Then he buttoned the trench coat up to his neck and looked eastwards to the lighthouse. The single figure on the beach was no longer alone. A couple stood, their arms locked, watching the falling tide.
The Dolphin Holiday Camp
Saturday, 31 August 1974
With the light of dawn Philip slept, to be woken by a voice opposite. ‘Just get dressed quickly, boys.’ Philip looked at his Timex: 7.35am. He crept to the window. On the stoop stood Grace Elliot’s husband, his back to the open door, with one of the Blue Coats and a security guard. They said nothing, avoiding each other’s eyes.
The Blue Coat stayed behind. He had one of the poolside swimming poles and he sank to his knees and worked it under the wooden chalet, in the sandy shadows, pulling something out of the cool dark space: a canvas bag, knotted with the blue rope the fishermen used. He should have taken it away then, Philip had sensed that, but instead he’d tugged the neck loose and pulled out a box. He could see it was of dark wood, polished, with a brass plate where a key had once gone. The Blue Coat had opened it and Philip could still hear the tiny, metallic tune: ‘Greensleeves’.
They were missing at breakfast. An empty table by the window where the family had always sat. He ate quickly with his uncle and aunt and returned to the chalet. His aunt said she’d pack and he could have half an hour: a last half hour, but that he couldn’t go on the beach because of his shoes, his jelly-moulds already swapped for school brogues.
He’d run then, down towards the sluice, hoping they’d be there. He wanted to know what the man had found, and why he’d found it, and what they’d seen the night before and if they’d been seen, but most of all he wanted to say goodbye. He’d rehearsed this last morning many times: an only child struggling with the manners of friendship. Would they come again next year? Would it be the same two weeks? In a schizophrenic, oddly adult way he knew that it would probably never happen, that hoped-for repeat of the summer, but he was young enough to crave, desperately, the possibility that it might. Fuel enough for a year of dreams.
But the marshes were empty. He ran to the poolside, deserted on changeover day despite the sunshine. In the distant car park families were loading up, cases being strapped to roof racks. By reception the first newcomer had arrived, a small child in shorts running ahead of a man with two suitcases. Just inside the doors there was an amusement arcade, they’d come here once with Smith, bringing coins they’d found on the beach. Philip slipped in and stood alone on the plush blue carpet, the machines winking silently, unplayed.
He heard Smith’s voice first, oddly muted. ‘Don’t push.’
Philip stepped between the machines and stood behind a cabinet where a mechanical crane fished for prizes. Through the glass he saw the children outside in a single line led by Grace Elliot: Sis, Dex and Smith, with one of the camp’s security guards, a different one this time, at the back. Philip padded behind, aware that the rigid formation was part of some wider punishment. They’d been seen the night before, recognized. But had the man who’d seen them seen him? There’d been no early knock at his chalet. But what had the children said? Had they betrayed him now?
Philip inched out into the sunshine of the car park, skirting a line of cars, mostly black and already humming with heat. The three children stood by a Morris Minor Traveller. Grace Elliot talked with the security guard, shaking his hand, crying, her face red and wet. Inside the car her husband sat at the wheel, a map spread out concertina-style.
Philip edged closer, seeing them through the windows of a VW camper. He caught Sis’s eye, but she shook her head: just once, but he could see the plea, the urgency of the signal to keep away. Dex clung to her, Smith stood apart, his shoulders rigid with the fear he was hiding.
Then, released by a command he did not hear, the children bundled into the back seat of the car. Windows down, they joined a queue at the gates. Dryden watched them go, willing them to acknowledge he was there, afraid they would. But their heads never turned, not once, to look back at the sea, or to look back at him.
32
Monday, 9 January
The façade of Whittlesea District Hospital boasted a brace of Palladian pillars and a portico complete with a carved heraldic shield. But if the front hinted at grand ambitions the rear shouted poverty. Steam gushed from a vent, rising up the blackened brickwork and melting the snow in the guttering above. A skip marked ‘clinical waste’ tumbled soiled paper onto the tarmac and a gang of seagulls launched sporadic raids on a tumbled rubbish bin. By a pair of plastic swing doors a male medical orderly sat swaddled in a shell suit smoking a cigarette like an addict. The insistent hum of extractor fans provided a constant soundtrack to complement the crackle of the radio from beyond the steamed windows of a laundry.
A pair of female nurses stood arm-in-arm on the doorstep engaged on separate mobile phone calls. Dryden, extracting one of his Greek cigarettes, stood close to the orderly and lit up.
It took five seconds for the orderly to speak. ‘Visiting?’ He was in his twenties, unshaven, his eyes haunted by lack of sleep and overindulgence in something liquid.
Dryden shook his head. ‘Looking for the union rep – Unison. Any idea?’
‘Not on site. This place is closing – not enough patients to justify the staff, not enough staff to justify the funding. Lynn’s got the nearest full-time rep.’
‘I was after a bit of history, actually – someone who used to work here as a nurse. Anyone still around?’
‘Yeah. Loads – that’s the problem. Nurse, you said?’
‘Yeah – male, a trainee. With access to the dispensary. This would be ’74, perhaps a bit earlier.’
He whistled, as if Dryden had asked to speak to Queen Victoria. ‘That’s going back a bit.’ He ground the stub of the cigarette out on the tarmac. ‘Come on.’
The change in temperature was astonishing: the heated fug of the hospital interior settling instantly on Dryden’s frosted skin. The smell turned his stomach, the memory of custard weaving round that of urine and floor scourer. They picked their way through a hallway strewn with dirty linen and out into one of the hospital’s main corridors. Sixty yards ahead of them an overweight nurse pushed a patient into the distance on a trolley: otherwise the long vista was empty, the dully polished floor reflecting noise from the wards at each side. A TV buzzed a sports commentary, while somewhere a tap gushed into a bath, the plumbing banging as it dealt with the rush of hot water.
At the far end they descended damp brick steps under a sign marked DISPENSARY. At the bottom was a windowless room with some plastic seats and a matching pot plant. A counter behind meshed glass took up one side of the room, the service hatch was open and deserted except for a single tea cup and saucer. It was even hotter here and Dryden could feel through the soles of his feet the hum of a boiler somewhere in the basement.
Dryden’s guide smacked the counter with the palm of his hand: ‘Shop! Marina, shop!’
His guide retreated, leaving Dryden to wait alone. He paced the room, reading posters on the walls, many of which looked like they’d been printed up for the launch of the NHS in the forties – a diagram of a dissected eye, a list of do’s and don’ts for diabetics and a gruesome set of pictures showing the progress of malignant melanomas. He checked his watch: Laura was in the pool at the camp doing hydrotherapy, but he felt the gentle tug of guilt.