Wide Open

‘But I do know. I’m renting one of the prefabs. I’m living in Sheppey now.’

‘Yeah, well, what you don’t know, apparently,’ Lily said, smiling, ‘is that I can report you to the police for walking down this road naked.’

The man, under considerable duress, tried his best to hold his own. ‘That’s my prefab,’ he said bullishly, ‘I mean I’m renting it. So this here is the front of my house. And that …’ he pointed, ‘is the nudist beach.’

‘But this,’ Lily indicated with a flourish, ‘this is the sign that says you must put on clothes to go beyond that point. See?’

‘But there’s no one about.’

‘I’m about. And someone else lives in that prefab. Your neighbour. He’s short and bald and he’s always well covered. He would probably also be disgusted if he saw you this way.’

‘I’m not disgusting, I’m just naked. And this is a nudist beach.’

‘That is a nudist beach. This is the public highway.’

The man said nothing. Lily appraised him, coolly. ‘I’ve lived around here a long while. See those over there?’

She pointed at a cluster of houses; small, purpose-built chalets. He nodded. ‘That’s where you people go.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The Hamlet. It’s fenced off, see? That’s where all the temporary people go. Nobody permanent has anything to do with them. We think they’re weird.’

He glanced over at the chalets as though he hadn’t truly noticed them before. ‘Perhaps they think you’re weird.’

‘What?’

Lily crossed her arms.

‘I’m going to the beach now. It’s too cold to stand around talking.’

‘Fine.’

The man – he was called Luke Hamsun, he was forty-seven and a professional photographer – walked past Lily and on to the beach. Lily turned and watched his retreating torso, then she threw down her bike and went to peer inside his prefab.

Luke had found the idea of a shell beach appealing, initially. It brought to mind the image of Venus rising from her oyster. This whole place is practically deserted, he thought bitterly, and yet fate brings me bang into contact with Prissy Miss Moon Features.

He wondered what Lily’s name was. He wondered whether she’d prove photogenic.

No people. He recited this like a mantra. No people. That’s why I’m here. No drink. No fags. No people. No sex. No stress. No people. Just emptiness. That’s all.

The sea was brown. It wasn’t even the sea, really. It was the channel. This place is truly the back of beyond, Luke thought smugly. It was grey and bleak and very flat. It was like the moon, in fact. But did they have seas on the moon? He remembered hearing something similar in a way-distant geography lesson but he couldn’t decide if the seas in question were wet seas or dry seas.

How could you have a dry sea? And if the sea on the moon was wet, wouldn’t the water float off because there was no gravity on the moon to hold things down?

He walked along the beach. The shells were actually quite hard on his feet. His feet were tender, underneath, and so was he. He held in his paunch. Nothing moved. He supposed that the muscles on his gut had stopped working. He breathed out. No, they had been working after all. He coughed. His belly hurt.

The brown water lapped at his feet. It was icy.

Oooohhhhh! Much colder than he’d imagined. He was naïve like that. This instance was entirely typical. He moved back a step. The sky was massive. Flat land, flat sea, and a great big, dirty, mud-puddle of a sky.

It looked like it was going to rain. He shivered. He peered over his shoulder to see if the girl had gone. It seemed like she had.

As Luke strolled back to his prefab he confidently sidelined any thoughts of his own physical timidity (shouldn’t the sea feel warmer in cold weather? He’d certainly always thought so. He’d been misled, clearly) and instead he bolstered himself by imagining the cosmos; black, enormous, dotted intermittently with diamond-chip stars, and then a sea, floating. A giant sea with waves and foam and everything. Just, kind of, floating.

He imagined himself, Luke Hamsun, on the moon, moon-walking. He’d been sent to the moon to recapture the sea, to tighten it up, to winch it down.

Over his shoulder Luke pictured heavy ropes which were weightless because nothing weighed on the moon, and in his hands a dozen giant tent pegs. He was supernaturally powerful. He was Flash Gordon. He had no back problem. No gut-ache. His sciatica was a phantasm. He would never keel over and die. He was no longer forty-seven.

And in some respects this was actually true. At least it could have been true in a different world. It just so happened that Luke Hamsun was an earthling, and as such, he was obliged to endure the drag of gravity. He was grounded.

But he endured phlegmatically, cheerfully almost. He didn’t complain. He saved his breath. In fact he hoarded it. He held it.

Lily, meanwhile, had made herself comfortable on Luke’s sofa and was inspecting one of his portfolios.

‘Oh good,’ she said calmly, when he strolled back inside, turning a photo around so that he could see it properly, ‘now you’ve returned you can set me straight on this. Is that a pickaxe up her arse or …’

‘How did you get in here?’

Lily lifted the photo and reappraised it. ‘If you’ve got no trousers then you’ve got no pockets. If you’ve got no pockets then you’ve got no keys.’

Luke felt enraged, violated, defiled, but when he finally spoke it was with great softness. ‘Put those down and get out of here.’

Lily, rather surprisingly, responded to the softness. She closed the portfolio.

‘You’re a bit of a pervert then, on the quiet?’

‘You’re a silly little sneak.’

‘A what?’

Lily stood up, smirking. Luke felt embarrassed by his nakedness and picked up a coat from a chair by the door. He put it on. He looked ridiculous now, naked, wearing only a coat. The coat was incriminating.

‘So that’s why you’ve come here,’ she said, pouting deliciously, ‘to take some more of these dirty pictures?’

‘They aren’t dirty pictures.’

She’d struck a nerve. She knew it. She always knew. She laughed. ‘So what’s that then?’

Against the wall, yet to be hung, stood a picture of a naked female cupping her breasts like they were two neat apples, but the breasts had been yanked up high as though she planned to pillow her chin on them. It looked uncomfortable.

‘It’s a nude.’

‘A nude. Oh. I get it.’

Lily continued to eye the picture.

‘Ouch!’ she said.