Part 1 (2/2)

Terry had to will his hands to stop trembling in order to open the box. He took out a bottle of antiseptic, oily with fingerprints from previous mishaps, and a roll of bandage in a cellophane sheath. He tore the sheath open with his teeth and began to tug at the bandage inside, dismayed to see his own grubby fingerprints instantly soiling the pristine white gauze. He was about to pour some of the antiseptic on to the bandage when Joe Tye muttered, 'What's that stuff on his hand?'

For a guilty moment Terry thought Joe was accusing him of being unclean, but then realised he meant Pete. The big, bearded man's breath was a rattle in his throat, his eyelids flickered, his body shook as though with fever. Perhaps it was shock or loss of blood. In a daze, Terry looked down at his uncle's mutilated hand.

It was the blood that had swamped his attention before, but Terry now saw the 'stuff' that Joe had pointed out.

Through the blood he saw that Pete's wound was coated with a glutinous, jelly-like ooze. Terry swallowed and shuddered.

He imagined the creature disgorging the gluey substance like poison from its diseased body on to his uncle's. Frantic to prevent the stuff from penetrating the wound, Terry yanked at a length of bandage, but it refused to tear, merely stretching instead.

John Bayc.o.c.k delved into the first aid box, grabbed a swab and began to wipe the gel away from the wound. Terry flashed him a glance of grat.i.tude, unscrewed the lid of the bottle and poured antiseptic directly on to Pete's hand.

Semiconscious, the bearded man hissed and muttered, his body tensing momentarily.

'Easy there, big man,' Joe Tye soothed with a tenderness that surprised Terry despite the circ.u.mstances.

When he was satisfied that the wound was entirely clean, John Bayc.o.c.k applied a lint dressing, holding it in place as Terry wound the bandage tightly around his uncle's hand. He worked swiftly and carefully, trying to outpace the blood that continued to soak through the lint and the gauze and threatened to reduce his good work to a sodden red mess. As more and more bandage was applied, an almost palpable relief coursed through the men, as if hiding the terrible injury from view could somehow quell the horror of the incident that had caused it. When Terry was finished it looked as though his uncle was wearing a single white boxing glove.

'Will he be all right?' Barry murmured, stepping hesitantly forward now.

Terry shrugged and felt his dad's hand pat him twice on the shoulder.

'Good work, son,' Malcolm said in a low voice as if his words were meant for Terry alone. Then raising his voice, the skipper added, 'All right, lads, keep him as comfortable as you can. I'm taking us home.'

In the two weeks since he had been given his new job t.i.tle, Jack Perry had been practising the term in his head and in front of the mirror in his bedroom. 'I'm an environment coordinator,' he would say, qualifying the statement with a slight raising of the left eyebrow and a smug little smile. In his mind he would be at a party, sipping Pina Colada and speaking to a woman who looked like a cross between Sally Thomsett from Man About the House and that girl from the Hai Karate Hai Karate ads. The woman would gasp in admiration and her eyes would brighten with interest. Perhaps she might even lick her glossy red lips in lascivious antic.i.p.ation. ads. The woman would gasp in admiration and her eyes would brighten with interest. Perhaps she might even lick her glossy red lips in lascivious antic.i.p.ation.

It was at this point that the fantasy would begin to dissolve. If the woman enquired further, Jack would have to admit that he drove a truck for the council and that the only authority he wielded was over a bunch of moaning, long-haired students who were simply out for a bit of holiday money. Not only that but every morning at 5 a.m. he and the students - most of them hungover, or soporific from the pot they had been smoking the night before - pulled up on to the promenade, got out clad in overalls, boots and thick rubber gloves, and tramped down to the beach, laden with shovels and industrial-sized refuse sacks.

Sometimes, lying in his bed at night and hearing his widowed mother in the bedroom next door tossing restlessly in hers, Jack would wonder where it had all gone wrong.

There were no parties in his life, no Pina Coladas, no Sally Thomsett lookalikes. There were not even any friends to speak of - not real ones at any rate. Just casual acquaintances, people he knew on a superficial level: people at work; people he b.u.mped in to now and then who had been to school with him, and who, like him, had never moved away; fellow enthusiasts at the steam railway where he did voluntary work every Sunday.

If it wasn't for his trains - his weekly pilgrimage to the railway itself, the books he spent hours poring over, the beautifully complex model rail network he had set up in the attic and which he added to constantly - he didn't know what he'd do. Oh, he had dreams of going to parties and meeting beautiful women, of being the pivot of an uproarious circle of friends, but when it came down to it he was only ever happy in the company of his trains. His trains were a constant, his trains never let him down. The only thing that ever blighted the time he spent with them was the knowledge that sooner or later reality would impinge again, highlighting his inadequacies, crus.h.i.+ng his spirit with its casual cruelty.

h.e.l.l is other people, he thought on this particular morning as he crunched the truck down through the gears and brought it to a shuddering halt on the seafront. Even if by some miracle he did one day meet Sally Thomsett or the Hai Hai Karate Karate girl and she did, by some far greater miracle, turn out to fancy him, he honestly doubted whether he would be able to cope. Part of him desperately wanted to be loved and accepted, but the more dominant part balked at the prospect of what that would really involve. People - girl and she did, by some far greater miracle, turn out to fancy him, he honestly doubted whether he would be able to cope. Part of him desperately wanted to be loved and accepted, but the more dominant part balked at the prospect of what that would really involve. People - real real people - were different to fantasies. They were too unpredictable, they wanted to enter into relations.h.i.+ps that needed to be worked at, partners.h.i.+ps in which compromises had to be reached, sacrifices made. people - were different to fantasies. They were too unpredictable, they wanted to enter into relations.h.i.+ps that needed to be worked at, partners.h.i.+ps in which compromises had to be reached, sacrifices made.

