The Kingdom by the Sea (16 page)

“Eat up all the cake if you want. It’s Christmas cake really. It needs finishing up.” Mr Murgatroyd settled into a
chair, and watched Harry eat. Why was he watching so closely? As if he was counting every crumb. He’d said it could all be eaten up… he was a
jumpy
person, sitting on the edge of his chair. Harry suddenly grew ashamed because his hands weren’t all that clean.

“Sorry, my hands are dirty…”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Mr Murgatroyd. “Don’t worry about that at all. Not important. Not important.” Then he got up and dashed from the room, as if he’d been shot. Through the window, Harry saw him talking to the cat again. Then, the next time he looked, Mr Murgatroyd had got hold of a spade and was frantically digging up a patch of garden.

Harry finished all the cake; even gathered the crumbs together with his finger-end and ate them. Then he drained the tea to the last drop. And still felt ravenously hungry. But it was all gone. So he drifted over to the window above the sink. Through the window, he could see Mr Murgatroyd had finished digging the patch of earth, and was now frantically nailing up a bit of fence.

Then he looked down.

A miracle. Three pound notes had floated free; they were nearly transparent with wet, but clear of the wodge. As he looked, another one began to curl free of the wodge… Mr Murgatroyd wasn’t as mad as he seemed. Harry tried to lift
one of the floating notes out of the water. It tore nearly all the way across.

“No, no,” said Mr Murgatroyd, appearing suddenly at his elbow. “A fish-slice and blotting paper.”

He had come in so silently, Harry jumped a foot in the air. His heart still seemed to be pounding as he watched Mr M. fish out the last note safely.

“Put them by the fire. By the fire. Face upwards. Then even if they stick to the blotting paper, the bank manager can still read the signature, and will give you a new one.”

Harry had an awful vision of himself walking into a bank…

“Don’t worry,” said Mr M. kindly. “I’ll take them to the bank for you in the morning.”

“Thanks.” He gave Mr M. a smile.

“Don’t thank me. No need for thanks.” Mr M.’s eyes were everywhere but Harry’s face. “Anything else you want dried out - the stuff in the car - get it for you.” He fled again, and returned panting with all the stuff. “Get you a clothes-horse - then you can see to things yourself. I’ll make up the fire - good fire, good fire.” Then he was off outdoors again.

Harry hung what he could over the old wooden clothes-horse. He laid the contents of the attachè case, and the case itself, out on the clippie rug before the fire, where
they steamed gently. Then there was nothing to do. He watched Mr M. out of the window. Leading a pair of goats past the gate; feeding a small flock of geese, and talking, talking to them. Mr M. seemed to talk to everything that moved. Harry wondered if he was barmy, like old Joseph. He didn’t
look
barmy. Tall and thin, with a grey nibbled moustache and short-cut hair. His clothes were worn, but he looked very clean and neat. And he did everything very efficiently round the farm, and what he did seemed to make sense.

Then there were all the books. Lots of bookshelves. More books piled neatly in the corners of the room. Big serious books, mainly history, but some poetry too. And a pile of war-magazines, in strict order of date, so that Harry hardly dared touch them. But the last one was badly out of date - six months old, and the top was thick with dust.

He suddenly felt very tired again. He curled up in the big armchair by the fire, with the last magazine. He remembered it from home; he and Dad had bought the same magazine.

But the last copy was a miserable one. January 1942, and the sinking of the
Repulse
and
Prince of Wales
by those Japanese bombers… had Mr M. stopped buying the magazine then, because it was such a miserable number, full of bad news? The news had got better since then.
Since the Battle of Midway, the Japs were on the run…

He slept.

“Wakey, wakey,” said Mr M. “Teatime. It’s just bacon and eggs, but there’s plenty of it.”

There was too. Two eggs and huge rashers of thick-cut bacon, swimming in their own golden grease. And a pile of thick-cut white bread. And butter with dewdrops coming out of it.

“That’s a whole week’s ration,” gasped Harry “Two weeks’ rations.”

“Not round here. I know the farmers. Plenty if you know the farmers - I teach their sons. I don’t go short.”

With a nervous flick of the eyes, Mr M. vanished behind a copy of
Picture Post. A
six-month-old copy of
Picture Post.
He seemed able to eat and read at the same time, though from the tilt of his grey head, visible above the magazine, he wasn’t getting on very well with the article he was reading.

