The Kingdom by the Sea Read online

  Harry felt treacherous hot tears starting to gather in the corners of his eyes. He yelled, “Back home, I go to church with my mam twice every Sunday.”

  “Where’s that then?”

  “St Peter’s, Balkwell.”

  “Well, get back there, and trail sand all over their floor. See how they like it.”

  “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” roared Harry. He had gone to church twice every Sunday, and a lot of what he’d heard had stuck in his mind.

  “Ye what?” shouted the man. “You little toy. How dare you quote scripture at me! I’ll belt you on the lug…”

  “If anyone should offend these little ones,” roared Harry, “it were better that a millstone was hanged around his neck and he was flung into the sea.” Once started, he found it very hard to stop, especially when he quarrelled with strange adults.

  The man’s jaw dropped open. He was speechless. Then he raised his hand for a blow.

  Don growled warningly.

  “Get out,” said the man. “Get out of our church.”

  Harry got. At the churchyard gate he turned back and shouted, “Call yourself a Christian?”

  But it didn’t make him feel any better.

  And it was worse, when he looked across back to the mainland. The tide had come in. The sand-bridge was gone. Wherever he looked, there were the waves of the shining ocean.

  He was cut off.

  Suddenly, the whole island felt like a terrible trap. He wanted to sit down and howl. But he knew he had to keep moving. People were still watching him; and some were kids his own age. The school holidays must’ve started. That’s what Ada’s mother must’ve meant last night when she said “a wet week for the start of your holiday”. Kids were bad. He didn’t mind the adults so much; all they could do was shout and threaten. But gangs of kids…

  He kept walking. He walked round the harbour, and looked at the fishermen, fiddling with their boats. He walked up to a headland with a castle on it. But warning notices kept him from going anywhere near it. And barbed wire. He had never known such an unfriendly place.

  And there was a gang of kids following him now. Four of them, and two of them were bigger than he was. They followed him everywhere, pointing at the stuff he was carrying, and taking the mickey and sniggering.

  They followed him to the far end of the civilised bit, where the sand-dunes started on the east coast. He had hoped they would leave him alone, if he left their village, but they still followed. When he tried to get back to the village, they stood and blocked his way. And then he realised he had made a bad mistake. Now they could drive him back into the sand-dunes and do what they liked with him, without even their horrible parents interfering.

  He walked north up the coast, as fast as he could. They followed at a distance, but closing up slowly. Their voices, on the wind, grew gloating.

  They didn’t know him; they thought he was running away; what he was doing was looking for a weapon, and a place to fight.

  Just as they got really near, he found both together.

  A ruined boat, from which he snapped a three-yard length of curved rib. It was worn with age, and the end fitted smoothly into his hand. He took off his pack behind the boat, and turned to face them.

  They jeered. “Look, he thinks he’s Tarzan.” But they were suddenly thoughtful; doubtful.

  “He’s a gypsy. Gypsies don’t fight fair!”

  “Mebbe he’s gotta knife…”

  “If he’d gotta knife, he’d have it out, wouldn’t he?”

  They edged closer, giving sudden jumps towards him, raising their arms, yelling. Judging him, trying to scare him.

  He stood his ground, just raising the wooden rib. He’d picked out the leader. The leader was the one he’d try and hit. The leader would come in first, pretending he was the bravest.

  They jumped back and forward so much, just avoiding the whistling end of his piece of wood, trying to grab it off him, that when they did really attack, they almost caught him out. He swung up his piece of wood too late.

  Except that the leader got in the way of the upswing. It just happened to catch him between the legs. He gave a strangled shriek, and fell writhing on the sand. Harry felt another hand grab for the wood, and tugged it back and lashed out with all his strength, in a panic. It thumped home on somebody else, and there was a proper yelp. Then he was knocked flat, and the wood was held so he couldn’t move it, and what felt like a boot hit him agonisingly in the ribs.

  And then there was a barking slavering hurricane above him, and the sharp snap of teeth, and another yelp of pain.

