Nailed by the Heart (10 page)

"This
is the only room that smells damp," said Ruth, tugging at the
first door. It bore the legend CO. KNOCK AND WAIT in white letters.

He
sniffed. A faint smell of mushrooms. "It doesn't seem too bad.
We'll get the architect to stick the damp meter on the walls."

"Chris!"

He
dropped the door he was carrying. It fell with a painfully loud
crash. "What's wrong!"

"Quick."

"Jesus,
Ruth, I thought you'd hurt yourself."

Ruth
grinned. "It looks as if we've got a sitting tenant."

"Christ
... Not rats."

"Not
animal. Vegetable. See for yourself."

Behind
the door was an ancient ceramic sink. But it was what was in the
sink, beneath a single dripping tap, that she had seen. There in the
bowl bloomed a mass of green leaves.

"A
bush?"

"Not
any old bush." She reached into the green mass that looked as if
it was exploding out of the sink and snapped off a thick white shoot.
"Look." She bit a chunk off and chewed it.

"Ruth?"

She
smiled. "It's celery. Here, have a bit."

"Celery
fits into the palm of your hand." He ran his hand through the
verdant growth. "This'll fill a wheelbarrow. How the hell did it
get here?"

"One
of the builders years ago. Probably had a celery fetish and left it
in the sink with some water to keep it fresh. And it just grew and
grew." She held out the stalk for him to bite. "Guess what
we'll be having for tea for the next three years."

He
bit. The white flesh was crisp and surprisingly sweet.

The
mother of all celery plants took some shifting. The thick bole from
where the shoots sprang had swollen over the years to fill the sink.
It was like trying to prise a fat man from a too-small bath.

"The
sink will have to go anyway." He smashed the china bowl. "Shit."
A small rush of water ran over his shoes. "Now will you look at
that."

Her
eyes widened. "It's filled it." Like a jelly poured into a
mold the celery had grown hard against every contour of the sink. It
had even grown around the sink chain which disappeared into the
plant. The plug itself must have been surrounded by layer after layer
of celery stalks somewhere in the celery heart.

It
took another five minutes of prising and swearing before it released
its embrace on the sink. With a crisp snapping sound it came loose
suddenly, throwing him off balance. "Jesus ... That's heavy."
He heaved the monster plant into the wheelbarrow.

"Just
a minute." She snapped some of the smaller stalks from the heart
of the plant. "I'll make lunch."

"Resourceful.
Now if you can knock together a few four-poster beds out of those old
doors and ammo boxes, we've got it made."

He
wheeled the barrow out to the skip. Without the sides of the sink
holding it tightly in place, the plant had flopped outward in a spray
of white rubbery stalks that moved in the breeze. Now, for all the
world, it looked like some species of huge albino spider. He covered
the monster plant with the doors, then went back to move the last
piece of junk from the room-a wooden straightbacked chair. It stood
in the damp dirt by the sink. When he tried to move it, it wouldn't
budge. When he forced it, it gave with the same crisp crack he had
heard earlier when he prised the celery from the sink.

Instinctively,
he knew what he would find when he looked more closely at the raw
glistening feet of the chair.

It
had taken root in the floor. He ran his fingers across the four
snapped roots in the dirt which corresponded to where the four legs
of the chair had stood. The wood of the chair was alive. The frame
had warped, or grown rather, making the leather seat too small for
the frame. He felt the arms. They were beginning to bud with new
growths. From touch alone he could feel that the legs had swollen.
Another ten years and he would have found something between a chair
and a tree. Not quite one thing or the other. It would slowly have
filled the room, vying for space with the swollen celery plant.

Feeling
suddenly cold, he broke the chair against the stone wall, then
dropped the pieces into the wheelbarrow. When Ruth called him for
lunch he did not mention the chair to her.

"Celery
boats?"

Chris
smiled. "No thanks, Ruth. I'll stick with the sandwiches. Has
David eaten?"

"All
he wanted was a Pot Noodle." She read his expression. "It's
okay. He didn't come into the caravan."

"Did
you get rid of the goldfish?"

"That's
your job, loving husband."

"Thanks
a million. Just check your pants drawer tonight." He grinned.
"Make sure I haven't slipped it into one of your stockings."

"Pig."
Playfully, she kicked him on the shin.

"Ah
... But I'm your very own loving pig."

They
were sat on chairs on the walkway that ran around the top of the
seafort wall. Overhead, spring was doing a superb new paint-job on
the sky, a deep, flawless blue. Twenty feet beneath him on the beach,
David crouched over a pile of toys. He had drawn huge faces in the
sand with a stick. They had grins and squint eyes.

"Perfect."
Ruth wriggled lower into her chair, resting her feet on his legs.
"The celery wants eating up before it wilts."

Below
in the courtyard were the two skips, now full and awaiting
collection. In one lay the celery monster spider, its long white,
rubbery legs no doubt splayed out and crushed beneath thirteen heavy
timber doors and five wheelbarrowsful of concrete rubble.

Get
out of that one and I'll call you Houdini, he thought.

"As
there's more junk to shift," said Ruth, "maybe we should
get help."

"Any
ideas?"

"There's
a lad in the village who seems to do odd jobs for people. You've
probably seen him. Long, straggly hair and a scruffy beard. Looks
like a wild man from the backwoods. I think he's a bit simple."

