LITMIR.BIZ

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the door, and a smell of smoked fish gusted into the room. ‘Let’s be having you,’ she said. ‘We haven’t come all this way for you to hibernate.’ Alexander listened for the sea and did not hear it, but there were grains of sand on the pillow case, and these were sign enough that a day unlike any other had begun.

      After breakfast they walked in procession down to the beach, fifty paces behind a woman with a blue towel held under her arm like a pet dog. His mother bought some food and his father bought a newspaper in a shop that sold sandals and rubber balls as well as bread and sweets and cigarettes. At a chart of the tides his father stopped again, as if he had forgotten that the Beckwiths were waiting. ‘Should be fine today,’ he announced. A luring breeze swirled over Alexander’s skin. At the end of the road the surf was rushing up as though to meet them, then scampering away.

      Cubicles of striped canvas had been raised on the beach. Alexander and his parents walked past them all, searching for the Beckwiths. They walked towards the cliffs on their right, checking every hunched and supine figure. A woman in a turquoise swimsuit looked like Mrs Beckwith from afar, but was not Mrs Beckwith. They turned round and retraced the footsteps they had left. As they reached the end of their trail Alexander looked up at the dune and saw that a woman wearing a dark blue dress and dark glasses was waving as if wiping an invisible window.

      Mr Beckwith stood up on the crest of the dune and came down the slope to shake hands with them all, including Alexander. ‘Graham,’ said Mrs Beckwith to his father, shaking his hand. ‘Irene,’ she said to his mother, and kissed her once on each cheek. To Alexander she said nothing, but looked at him with her hands on her hips as if debating with herself what was to be done with him. At last she smiled concedingly: ‘Megan’s with the other loonies,’ she said.

      ‘There,’ explained Mr Beckwith, raising a heavy arm to point across the beach. ‘The woman in the red cap’s keeping an eye on her.’

      Without changing into his swimming trunks Alexander leapt down the dune and ran out to the sea. The woman in the red cap was standing in hip-high water, watching a girl who was dog-paddling along with her head held up and her eyes wide open, as if peeping over a tiny wall. Beyond her was Megan, her brick-coloured hair making snakes on the surface of the sea. She stood up and ducked her head into a breaking wave.

      Alexander cupped his hands and shouted to her. She looked the wrong way, then noticed him. Her mouth spat out a gobbet of seawater and made a shape that might have been the shape of his name. With the flats of her hands she beat on her belly. ‘Eck?’ she yelled, and Alexander realised then that his parents and the Beckwiths had plotted together to bring about this moment for himself and Megan.

      ‘Didn’t you know?’ he called, as Megan strode towards him, raising frills of water from her foam-white legs.

      ‘Top of the class, Eck.’ Her laugh became a cough as she stumbled out of the shallow water. ‘No, of course I didn’t know. Did you?’

      ‘Not till last night,’ Alexander replied.

      ‘You’re staying here?’ she asked. He told her about Mrs Pardoe’s, and she trampled the soggy sand while he was speaking. ‘This is terrific, Eck,’ she said, poking him in the midriff with a forefinger.

      ‘You getting out now?’ asked Alexander. ‘It’s really warm up on the dunes.’ Megan looked landward and then seaward. Her eyes were bloodshot and a violet line was spreading from the centre of her upper lip. ‘Come on,’ Alexander urged, touching her stippled forearm. ‘You’re freezing.’

      ‘I’ve only been in a couple of minutes, Eck. Why don’t you get changed and come in?’ she cajoled. ‘Go on. Go and get changed.’

      Alexander removed his shoes and socks and extended a foot into the rinse of an expiring wave. ‘You’ve got to get right in,’ said Megan, walking backwards into the water, ‘otherwise it’s cold. Once it’s over your chest you start to warm up. Believe me,’ she said, kicking with her heels. ‘A city boy,’ she commented to the woman in the red cap, and she sprawled into the surf and swam away. Alexander turned to wave at the dune, though now there were so many people on it that he could not be certain where his parents and the Beckwiths were.