“Rang the vet,” he said, with his mouth full. “Your dog’s OK. Just coming round from the chloroform nicely. Vet says you can go and see him tomorrow - I’ll run you down there.”

“Oh,
thanks
,” said Harry. “Thanks for being so kind.”

A fit of coughing broke out behind
Picture Post.
It went on and on. It appeared a large morsel of food had gone down the wrong way. Mr M. dropped the magazine on to
his greasy plate, and sat coughing helplessly, tears streaming down his face. Harry, alarmed he was going to choke to death, ran round and banged him firmly on the back.

“Thanks,” said Mr M. when the coughing had subsided at last.

Abruptly, the painful silence fell again. Harry had never known a silence like it. It was scarcely endurable. It hung in the room like a great dark threatening shadow. Making the tick of the clock far too loud. Every crack of the fire made you jump.

“Fancy a walk?” said Mr M. abruptly. “I always have a walk before bed.”

The clock on the wall said seven o’clock…

Harry thought suddenly that Mr M. was having a fight with time itself. The same as he was having this terrible fight with silence. A silence that was choking him. Only… you couldn’t fight with
time.
You couldn’t fight with
silence.

It was as if… Harry struggled… as if there was another person in the house. An invisible person who was frightening Mr M. out of his wits, using the weapons of time and silence.

Only that was
mad. A
mad thought. Was Mr M. mad? Or was he going mad himself? Not a nice thought either way…

“Yes, I’ll come for a walk,” said Harry.

Mr M. set off at a great pace, so that Harry, still tired, had a great job in keeping up. Mr M. had an old battered pair of binoculars hung round his neck. He walked so fast they must have banged against his chest painfully.

But it was a glorious evening, and they walked to the sea. Lindisfarne lay low and golden. The sea was in, and the two refuge-towers stuck out of it. They stopped to admire the view, and Harry managed to get his breath back. Then he said, “We nearly drowned, coming back from there. That’s why everything got so wet.”

“I thought it might be something like that,” said Mr M. He didn’t seem all that interested. “Look, there’s a fulmar. He comes every evening, about this time, and flies round and round this bit of cliff. Exactly the same pattern every time. I think he’s just showing off.”

It was almost a joke. And he did seem a little calmer. And the longer they walked, the calmer he got. He seemed to know a lot about birds and plants and explained about them, in a way that was eager, and not at all show-off. It was a bit like going for a walk with Artie, only Mr M. knew longer Latin names for things. There were still silences, but they didn’t drill into your brain, like they did in the house.

Only one odd thing happened, as they walked back through the village, having come off the cliffs. There was
an old man, standing smoking at his cottage door.

“Evening, Mr Murgatroyd!” His tone was kind, but there was that same kind of weary pity in it. Again, as if Mr M. had a wooden leg, or was deformed or something…

“Evening, Sam. How’s your lad?” There was a sudden tightness, as of pain, in Mr M.’s voice.

“Doing fine,” said the old man. “Making fourteen pound a week, in that Vickers factory at Newcastle. Churning out tanks like cans of beans they are, every hour God sends. He hardly has time to write. He’s still keen to do his bit for his country. But he’s in that controlled occupation.”

For a moment, the old man sounded ashamed. Then he said, “Nice to see you with a young ‘un, Mr Murgatroyd. Like old times, eh?”

The sudden, silent cold was back. Harry, glancing at Mr M., thought he looked ten years older, all of a sudden.

Then Mr M. just said, “Goodnight, Sam,” and walked on.

“Everything’s dry now,” said Harry. Then he screwed up his courage and said, “Can I sleep in your barn tonight?” He didn’t know what else to say. It was getting dark outside, and he had to make
some
arrangements.

“You’ll do no such thing,” said Mr M. “There’s a bed upstairs for you, if you want it. First room on the left. And if you want a bath, there’s plenty of hot water. Bathroom
second on the right. Now I must go and fasten up the geese.”

And he was gone again, before Harry could say thank you.

So all Harry could do was go upstairs, taking his dried things with him.

The bed was neatly turned down, and there were striped pyjamas laid out ready for him. Again they were a bit big for him; but they were certainly far too small for Mr M.

