Bones Under The Beach Hut

'Oh. I hadn't thought of that.'

'I'm going down for a paddle,' Jude announced impetuously. And she ran over the flat sand towards the sea, setting everything jiggling, but again attracting some admiring male glances.

Carole tried to focus her mind on The Times crossword, but without success. She was continually distracted by the sounds and sights of the beach. And her eyes kept wandering across to the locked frontage of Quiet Harbour, prompting further speculations about what she had seen inside the hut.

To distract herself, she went into Fowey and took the small pink director's chair out of its plastic wrapping. She set it on the sand between its two grown-up counterparts and indulged in a moment of soppiness. She couldn't wait to see Lily sitting in it. She somehow just knew her granddaughter would love the thing. Then, not wishing Jude to witness her sentimentality, she folded the little chair and put it back inside.

Still restless, she gave in to the reproachful look from Gulliver, who took a pretty dim view of being tied up by his lead to a hook on the outside of the beach hut. So Carole took him for a little stroll along the curved rows of beach huts, observing as much as she could without being seen to be snooping. The one right next door to Fowey was called Shrimphaven. The doors were open, but the hut looked to be empty. As a result Carole peered in more obviously than she might have done, and was embarrassed to meet the bespectacled gaze of a young woman sitting in the shadows over an open laptop. Making an awkward cough of apology, Carole scuttled off along the line of huts.

Some of the owners she recognized from her previous visit. Outside a hut called Mistral an elderly couple sat on candy-striped loungers. The woman, plump, white-haired, with powdered skin like pink meringue, was contentedly working her way through a book of word searches. She looked up as Carole passed.

'Morning,' the old woman said in a comfortable, homely voice. 'I gather you've got problems with Quiet Harbour.'

'A bit of fire damage. Not too serious. Vandals, I suppose.'

The woman shook her head gloomily. 'Too much of that going on these days. By the way, my name's Joyce Oliver.'

'Carole Seddon.'

'And that's Lionel.' The husband she gestured to looked unsuitably dressed for the beach. Though he was in shirt sleeves, the shirt was a formal white one, and his charcoal trousers with neat creases looked as though they were the bottom half of a suit. Over the back of his lounger hung a matching jacket. His shoes, black lace-ups with toecaps, were highly polished. Beside him on the sand was a copy of the Daily Mail, but he wasn't reading it. He was just looking out to sea with an expression of infinite bleakness.

'In a world of his own, as ever,' said Joyce Oliver with a little chuckle, as Gulliver tugged on his lead to get moving. 'Well, I'm sure we'll see you again, Carole.

We're here most days in the summer, and particularly at the moment because we're in the process of moving house. Place where we brought up the kids is far too big for us now. It's a wrench leaving the house, but has to be done. Lionel can't manage the garden any more. It's his pride and joy — the work he's put into the landscaping and the water features you wouldn't believe. But it's too much for him now and he hates the idea of having someone else doing it for him, so the move does make good sense.

'Anyway, we're not quite out of the old house, and there's lots of work needs doing on the new one — well, you can't really call it a house, it's only a flat — so coming down here to the hut is quite a relief, let me tell you.'

'Yes, it's a lovely spot,' said Carole, providing a predictable comment on Smalting Beach. Then with a nod to Joyce Oliver, she continued along the line of beach huts.

Chapter Eight

Carole was surprised that the man in the next hut appeared to recognize her. She had no recollection of ever having seen him before. Rising from a wooden folding chair, he said, 'Good morning. You must be Mrs Seddon.'

His beach hut had not been open on her previous visit, because Carole would certainly have remembered it if it had been. The opened doors revealed, fixed on to their interiors and continuing on all three walls of the hut, a huge array of naval memorabilia. Highly polished brass port and starboard lights were attached to the inside of their appropriate doors. There were also anchors, ancient quadrants and sextants, watercolours of ships, model ships, ships in bottles, framed hat ribbons, wooden dead eyes, cleats, badges, flags, boards with demonstration knots pinned on them, and green glass floats for fishing nets. In pride of place at the back of the hut stood a brass-studded wooden ship's wheel. Over the doors was fixed a worn brass plaque bearing the name: The Bridge.

Slightly fazed by the display, Carole acknowledged that she was indeed Mrs Seddon. The gentleman who'd asked the question was of a piece with the contents of his hut. Probably in his early seventies, he had a full grey beard in the style of George V. He wore a blazer with embossed brass buttons and on its breast pocket a badge featuring a lot of woven gold wire. His dark blue tie also bore some naval insignia.

Offering a hairy hand to Carole, the man identified himself. 'Good morning, my name is Reginald Flowers and I am President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.'

It was then that Carole noticed he was not alone. Sitting on another folding chair beside him was a chubby little woman with faded red hair and thick-lensed glasses. Open on her lap was a folded-back spiral reporter's notebook in which she'd apparently been writing shorthand.

'And this is Dora,' said Reginald Flowers with the utmost condescension, 'who is my secretary.'

'Well, Reginald, that's not strictly accurate,' the woman objected rather feebly.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, I'm not your secretary. I'm secretary of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.'

'It comes to the same thing, Dora.'

'No, it doesn't really.'

'Yes, it does. Anyway, I need to speak to Mrs Seddon. So could you please go off and type up those letters as soon as possible?'

'I'll do them this evening. I only came down this morning to have a nice day in my beach hut.' She smiled myopically at Carole and pointed along the row. 'Mine's the third one along. It's called Cape of Good Hope.'

'Oh. How nice,' said Carole.

'And obviously my full name isn't just Dora. It's Dora Pinchbeck.'

'Ah. Well-'

'Dora,' said Reginald Flowers firmly, 'I would be very grateful if you could do those letters straight away, and then you can enjoy your day in the beach hut.'

'Well, I'd really rather—'

'If you would be so kind,' came the implacable order.

'Oh, very well.' And Dora shuffled her notebook and pen into her bag. 'I'll have to lock up Cape of Good Hope before I go.'

'That will be quite permissible,' her magnanimous boss assured her.

With a long-suffering sigh, Dora Pinchbeck scuttled off to her beach hut.

'And bring the letters here for me to sign as soon as you've finished them!' Reginald Flowers called after her. Then he turned back to bestow a gracious smile on Carole. 'As I say, I am the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. As such, I do of course know everything that goes on in these beach huts.'

'I'm sure you do. Anyway, nice to meet you.' Nodding towards the collection in the hut, Carole said, 'An ex-naval man, I assume?'

His face darkened. 'No, I did not myself in fact serve before the mast, though many of my ancestors

did. Let's just say that the history of the British Navy has been a lifelong interest of mine and one that in retirement I have been able to pursue more thoroughly.'