      Every day they all shared a picnic in a trough of sand on the grassy dune. Alexander and Megan would watch for the signal from Mrs Beckwith’s polka-dot scarf, and their return was in turn a signal to Mr Beckwith, who would come down from the crest of the dune where he sat like a sentinel through most of the morning, his face directed at the horizon.

      On the third afternoon, once the sandwiches were finished, Mr Beckwith stood up, shook the sand and crumbs from the lap of his trousers, and then, instead of climbing back up to his lookout, placed a hand on Alexander’s shoulderblades and said to him: ‘I’ll show you something, young Alexander.’

      At the back of the dune Mr Beckwith stopped, his feet bracketing a tussock of pink flowers. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked.

      ‘I don’t,’ replied Alexander, promptly, as Mr Beckwith required.

      ‘It’s thrift,’ said Mr Beckwith. ‘It’s called thrift because its leaves retain its water thriftily. Do you recognise it? You’ve seen it before.’ Mr Beckwith looked at Alexander with an expression that was as stern as the one with which he faced the sea, but his voice was soft and coaxing.

      ‘Have I?’

      ‘Yes, you have,’ said Mr Beckwith. ‘You’ve seen it on the back of a threepenny bit,’ he said, displaying a coin on the tip of a middle finger. ‘You see: thrift on a coin. It makes sense. It’s also known as sea-pink or ladies’ cushions, and that makes sense as well.’ Turning slowly, he looked around the dune. ‘And that,’ he said, not indicating what he meant, ‘is lady’s bedstraw.’ Alexander followed him to a spume of tiny yellow flowers. ‘Put your nose on that,’ Mr Beckwith told him. ‘What does it smell of?’

      ‘Honey,’ replied Alexander.

      ‘Used to be put in mattresses to make them smell nice. And that over there, that’s henbane by the look of it,’ he said, walking over to a stunted bush on which grew clusters of watery yellow flowers. ‘Henbane all right. Take a look, but don’t touch it.’

      Alexander crouched by Mr Beckwith’s feet. Thin purple lines made webs on the petals and the leaves were hairy as caterpillars.

      ‘A type of nightshade this is. Can make you very ill indeed. Worse than ill, in fact. Dr Crippen – you’ve heard of Dr Crippen?’ Alexander shook his head. ‘No matter. A nasty piece of work was Dr Crippen. Poisoned his wife he did, and this is what he poisoned her with.’ The face of Dr Crippen appeared to Alexander as a version of Mr Gardiner’s, sallow as henbane flowers, with hard little veins under his eyes.

      From then on, Alexander spent part of every afternoon with Mr Beckwith. When the picnic was over, and the others spread out the towels to sunbathe or went down the slope to look for shells, Mr Beckwith would unhurriedly survey the sky and the sea and the beach, and quietly propose: ‘Shall we take a stroll?’ Over the dune and onto the roads they would walk, not strolling but striding, as if Mr Beckwith were taking him to an important appointment. From village to village they strode along the empty lanes, beyond the reach of the sea’s rustle, and sometimes the only sound was the ripping of the soles of their sandals on the hot tarmac. Looking to right and left in regular alternation, as if to ensure that nothing could happen on the other side of the hedgerows without his noticing it, Mr Beckwith would suddenly remark ‘Look at this,’ and drop a hand onto Alexander’s shoulder to steer him towards a verge. ‘Look,’ he would say, kneeling on the turf to hold aside a stand of grass, revealing a flower with petals like shavings of frozen cream, or moths’ wings, or tiny bits of sky-blue silk.

      As if they were the words of a vow between himself and Mr Beckwith, Alexander would never forget the names of the villages and hamlets through which he walked with him: through Rinsey Croft and Colvorry and Trewithick they went, through Pentreath, through Kenneggy and on to the path above Kenneggy Sands, through Penhale Jakes and Trevena and then up the hill at Tresoweshill, and through Hendra, past the

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