'What's this? Offering a silent prayer to Neptune?' said a voice from the back of the truck, and Jack realised he had been daydreaming again. It had been happening with increasing regularity this past week or so, an inability to concentrate on what was happening around him, a tendency for his thoughts to drift inward. By now he was finding it difficult to keep track of conversations without his mind slipping away. It was almost impossible to settle down to read or watch TV for any length of time. Perhaps it was all to do with the fact that he'd been sleeping badly of late. His dreams had been full of dark, unsettling images that caused him to wake several times a night, sweating and gasping for breath.

The frustrating thing was, he could not recall the specifics of any of these nightmares. If something beyond his usual anxieties was bothering him, he had no idea what it was.

'Sorry, just... erm... just collecting my thoughts,' he mumbled in reply and, twisting round, attempted a grin that he couldn't help but feel sat awkwardly on his face.

The group in the back, his eight-strong workforce, four lining each interior wall of the truck, stared back at him sullenly. Jack felt sweat trickle down his forehead, moisten his armpits. At forty-four he was a good quarter-century older than every one of these boys. They made him feel dull, fat, ugly and unaccountably nervous. They made him feel like a teacher in dubious control of a cla.s.s of students who felt nothing for him but contempt, or perhaps, even worse, pity 'Right,' he said with hollow bonhomie, 'let's get to it then,'

and he rubbed absently at the rash that had sprung up on his arms in the past week, and which in the muggy, sweaty heat was itching more than ever.

They climbed out of the truck, carrying the paraphernalia they would need to clear the beach of rubbish left by both holidaymakers and the outgoing tide. Jack had been doing this job for a long time and had seen enough stuff washed up on the beach to put him off swimming for life. As well as the usual rubbish - bits of old fishermen's netting, plastic bottles, rusty tins - there had been dead animals (dogs and cats mainly, and once half a horse, trailing bluish-white guts bleached of blood), syringes, surgical dressings, raw sewage and chemical drums rusted and punctured. He had never found a person, or bits of a person, but he knew one or two workers who had. Mike Salters and Craig Branch had once found the body of an old woman floating in on the tide, her face black and eyeless, shrimps and baby crabs spilling from her mouth as the waves dragged her up on to the beach. And there was talk that Tony Carver had once found a man's decomposed head in a Sainsbury's bag, the victim of a gangland killing whose dismembered body - minus the hands - had apparently been recovered later from a skip behind one of Tayborough Sands's plusher hotels.

Jack adjusted his spectacles and looked out over the clay-coloured expanse of beach. Although it was already muggy, the day was still struggling to open its eyes. Dark clouds smeared the sky like old mascara. On the horizon, the rising sun was a blur of lipstick-red. As they trudged down the uneven stone steps on to the beach, a sea-breeze ruffled over them, which, while bringing welcome relief from the humidity, carried with it a stench of rotting seaweed and dead fish.

Vaguely Jack waved his troops off to cover different sections of the beach, noting that their grunts of acknowledgement were becoming surlier by the day. He ought to do something about it, he supposed, a.s.sert his authority, but he felt both too intimidated and too lethargic.

As he moved down the beach armed with his shovel and his roll of refuse sacks he noticed that one of his workers, Simon, a thin seventeen-year-old with straight blond hair cut in a pageboy style, was scratching feverishly at the crook of his elbow through his overalls, his teeth clenched in a grimace.

If it had been anyone else, Jack might not have said anything, but Simon was quiet, softly-spoken, generally polite.

'You all right?' Jack asked.

Simon looked momentarily dazed, as though Jack had sprung up from nowhere, then he blinked and nodded.

'I've got this rash. On my arms and across my chest. Itches like mad.'

'Me too,' said Jack, and felt compelled to rub at his own arms. 'Must be the heat. These overalls. Make you sweat a bit, don't they?'

He offered an uncertain smile, which wavered when Simon shook his head. 'I don't think it's the overalls.'

'Don't you?'

'No. I think it's this this stuff.' stuff.'

Simon jabbed at the sand with the toe of one booted foot.

Jack looked down and saw a few stringy clots of the strange deposit that the tide had been leaving behind for the past week or two. It was like half-set jelly, though colourless and transparent. It had been everywhere recently, each rolling wave bringing more of it up on to the sand. Jack and his team did their best to clear it from the beach, but they were fighting a losing battle. Jack held up his gloved hands and announced, 'It can't be that. If we're careful it shouldn't get on our skin, whatever it is.'

'I know that,' continued Simon, his brows crinkling in a frown, 'but what if it's giving out fumes or something and we're breathing it in? I mean, what is this stuff? It might be some killer chemical; it could be nuclear waste for all we know. I mean, there was that thing in the paper a couple of weeks ago, wasn't there, about that lighthouse keeper who saw some weird light come down in the sea? Why hasn't anyone come out to investigate that? Why isn't the government doing anything? I mean, it might have been some Russian secret weapon, mightn't it? Maybe they're planning to poison us all by contaminating our water. I've read all about that sort of stuff, chemical warfare and that.' He came to a sudden breathless stop, his cheeks red, eyes wildly searching Jack's face. Then, as though embarra.s.sed, his gaze flickered away, he turned his head and re-focused on the sea.

They stood in silence for a moment, then Jack murmured, 'Maybe I ought to report it. Just to be on the safe side. I could even save some in a jar and take it to a laboratory or something.'

For a moment Simon didn't respond, then he nodded.

Dreamily he said, 'The sea's such a big place, isn't it? I bet there's stuff out there that no one's ever seen.'

Jack followed his gaze. His arms were itching. He s.h.i.+vered.

The sun was tearing itself from the water now, leaving blood on the ocean.

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