Fluffy lambs are nibbling grass. Ewes watch us, like we’re planning to serve up their babies with sprouts and mash.
We scare birds on stilts with spoony beaks; they skim off across the river. Their wing tips touch the water, sending out circles.
Here the Thames is turning into the sea and Essex is turning gold. That smudge is Canvey Island; farther on, Southend.
The English Channel’s Biro-blue; the sky’s the blue of snooker chalk. We judder across a footbridge over a rusty creek, half-marsh, half-dune, inland: WELCOME TO THE ISLE OF GRAIN.
It’s not a real island, mind. Once upon a time, perhaps.
That loony, loopy, tweety bird’s followed us. Must of.
ALLHALLOWS-ON-SEA’S BASICALLY A big holiday park spilling up to the shorefront from a nothingy village behind. It’s all rows of caravans and those oblong cabins on little stilts they call trailer homes in American films. There’s half-naked kids and totally naked toddlers all over the shop, firing water pistols and playing Swingball and running about. Half-sloshed mums’re rolling their eyes at sun-pinked dads burning bangers on barbecues. I try to eat the smoke. “Dunno about you,” says Brubeck, “but I’m starving.”
Too enthusiastically I say, “Just a bit,” so he parks his bike at the fish-and-chip place, next to Lazy Rolf’s Krazy Golf. Brubeck orders cod and chips, which is two pounds, but I just order chips ’cause it’s only fifty p. But then Brubeck tells the bloke at the counter, “Two cod and chips, please,” and hands over a fiver, and the bloke glances at me and gives Brubeck that nice-one-son look that men give each other, which pisses me off ’cause me and Brubeck aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend and we’re not bloody going to be, however many battered cods he gives me. Brubeck gets us two cans of Coke too and notices my face. “It’s only fish and chips — no strings attached.”
“You’re damn right there’s no strings attached.” It comes out spikier than I meant. “But thanks.”
We walk past the last cabin and on a bit to a concrete shelter, just on the lip of the dunes. A whiff of wee leaks through the slitted window but Brubeck climbs onto its low, flat roof. “This is a pillbox,” he says. “They were machine-gun posts during the war, in case the Germans invaded. There’s still hundreds of them around, if you keep your eyes peeled. This is peace, if you think about it — machine-gun nests being used as picnic tables.” I look at him: You’d never dare say something that clever at school. I scramble up on my own and take in the view. Southend’s across the wider-than-a-mile mouth of the Thames and the other way I can see Sheerness docks on the Isle of Sheppey. Then we open our Cokes and I peel off the ring carefully to put in the can after. They slice open dogs’ paw-pads. Brubeck holds his can towards me so I clunk it, like it’s a wineglass, but I don’t meet his eyes in case he gets any ideas, and we drink. My first gulp’s a booom of freezing fizz. The chips are warm and vinegary and the batter’s hot in our fingers as we pull it back to get at the fat flakes of cod. “It tastes great,” I say. “Cheers.”
“Not as good as a Manchester chipper,” says Brubeck.
A stunt kite writes on the blue with its pink tail.
I FILL MY lungs with one of Brubeck’s Dunhills. That’s better. Then I think of Stella Yearwood and Vinny smoking his Marlboros in bed, and suddenly I have to pretend I’ve got something in my eye. To distract myself, I ask Brubeck, “So who’s this uncle of yours, then? The one you visited earlier.”
“Uncle Norm. My mum’s brother. Used to be a crane operator at Blue Circle Cement, but he’s stopped working. He’s going blind.”
I take another deep drag. “That’s awful. Poor guy.”
“Uncle Norm says, ‘Pity is a form of abuse.’ ”
“Is he completely blind, or just partly, or …”
“He’s lost about three-quarters of his sight in both eyes, and the rest’s going. What gets him down most is that he can’t read the papers anymore. It’s like searching for your keys in dirty snow, he says. So most Saturdays I cycle out to his bungalow and read him pieces from the Guardian. Then he talks about Thatcher versus the unions, why the Russians are in Afghanistan, why the CIA are taking down democratic governments in Latin America.”
“Sounds like school,” I say.
Brubeck shakes his head. “Most of our teachers just want to get home by four and retire by sixty. But my uncle Norm loves talking and thinking and he wants you to love it too. He’s sharp as a razor. Then my aunt makes a big late lunch, and my uncle nods off, and I go fishing, if the weather’s nice. Unless I see someone from my class at school lying dead on the beach.” He stubs out his cigarette on the concrete. “So. What’s your story, Sykes?”
“What do you mean, what’s my story?”
“At eight forty-five I see you walking up Queen Street, ducking—”
“You saw me?”
“Yep — ducking into the Indoor Market, but seven hours later the target is sighted ten miles east of Gravesend, along the river.”
“What is this? Ed Brubeck, Private Investigator?”
A little tailless dog that’s all waggling bum comes up. Brubeck chucks it a chip. “If I was a detective, I’d suspect boyfriend trouble.”
My voice goes sharp. “None of your business.”
“This is true. But the tosser’s not worth it, whoever he is.”
Scowling, I drop the dog a chip. He scoffs it so hungrily I wonder if he’s a stray. Like me.
Brubeck makes a funnel out of his chip paper to pour the crispy bits into his mouth. “You planning on going back to town tonight?”
I abort a groan. Gravesend’s a black cloud. Vinny and Stella and Mam are in it. Are it. My watch says 18:19 and the Captain Marlow’ll be cheerful and chattery as the evening regulars drift in. Upstairs Jacko and Sharon’ll be sat on the sofa watching The A-Team with cheese thingies and a slab of chocolate cake. I’d like to be there, but what about Mam’s slap? “No,” I tell Brubeck, “I’m not.”
“It’ll be dark in three hours. Not a lot of time to find a circus to run away with.”
The dune grass sways. Clouds’re unrolling across the sky from France. I put my jacket on. “Maybe I’ll find a nice cozy pillbox. One that’s not used to pee in. Or a barn.”
Here come seagulls on boingy elastic, scrawking for chips too. Brubeck stands up and flaps his arms at the gulls like the Mad Prince of Allhallows-on-Sea to make them scatter, just for the hell of it. “Maybe I know somewhere better.”
WE’RE CYCLING ALONG a proper road again. Big fields in the pancake-flat arse-end of nowhere, with long black shadows. Brubeck’s being all mysterious ’bout where we’re going—“Either you trust me, Sykes, or you don’t”—but he says it’s warm, dry, and safe and he’s stayed there himself five or six times when he’s been out night-fishing, so I’ll go along with it, for now. He says he’ll head off home after Gravesend. That’s the problem with boys: They tend to help you only ’cause they fancy you, but there’s no unembarrassing way to find out their real motives till it’s too late. Ed Brubeck seems okay, and he spends his Saturday afternoons reading for a blind uncle, but thanks to bloody Vinny and Stella, I’m not so sure if I’m a good judge of character. With night coming on, though, I don’t have much choice. We pass a massive factory. I’m ’bout to ask Brubeck what they make there when he tells me it’s Grain Power Station and it provides electricity for Gravesend and half of southeast London.