Nailed by the Heart (7 page)

"David
..." They had reached the doors to the building.

"
... the clouds. I wanted to see if you can really stand on them."

Chris
crouched down and took his son's head in his hands so he could look
at him face-to-face. He kissed him on the forehead, just above the
bruised eye. "David, enough of these flying stories now, eh,
son?"

"But,
Dad, I really did fly."

Chris
looked into those earnest blue eyes. "Tell me about it later.
Now ... Come on, let's have a look around before it gets too dark. Do
you remember the gun?"

"A
real gun?"

"A
real one, kidda. Come on, let's go find it."

David
ran to the door as Chris fished the key from his pocket. One of the
first things the last owner of the place had done was substitute a
user-friendly Yale for the old clunking Victorian lock. It opened
easily (no Frankenstein castle creak, he thought). Father and son
stepped inside into the gloom.

The
smell ... Chris breathed in deeply through his nostrils. A little
musty. All the place needed was ventilation. Let the sea breezes blow
through the dusty corridors for a day or two and the place would
smell almost sweet.

They
were standing in a hallway with three corridors running off-one to
the left, one to the right; another straight ahead to a staircase.
This would be the entrance lobby with the hotel reception desk in one
corner. The light from the windows amply revealed the mounds of
builder's rubble against the walls. There were rusty iron bed-frames
(probably abandoned when the Army moved out), and a neat stack of
breeze blocks that must have been abandoned ten years before when the
builder quit work on the conversion.

"Come
on. Let's explore."

They
began a tour of the long, dusty corridors. Some had been plastered
during the conversion attempt ten years ago, but many were still bare
stone, the shoe-box-size blocks of rock so expertly cut and fitted
together you couldn't have put a knife-blade between them.

The
first room they reached must have been used as a rubbish dump. Old
drinks cans, bottles (one whiskey, most beer-the military certainly
knew how to unwind), broken chairs and, along the far wall under the
window, a dozen olive-green metal boxes, bearing white stencilled
letters. AMMUNITION. They moved on, David at a trot now, wanting to
see the gun.

"Hang
on, David. Not so fast." This was still a dangerous place.
Cables hung down at intervals; part of the unfinished wiring job.
They shouldn't be live, but you never could tell. The other rooms on
the ground floor were largely a repeat of the first. Clearing these
alone would be like one of the labors of Hercules. Maybe he should
hire some help.

They
reached another room. Empty apart from an old dining table and three
ill-matching chairs.

"I
suppose this is where the builders had their break room."

"Look,
there's some playing cards," said David, walking across the
room, his feet echoing slightly. "Can I have them?"

"Best
leave them." Chris noticed that they had been dealt out into two
hands. Ten years ago the players had been interrupted. There was also
a packet of dusty-looking Polo mints. Half were gone. The others
looked like circular yellowing bones in the cylinder of crinkled
foil. A box of matches. And open on the table, a newspaper. The
twentieth of April. Ten years old to the very week.

He
shivered. It made him think of the Marie Celeste. The builders had
simply stopped whatever they were doing and had gone, leaving jobs
half done. Bankruptcy hits you like that. It raised a phantom in
Chris's mind. What happened if their plan did not come off? They were
going to sink every penny they had in the world into this place. If
it failed...

"David
... Come on, son, time to move on."

"I've
found something weird," David replied, looking through a door
that Chris had taken to be a cupboard.

"What
is it?"

"God
knows."

"Language."
The reprimand came automatically, but he was more interested in what
lay behind the wooden door.

David
frowned and swung the door backwards. "Steps, but going down.
And we're already on the ground floor."

Chris
laughed. "It's a cellar. It was probably used for storage."

But
a cellar on an island? The building was only a yard or two above the
high-tide level anyway. That meant the cellar was below sea level.
That was impossible. Unless it flooded at every high tide.

Chris
peered into the black pit of the stairwell but could make nothing
out.

"Aren't
we going down?"

"Not
tonight. We haven't got time. Come on, let's make tracks if we're
going to find that gun."

The
idea of the underwater cellar intrigued Chris, but it would have to
wait. There could be only a few more minutes of daylight left.

On
the next floor they found the big room that looked over the sea. From
ceiling to floor, and along the entire length of the far wall, ran
the window. Immediately beyond that was the old gundeck; beyond that
nothing but sea and blue sky all the way to Holland. After all these
years the windows were smeared a blurry white from salt spray, with a
random white and black splash here and there. Pure seagull guano.