  And then they were gone. He leapt to his feet, his legs shaking. Saw three of them standing ten yards off. One was clutching his shoulder, like it hurt. Another held a wrist from which blood trickled. And the leader was still trying to crawl in agony, back to his henchmen, doubled up with pain.

  They shouted at each other.

  “Go and get sticks!”

  “Go and get Billie Prudhoe an’ his brother! And Alf Green!”

  “This bugger’s mad. He needs settling for good.”

  “Tell the poliss. That dog’s dangerous. It needs puttin’ down.”

  They picked up their leader, but he kept on doubling up with pain. When he could finally stand unaided, he said, “I’ll stay here an’watch him. You fetch the rest of the lads.”

  Eager to do his bidding, they fled and soon vanished over the sandhills.

  Harry knew he was in a jam. The leader was still there. If Harry made off and tried to hide, the leader would follow him, and summon up his returning gang from the top of the nearest sand-dune… The leader had to be fixed.

  He walked towards him. The leader tried to back off. But he was still in pain. Harry caught up with him easily as he tried to scrabble to safety up the side of a sand-dune.

  Harry took careful aim, and hit the leader on the ankle with the curving length of wood. With all his force. It was the only way.

  There was a nasty crack. The leader yelped, fell down and held his ankle. “Bastard. You’ve broke it. I’ll kill you for that.”

  Harry didn’t say a thing. He went back to his gear and picked it up. He called to the dog, and made off up the next slope. The leader made no attempt to follow; he was still nursing his ankle.

  He soon dropped from sight.

  Harry tried every trick he knew to dodge them. The trouble was, they could follow his footprints in the sand of the sandhills. And especially the dog’s; they would be a dead giveaway. So at first he just plunged ahead regardless. Till he came to a little pebbly stream running out of the sandhills to the sea. It gave him an idea.

  First he milled around all over the place; but especially where the tall grass grew in clumps, and his footsteps didn’t show. When he had made an utter confusion of the whole area and laid a dozen false trails, he got the dog by the collar, and walked him to the sea down the little pebbly stream, where no footprints showed. After that, they walked up to their ankles in the waves, heading north. The gentle breaking waves hid everything. But it was dicey, walking on the open beach. So when another stream came down the sand, he walked the dog up it, and back into the sandhills. After that, all he could do was stick to the bottom of the dunes, the little valleys that ran between them, and hope for the best. He found other lines of footprints; even the prints of another large dog, and that cheered him. There were other people on the dunes; solitary men with binoculars; family groups on holiday with dogs. He kept well clear of them, out of sight. He didn’t want them reporting his presence to the gang.

  He never saw the gang again. By dusk, with much weary walking up and down through sliding sand, he was back on the beach that led to the sand-bridge. The sand-bridge wasn’t far away. It seemed a little narrower than it had been that morning; with little wavelets eating at its edges. But it was still more than two hundred yards across. And he couldn’t wait to get off this horrible island.

  He
and the dog slid like shadows on to the end of the bridge, and vanished into the gathering dark.

  Back nearer the village, the wooden warning sign told that the time for a safe crossing was half an hour past.

  But he had been careful to go nowhere near the village.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The trouble was, he was a town child. He believed in roads that stayed as roads, bridges that stayed as bridges. He believed he had a God-given right of way.

  He didn’t know the sea.

  It was not that he was a fool. He kept a sharp eye on the lines of tiny distant breakers on each side of him, that glowed with the white of breaking surf, in the dark. In a way, they were a guide, like the white lines they had painted on the edge of pavements, back home, to guide people when the blackout started.

  He began to get the worrying idea that the white lines were getting nearer, but it was hard to judge, in the dark. He hurried as fast as he could, but he was utterly weary; his luggage weighed a ton; the pans banging against his bottom were nagging enemies now. He stopped and looked behind. The cursed island was fading to a low, dim, mottled hump. But in front, the Northumbrian coast seemed no nearer, low, flat, boring. Get on, get on.

