Read Online Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban - Free Book Online Page B

rescue of a Lowestoft fishing-smack on the Barber Sands, might have turned back because of the force of the gale and the heavy seas. That was when James Haylett said, ‘Caister men never turn back.’ Nine of the lifeboat crew were lost including two sons and a grandson of James Haylett. The fishing-smack had got herself off the sands, anchored safely in deep water, and knew nothing of the disaster until later. Rescuers and those to be rescued don’t always come back together.
    Lunch-time came. We went to a little place near by where the take-away queue waited partly in the street and partly at the counter. There were no empty booths so we shared one with two fresh-faced young executives eating eggs and sausages and grease.
    ‘The brief is really quite clear,’ said the one next to me.
    ‘We’ve put in the think time,’ said the one next to the bookshop man. ‘We’re ready to move on it.’
    ‘And we’d jolly well better do it soon,’ said mine. ‘Those chaps in the City can’t be kept dangling indefinitely. Once we’ve separated the sheep from the goats we’ve got to make our bid.’
    ‘Precisely what I said in my report,’ said the other as he wiped up some grease with a bit of Mother’s Pride slicedbread. ‘When they get back from Stuttgart I want to see some action.’
    Their faces were pink, their eyes were clear and bright, their shirts and ties what the adverts call coordinated I believe. Mine had dirty fingernails and his handkerchief was tucked into his jacket sleeve. The other had clean fingernails. Their voices were loud, they were eager to impart the dash and colour of their lives to the drabness about them.
    I had a salad. If I were to say that today’s tomatoes are an index of the decline of Western man I should be thought a crank but nations do not, I think, ascend on such tomatoes. The bookshop man had fried eggs with sausages, chips, grease and Mother’s Pride sliced bread and butter. He put ketchup on the chips. No wonder he looks hopeless I thought.
    ‘I always bring a sandwich for lunch,’ he said. ‘But I can have it for tea.’
    ‘If the bananas aren’t unloaded soon they’ll spoil,’ I said. I felt like talking like a spy.
    ‘I’m waiting to hear from our friend at the docks,’ said the bookshop man, rising in my estimation. ‘I can’t arrange the haulage until he gives me a date.’
    The two young executives raised their eyebrows at each other.
    ‘Have you booked them right the way through?’ I said. The waitress reached across us with sweets for the executives. Mine had trifle, the other fruit salad with cream.
    ‘Only tentatively,’ said the bookshop man. ‘Brighton’s close.’
    ‘I was thinking of Polperro,’ I said.
    The bookshop man went very red in the face. ‘Polperro!’ he said. ‘Why in God’s name Polperro?’
    I indicated the two executives with my eyes and busied myself with my salad. They were both having white coffee with a lot of sugar. Life mayn’t always be that sweet for you I thought.
    There was a long silence during which the executives smoked a kingsize filter-tip cigarette and a little thin cheap cigar without asking me if I minded. The bookshop man took something fromhis pocket and began to play with it. It was a round beach pebble, a grey one.
    ‘Where’s it from?’ I said.
    ‘Antibes,’ he said. ‘I haven’t smoked all morning.’
    The executives excused themselves. We had coffee, no sweets. On the wall two booths away from us was a circular blue fluorescent tube in a rectangular wire cage. It was probably some kind of air purifier but it looked like a Tantric moon or some other contemplation object. I contemplated it. The bookshop man looked into his coffee as if viewing the abyss.
    ‘Did I say anything wrong?’ I said. ‘About Polperro?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘It just took me by surprise. Why Polperro?’
    ‘If I said that Polperro and the turtles together add up to something, would that mean anything to you?’ I