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Authors: Graham Joyce
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burst of hair-trigger violence and brutality.
When the curtain went down on the revue, I was scheduled to work the evening cash bingo session, and after that I was free. I had a couple of beers in the giant Slowboat Bar, so called for reasons I never did discover. I laughed and joked with a couple of the scary kitchen girls, but after my conversation with Nikki I had started watching the staff, too. I saw one of the barmen under challenge from a holidaymaker who claimed to have been short-changed. I wondered how often that happened.
I’d completed my first week. I crashed into my bed, and for the first time since I’d arrived, I slept soundly.
5
THE WAY FORWARD WILL REQUIRE THE DISMANTLING OF ALL STATE APPARATUS
I’d been wearing whites and a candy-striped blazer for a week solid and it was good to get back into civilian gear, which in my case was a pair of bell-bottom blue jeans and a white T-shirt. I rose early to have a lardy breakfast in the canteen, and as I crossed the resort all I could see were suitcases lined up outside the wooden chalets as cleaners tried to get in and holidaymakers and their families tried to get out. It was the ritual of the Saturday changeover.
The only thing I could do to find a little breathing space was to go for a walk on the beach. With everyone occupied in the changeover, the beach was deserted. It was going to be another hot day. A tunnel gave access from the resort to the beach wall, and when I got down to the water I took off my sandals and carried them, feeling the warm sand and shingle between my toes.
I still didn’t like it. I’d heard all those people talk about how they loved to walk barefoot on the beach. The fact is itgave me the creeps; or even worse, it triggered a mysterious anxiety. I brushed the sand off my feet and put my sandals back on, and then I wiped my hands on my denims. I moved back up the beach so that I could tread the reassuring pebbles.
I started walking north, toward Ingoldmells. The sand settles out in banks at angles to the shore, and when you get past the housing and developments there are impressive dunes. I’d read that the Vikings found natural harbors behind these now-dry dunes and I thought I might take a look. Way up the beach I saw two figures sitting, huddled together on a railway tie that had been deposited on the beach by a high tide. The sun at my right hand was a yellow blister over the water and the bright sunlight sparkled electric blue on one of the figures.
It was the man in the blue suit I’d seen on the day of the sand-castle competition. He was hugging a child—presumably the boy I’d seen. Maybe the blue suit was made of some synthetic material, because its threads caught the sun’s rays and darted light. He had a rope coiled over his shoulder.
But then the sun darkened and I felt dizzy. My breath came short. I heard a groan from way off—way out to sea—and I felt an unaccountable panic, triggered by something very old shifting deep inside me. I looked up. The man and the boy had turned to look at me, perhaps because I was acting oddly. But their faces were in shadow. It made no sense. They were turned full on to the sun, but their faces were gray and flat and smooth like beach pebbles, almost in silhouette. Even though their faces were indistinct, they peered back at me with suspicion, as if I somehow meant to harm them or as if they meant to harm me. I felt an irrational wave of panic and revulsion. My teeth chattered.
The sun appeared to come out again, and I had to blink, because I wasn’t looking at a man and a boy at all. I could see the railway tie they’d been sitting on, and an old blue coat had been washed up and wrapped around it. I’d somehow hallucinated the pair in the morning light. I paced up the beach to the sea-blasted railway tie. It was festooned with the usual debris: a bit of rope, a plastic bottle, some dried bladder wrack, the old coat hugging the wood. But of the man and the boy there was
When the curtain went down on the revue, I was scheduled to work the evening cash bingo session, and after that I was free. I had a couple of beers in the giant Slowboat Bar, so called for reasons I never did discover. I laughed and joked with a couple of the scary kitchen girls, but after my conversation with Nikki I had started watching the staff, too. I saw one of the barmen under challenge from a holidaymaker who claimed to have been short-changed. I wondered how often that happened.
I’d completed my first week. I crashed into my bed, and for the first time since I’d arrived, I slept soundly.
5
THE WAY FORWARD WILL REQUIRE THE DISMANTLING OF ALL STATE APPARATUS
I’d been wearing whites and a candy-striped blazer for a week solid and it was good to get back into civilian gear, which in my case was a pair of bell-bottom blue jeans and a white T-shirt. I rose early to have a lardy breakfast in the canteen, and as I crossed the resort all I could see were suitcases lined up outside the wooden chalets as cleaners tried to get in and holidaymakers and their families tried to get out. It was the ritual of the Saturday changeover.
The only thing I could do to find a little breathing space was to go for a walk on the beach. With everyone occupied in the changeover, the beach was deserted. It was going to be another hot day. A tunnel gave access from the resort to the beach wall, and when I got down to the water I took off my sandals and carried them, feeling the warm sand and shingle between my toes.
I still didn’t like it. I’d heard all those people talk about how they loved to walk barefoot on the beach. The fact is itgave me the creeps; or even worse, it triggered a mysterious anxiety. I brushed the sand off my feet and put my sandals back on, and then I wiped my hands on my denims. I moved back up the beach so that I could tread the reassuring pebbles.
I started walking north, toward Ingoldmells. The sand settles out in banks at angles to the shore, and when you get past the housing and developments there are impressive dunes. I’d read that the Vikings found natural harbors behind these now-dry dunes and I thought I might take a look. Way up the beach I saw two figures sitting, huddled together on a railway tie that had been deposited on the beach by a high tide. The sun at my right hand was a yellow blister over the water and the bright sunlight sparkled electric blue on one of the figures.
It was the man in the blue suit I’d seen on the day of the sand-castle competition. He was hugging a child—presumably the boy I’d seen. Maybe the blue suit was made of some synthetic material, because its threads caught the sun’s rays and darted light. He had a rope coiled over his shoulder.
But then the sun darkened and I felt dizzy. My breath came short. I heard a groan from way off—way out to sea—and I felt an unaccountable panic, triggered by something very old shifting deep inside me. I looked up. The man and the boy had turned to look at me, perhaps because I was acting oddly. But their faces were in shadow. It made no sense. They were turned full on to the sun, but their faces were gray and flat and smooth like beach pebbles, almost in silhouette. Even though their faces were indistinct, they peered back at me with suspicion, as if I somehow meant to harm them or as if they meant to harm me. I felt an irrational wave of panic and revulsion. My teeth chattered.
The sun appeared to come out again, and I had to blink, because I wasn’t looking at a man and a boy at all. I could see the railway tie they’d been sitting on, and an old blue coat had been washed up and wrapped around it. I’d somehow hallucinated the pair in the morning light. I paced up the beach to the sea-blasted railway tie. It was festooned with the usual debris: a bit of rope, a plastic bottle, some dried bladder wrack, the old coat hugging the wood. But of the man and the boy there was
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