  Yes, the lines of surf were moving together. The bridge ahead was narrower now, seeming little wider than the big wide coast-road at home.

  He swung round. Should he make back to the island? He didn’t want to. He hated the place. And he was a good way out from it now…

  And then, as he watched in horror, a wave more determined than the rest kept on and on, until it had rolled right across the sand-bridge between him and the island. For an awful moment, there was no bridge, just sea. Then the bridge heaved into sight again, like a long whale breaking surface but narrower still.

  He looked towards the mainland. The bridge there was still quite wide, unbroken… the way ahead was safer.

  He must have run another hundred yards. The very quality of the sand under his feet seemed to be changing, growing wetter, soggier, softer. He was slithering rather than running. His feet couldn’t get a grip any more.

  And then he saw it. The wave in front that swept right across the sand-bridge…

  Frantic, he looked behind again.

  There was no sign of the sand-bridge at all. Just the waves rolling across, one after the other.

  Run, run, run. The dog ran with him, barking urgently. But he just knew he wasn’t going to make it. The world was changing its rules.

  He ran into the next wave as it crossed in front; his feet were soaking, icy, in an instant. The sand under them was like freezing porridge. He was waddling slowly like a duck.

  And the mainland looked as far away as ever.

  It came to him that he was going to drown. There was no way that he couldn’t drown. He couldn’t run a mile; he couldn’t run fifty yards.

  And the next crossing wave was half-way to his knees, and strong. He felt the tug of it.

  And now the whole sand-bridge was gone for good. Even between waves it wasn’t showing. Where had all the water come from so quickly? He couldn’t even work out which way to go any more. He was standing up to his ankles in the whole wide trackless sea. He felt dizzy, as the endless waves moved past him, with their burden of sand. The ground seemed to be moving under him, sucking his feet away. He nearly fell, and there was nothing to hang on to in the whole moving world.

  He gave one last despairing gaze around.

  And then he saw it. Leaning crookedly out of the sea, dimly dark against the moving waves.

  The watchtower. The second watchtower. He remembered, oddly, the writings scratched inside the walls of the first watchtower. “Caught again”, “A bitter cold night”.

  The tower was a refuge for people trapped by the tide. Before it became really clear in his mind, he was floundering towards it.

  The waves were up to his knees now, really pushing him away towards the left. There were deeper bits, where the water sloshed up, freezing him between the legs, freezing him up so he had no feeling. He had to keep looking for the watchtower, because the waves were pushing him off course. And all the time the dog was alongside, barking joyously, thinking it was another game. He fell full-length, hauled himself back upright with a choking scream, fell again, and the waves rolled over him. Scrambling, crawling, underwater, then a lungful of air that ended in water again. But the tower was looming up…

  A huge wave, that drove the dog sideways into him, so they went down in a flailing tangle. Up, breathing, screaming, gargling, drowning…

  And then something hard and solid banged against his head. He grabbed, and he had it. Worked sideways towards the bottom of the ladder, hanging on like a limpet as the waves hit him.

  Foot of the ladder, climb, climb. His soaking clothes dragged him back; his gear was like a heavy hand on his shoulders.

  He pushed open the door, and collapsed inside. He waited for the dog to arrive, and land on top of him. No dog. Still no dog.

  He swung round and looked down. In the darkness, he could see the dog’s head, and only the dog’s head, at the bottom of the ladder. It wasn’t standing any more; it was swimming now. As he looked, a wave swept the head away to one side. He screamed.

  “Don!”

  Then he saw the dog, in between waves, trying to swim back. Why hadn’t it climbed the ladder after him?

  And then he realised; the ladder was too steep; the rungs were rusted away too thin. No way could a big dog like Don climb it, especially from swimming in the sea.

  Don was going to drown. He was a good swimmer, but he was too far from land. And the waves were big… and the dog wouldn’t leave him to save itself. It was being killed by its own faithfulness.