"He'll
fit in well here, then."

"Perhaps
he could give us a hand."

"It's
an idea. I'll ask him."

While
she shut her eyes and basked in the sun, he settled down to watch
David playing on the beach. David had balanced three of his toys on a
boulder that rose out of the sand to knee height. The toys were his
favorites-a Maddog Bigfoot, a blue stunt car, and a Star Wars
stormtrooper figure. He then placed a Superman comic next to those on
the boulder. He leaned forward, resting his hands on the smooth
boulder and intently studying the toys as if they were about to
perform a neat trick.

After
that he began to look from the toys to the sea then back again. The
sea was creeping in. After a few minutes the first waves hit the
boulder. They rolled slowly around it.

David
ran a few paces up the beach then turned to watch the boulder with an
intensity that made Chris's own neck ache.

Why
on earth had he done that? His son had deliberately marooned some of
his most precious toys on the boulder. By now the sea had completely
encircled the boulder.

When
David used a swear word or made some observation on life that would
have been impressive coming from an adult's lips, it always caught
Chris by surprise. He would shoot David a look, half wondering if
some forty-year-old dwarf had switched identities with his son. He
felt that way now.

God
alone knew why. The boy was only playing what six-year-olds no doubt
played. But it had the air of-Chris struggled for the description-a
ritual. Or a ceremony.

The
waves had swollen in size now. What happened next was inevitable.

One
hit the Maddog car and it disappeared into the sea with a splash; the
receding wave sucked it away out of sight.

David's
reaction was odd.

He
slapped his hands over his eyes as if the loss had upset him. But a
second later he yanked his hands away.

The
boy was forcing himself to watch the toys being washed away by the
waves. The comics went next, then the blue car. The Star Wars trooper
seemed to hang on the longest, until a splash of water knocked it to
the edge of the boulder and it hung over the edge like a drunken
diver, arms outstretched.

The
next wave claimed it for the sea.

Chris
looked back at David. He had retreated up the beach from the incoming
tide and sat cross-legged, staring out to sea. He looked drained, as
if the act of losing some of his favorite toys had exhausted him.

Losing
them?

No.
He had given them away.

"Ruth,
do you think he's happy here? I mean, moving house, losing his old
friends."

She
opened her eyes. "What makes you ask that?"

He
told her what David had done.

"David!
Hey, David!"

No
reaction.

He
hadn't heard. Or, more likely, he pretended not to hear. David seemed
to be rolled up in his own personal misery at the moment. He stared
at the sea which had taken his favorite toys.

"Don't
worry, Chris. I'll go down and talk to him." Ruth ran lightly
down the steps to the courtyard while he watched his son. Something
must be troubling the boy.

He
turned to go down the steps but was surprised to see Ruth hurrying
back up toward him.

"Come
on," she said quickly. "We've got a visitor."

In
the courtyard he found a small man-in his sixties, black-rimmed
glasses, white hair combed over a bald patch. He was gazing up at the
seafort walls as if they had just fallen from the Land of Oz. Ruth
and David stood a little way off, watching him. Ruth caught Chris's
eye. She gave a puzzled shrug when the little man's back was turned.

"Magic,"
the man was saying to himself. "Just magic." Chris coughed.
"Hello? Can I help you?" The man turned. His most striking
feature was his nose. Long, thin, and with a bony look to it which
managed to seem almost aristocratic without being beaky.

Whoever
he was, he could go. And quickly. The trucks were due for the skips.

"Mr.
Stainforth. Mrs. Stainforth. And little David." This little man
had done his homework. "I'm Tony Gateman. Good afternoon."
He shook hands with Chris and Ruth. "The times I've passed this
place over the last fifteen years and never once have I seen inside.
This courtyard is bloody enormous." He looked longingly toward
the door into the main part of the seafort. "Like a museum in
there, I shouldn't wonder."

"At
the moment it's more of a junkyard. Most of the original fittings
were ripped out when a builder began to convert it into a hotel.
Never got off the ground, though. He went bust."

"But
we don't intend to." Ruth moved nearer. "We've a sound
financial plan and the bank's backing."

Tony
Gateman peered at her through the thick lenses of his glasses.
"Actually, Fox and Barnett didn't go bust. Barnett had retired
by then, but old Jack Fox ran the firm sweet as a nut. It was liquid
all right."

Chris's
interest was stirred. "What happened?"

"Ahh
... " It was more than an expression of remembering; Mr. Gateman
was thinking hard. "He just decided it wasn't really his line of
work. Pulled the plug on the project and went back to building semis
... I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Stainforth, you'll still be wondering who
the hell I am. Poking my nose in."

Bored,
David had drifted back to the caravan.

"I
call myself Out-Butterwick's local historian, but that's just a
flimsy excuse. The truth is I like sticking my nose into things."
He rubbed the long aristocratic nose. "So tell me to clear off
if you like." He laughed, and Chris felt himself beginning to
like the little man.

He
continued: "A couple of years ago I published a little book, a
history of Out-Butterwick. The church, pub, shipwrecks; the
interesting characters of yesteryear, that kind of thing. Trouble is
this seafort is the most interesting place; up to bloody here in
history, and I could never get access."