down at the prostrate man. “What the hell were you doing there? Going to top yourself were you?” “No. No nothing like that,” Greaves said, wiping crushed cups and rubbish off himself. “Just hanging about,”. He lay on the floor exhausted with his eyes closed.

“You been swimming? Only your covered in seaweed and sand.” “Long story.” “Well you can stay there or I can give you a life on the train back to the prom. Timetable to keep to.” He gestured over his shoulder to the miniature steam train idling in the small model station. “Course if you want to jump and drown yourself, now’s the time to do it. Makes no odds to me either way.” “No. Hang on. Thanks. I don’t think I could face walking it back at the moment.” “Seven pound fifty.” “Seven pound fifty? But it’s only half a mile.” “That’s the price.” Greaves, sat up on the pier’s damp wooden floor and rummaged through his pockets. “Look, I’ve only got three quid on me. Left me wallet in the van haven’t I? “Sorry. Seven pound fifty and think yourself lucky I don’t report you.” “Look, give me a break. You’re going that way anyway. If you only charge me three quid, that’s three quid you wouldn’t have made if I wasn’t here. If you just charge me three sovs – you make a bit of cash I get to where I have to be – everyone wins” “Hmm. But if everyone did that…” “Not everyone has had a morning like I’ve had. Look, I’ll pay you. I’ll come back. Honest.” Greaves sat on the carriage two behind the engine and they moved off through the lifting mist. The train chugged along and rocked from side to side. Greaves felt a wave of relief and gratefulness wash over him. Some ambient electronic music played over the loudspeakers strapped to poles along the side of pier. “You here on business then?” the driver shouted over his shoulder. “You could say that.” “Daft place to be if you ask me.” “I had a. On the beach there. I saw something.” The train gave out a huge wheeze. “What’s that?” Greaves felt the cool mist breeze across his face and closed his eyes. “Never mind. It was nothing.” The driver pulled his cap down over his ears. Two fuzzy outlined figures were waiting up ahead at the next station. The train drew closer. Greaves smelt the oily steam. “Great smell that,” he said. “Thirty years of it mate,” the driver yelled back and pulled the break lever. The train slowed with a loud series of hisses. A woman and small girl got on at the back of the row of carriages. The girl was wearing a purple coat buttoned up to her neck and held on to a white balloon. The driver took their money and said something. They laughed. They chugged down the pier. The noise of the town, the traffic, the amusement arcades gradually returned. They stopped by the terminus. Greaves got up off the seat and winced in pain. “Pulled a muscle in me back.” The driver had alighted and was kneeling down, checking the boiler.

“Mind you come back with the money you owe me. I never forget a face,” he said looking up. Greaves smiled and got his tobacco out of a damp pocket. “I always pay my debts. Does the tide always come in that quick fella?” “Treacherous waters these you know,” the driver said nodding towards the sea and wiping his hands on a rag. “I thought I was a gonner out there.” “Every year someone cops for it.” Greaves offered the driver a roll up. “Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.” The woman and the girl walked passed them towards the road. The girl was objecting to something. Greaves looked round towards the road. An armoured personnel carrier drove by slowly. The soldier atop the dark green machine swung round to face them and a gun glinted in the sunlight for an instant. The girl cried out. Greaves looked over and saw the white balloon hover uncertainly in the air just above her head for a second, it wobbled before and then ascended rapidly. He watched it until it was swallowed up by the receding fog.