  Something inside him snapped. The dog was the other half of him. The dog was the last person he had left. Without the dog the world would be… empty.

  You shan’t have him! You shan’t have him as well! Or you might as well have me too! Screaming swear-words at he knew not what, he threw off the burden on his back and went pell-mell down the ladder, into the sea. It was deep now. It came up to his shoulders; its cold, entering the coldness of his own body, flooded him, took all his breath away. But when he opened his eyes, he saw the head of the dog, swimming up to him again, just a dark blob with two depressed ears, against the low glow of the breaking surf.

  He grabbed its collar, and the ladder doubly hard, as he felt the muscular swell of the next wave coming in to hit them. He thought his arms had been pulled off his body, but when the wave passed, the dog was still close to him, its hair floating queerly in the water, tickling his hand.

  “Up, boy.” He heaved the dog at the ladder. It scrabbled at the thin iron rung with its front feet, not able to get a grip.

  He knew there was only one thing to do, and he did it without thinking. He took a breath, ducked underwater, got his shoulder under the dog’s broad haunch and heaved.

  By the time the next wave hit him, he was standing upright on the sand with both hands on the ladder, and the dog, an incredible weight, was standing on his shoulders, clear of the water.

  It scrabbled above him. But it couldn’t get any higher. As the next wave came, he put one foot on the ladder, and tried a step up.

  The lifting power of the wave did it. His leg muscles screamed with pain, but he made the step up.

  Waiting for the next big wave, timing it just right, he made another step up. And a third.

  But with every step up, the lifting power of the waves decreased. He stuck on the third step. He couldn’t make the fourth. His hands were going numb with cold; he couldn’t feel his legs.

  He felt the huge wave coming. It must be two steps this time or nothing. That was all he was ever going to be able to manage.

  It was a very huge wave. Spluttering like a maniac, he managed one, two, then, incredibly, three. It was impossible, but he did it. The next second, he felt a tremendous convulsive kick from the dog’s hind legs. Then no weight at all… And he knew he’d failed, and
could never do it again. Don, Don! He hung on, blinded by sea-water, not wanting to do anything ever again. Let go. Let the sea take you. No more trying, no more pain.

  Then a burst of barking hit his ears, as the sea-water drained from them, he looked up, and the dog’s head was sticking out of the open door…

  It was quite easy after that. He only had to rest between every step he took.

  It was not so bad. The two blankets in the middle of his bedroll were only damp. He stripped and rubbed himself down with them, then wrapped them round himself. He would have liked to rub the dog down too, but there was nothing else left dry to do it with. There were nails knocked in the walls of the hut, and he wrung out his clothes and hung them to dry. Some hope!

  For the sea was still rising, climbing the rungs of the ladder, one by one, inexorably. He wondered, quite calmly, if the tide ever rose so high, the waves ever grew so wild, that the refuge on top was entirely submerged. If so, there was nothing he could do about it.

  And the sea sent its messengers before it. The very air he breathed was full of salty spray, so that he breathed a mixture of air and water, half boy, half fish. And the bigness of the sea overwhelmed him; the bigness of the sound of it. The land seemed so far away, it was nowhere. Nothing but sea. The sound of the waves did not soothe him. The sea had tried to kill him. Might still kill him. Meanwhile, he watched it.

  In the end, with bitter satisfaction, he watched it lose its force, like a beaten army, and start to retreat, rung by rung. Only then did he curl up in the two blankets and fall asleep.

  Sunlight wakened him, falling in through the half-open door on to his face. He tried getting up, and could hardly move, he was so cut and bruised and stiff. He peered out at his enemy.

  The enemy was nowhere to be seen. Nothing but flat sand, steaming gently in the sun. Seaweed. Feeding gulls. A mottled duck leading her mottled chicks to drink at a stream of fresh water that flowed across the sands.

  He realised how thirsty he was. But he’d have to get dressed first; those thin rusty ladder rungs would cut his bare feet to ribbons.