And a towel, and a half-used bar of soap, and a half-used tube of toothpaste.

It was strange, having a hot bath again, and even stranger getting into somebody else’s worn pyjamas, twice in three nights.

But the bed was soft, and he soon fell asleep.

Harry was awakened by the rattling of a cup and saucer outside his bedroom door. It was a really terrible rattling, as if Mr M. was shaking himself to pieces.

Then there was a long, long pause, and that same terrible silence. When Harry felt he couldn’t really take any more, and almost called out, the door opened.

Mr M. stood there, fully clad. He had the cup and saucer in one hand, and a bundle of clothes under his other arm. That much Harry saw through the lashes of his near-closed eyes, for he felt it was wiser to pretend to be still asleep.

Mr M. stood looking at Harry a very long time. At first, a slow smile crept across his face. Then, slowly, it faded; Mr M.’s face grew sadder and sadder, until Harry
almost cried out again, just to stop it getting worse.

At that point, Mr M. crossed the room on tiptoe, put the rattling cup on the bedside table and draped the clothes over a chair. There were corduroy trousers, a check shirt, vest and underpants and socks. And last, a blue jumper. Mr M. arranged the clothes with little tugs, and then rearranged them again. Satisfied, he tiptoed to the door, and looked at Harry’s face again. With a stare so intense that Harry felt he was being eaten,
alive.
Then he made a dash for Harry’s old clothes, where he had dropped them carelessly on the floor. He snatched them up, avidly, and vanished from the room. Calling as he went, suddenly, “Wakey wakey. Rise and shine.”

Feeling rather shaky himself, Harry swung his legs down to the floor, and drank the cup of tea. It had three sugars in. When he whipped out to the loo, there was the smell of frying bacon, coming upstairs. So he thought he’d better get washed and dressed quickly.

Mr M. seemed to have finished his breakfast. He was stuck behind the morning’s
Times.
He said, shortly, “Your breakfast’s in the oven.”

It was bacon and eggs again, but Harry wasn’t grumbling. After what he’d been through, he could eat bacon and eggs like that forever. He even mopped up the greasy plate with bread.

“There’s toast there,” said Mr M. in a tight voice. Harry munched his way through a lot of toast and marmalade. Then he felt guilty again, because of the rationing.

“Is it all right if I finish it up?”

Mr M.’s face appeared fleetingly. He smiled, as if he was really pleased. “I like a boy who eats a good breakfast,” he said. “You need feeding up.” Then his face vanished again.

Harry stared at the large headlines of the paper. There had been a victory in the Western Desert, at a place called Alam Haifa. Field Marshal Montgomery seemed to have destroyed a lot of Rommel’s tanks.

“Monty’s given Rommel what-for then!” said Harry.

Mr M.’s hands tightened on the paper. “I never discuss the war,” he said, in a very small voice. Then he seemed to relent and lowered the paper and said, “We’d better go down and see how your dog’s getting on.”

The car rattled and creaked along. And Mr M. rattled on non-stop about what a marvellous vet Mr Harper was. How animals loved him, how cats twined round him, purring, even when he was giving them injections. So it was a bit of an anti-climax to find, when they arrived, that Mr Harper was out on his rounds. They were shown into the back area by a bad-tempered woman in an overall, who seemed to regard them as a nuisance. Don was in a pen,
on a bed of old blankets. He seemed sleepy, and didn’t get up, though his tail beat against the floor. They both went in and stroked him. Harry thought again how good Mr M. was with animals, and how bad he was with people.

“He’s all right,” said Mr M., still stroking Don. “He’s just sleepy after the anaesthetic.” Don’s paw was tightly and neatly bandaged, but Harry was a bit worried that there was a little blood seeping through the bandage.

‘“Saright,” said Mr M. “Harper knows what he’s doing.”

Then they were back in the car, with the silence growing between them, and the whole empty sunny day stretching ahead with nothing to do.

Harry thought hard. He was getting increasingly nervous about what Mr M. wanted him for. All adults wanted
something.
Joseph had wanted help with beachcombing; the old lady had wanted to… well, Artie had wanted things fetched from the NAAFI.

“Can I help?” he said diffidently, not looking at Mr M., just staring through the windscreen at the little silver dial on the bonnet.

“Help?” said Mr M. He sounded most surprised. “Help with what?”