The
room was empty and relatively clean; just a couple of lengths of gray
flex added to the evidence of building work abandoned in a hurry. The
Marie Celeste.

"Where's
the gun?" David ran across to the windows. "Pee-ow!
Pee-ow!"

"Over
there." Chris pointed to a shape as big as a car, covered by a
tattered tarpaulin. "A 40mm Bofors. But I don't think we can
blow any ships up tonight."

"Why
not?"

"No
ammo." He smiled down at his son. "Also, I have a feeling
the Army might have taken some parts of the gun away so it can't be
fired."

"Isn't
that being a vandal?"

"Well,
it seems like it. But we wouldn't want any of the guests firing the
gun by accident, would we?"

"Suppose
not."

"But
you see where those platforms are-near those gaps in the wall? That's
where the old-fashioned cannon used to go, before they had modern
guns."

"Breech-loaders."

"That's
right, David," said Chris, surprised at his son's knowledge.
"How do you know that? I was ... Blast, what's wrong with this
door?" Chris had wrestled with the brass handles for a full
thirty seconds. They would not budge. "I think we've got a
little problem here. I can't open the door."

"Have
you got the key?"

"No.
There isn't one. There's not even a lock. We're so high up you'd need
a helicopter to get onto the gundeck ... Dear me." If David
hadn't been there the words would have been a little stronger. Chris
gave the doors a last rattle. They were shut tight. "Not to
worry, kidda. We'll get the doors fixed then we can have a proper
look. We'll just have to see what we can through the windows."

Even
with the windows in a gunked-up state he could tell that the view
would be pretty good. Perhaps it would be most striking in winter
during a storm. It would have all the spectacular sounds, sights and
fury of being on a ship; with the benefit of being firmly rooted in
the living rock. He could imagine waves cracking against the wall to
send foam and spray gushing up as far as the windows.

He
recalled trips to Scarborough when he was David's age. An angry sea
would draw crowds of people to the Spa theater which hung on the edge
of the sea. The waves would hurl themselves at the seawall, bursting
in geysers of spray that shot perhaps thirty feet high. Showers of
brine would drench any spectator who got close enough. And to a young
boy's delight, someone always did. The sea always has that power. It
creates a spectacular display which radiates a magnetism that draws
people to it. Then all they can do is stand and watch.

He
didn't know if it was the idea of danger which pulled not only
children but grown men and women closer and closer-the feeling you
get when you approach the lion's cage at the zoo, and lean over the
barrier to see, face-to-face, the man-eating beast. Perhaps the two
were similar. Seeing nature without her clothes on, in the raw, she
is more beautiful, more savage, more hypnotic, more fascinating, more
powerful, more aweinspiring, more frightening than you imagined. You
just have to get a little closer; see a little more.

As
that six-year-old boy, Chris would watch the ocean's antics. Words
would run around his head as if the sea were saying, "Come on,
come closer. Watch me. It's fun. Look-a ten-foot wave; look-all this
foam boiling up at the foot of the seawall steps. Come down the steps
a bit. It's okay. I'll make a little rush at you and you run
shrieking and giggling up the steps. Come closer. I want to play with
you. Come on ... Water's soft. I can't hurt you ..."

"Dad.
You said the door wouldn't open."

He
looked down at his hand as if it didn't belong to him. He was
gripping the brass handle and rattling the thing, trying to force the
door open. He shook his head as if waking from a deep sleep.

He
coughed. "I was just seeing if I could free it. Come on, it'll
be dark soon. Let's see a bit more before it gets too late."
They left the big room. "It's a great place, isn't it, kidda?"

"Sure
is, Dad." David charged along the corridor in the direction of
the next flight of stairs up.

Chris
followed. Why had those thoughts about the sea run through his head
like that? It was almost as if they had originated outside his skull.
Even recalling them now gave him an odd sensation. He shivered and
licked his dry lips. Do the early stages of insanity feel like this?

"Come
on, Dad!"

David
had reached the steps. He climbed them, quickly disappearing from
sight.

Chris,
rubbing his face, followed. The excitement of moving in, he supposed.
He was tired.

"What
do you want, Dad?"

David's
voice drifted down the staircase.

"What
do you mean, what do I want?"

David
appeared at the top of the steps. He looked fragile against the dark
void above him.

"Dad
..." David assumed the voice that told his parents he was
becoming exasperated by their slow wits. "Da-ad. You shouted at
me."

"I
never said a word."

"Did
... Fibber." David added the mild insult for emphasis.

"You're
imagining things again."

"Am
not."

"All
right, David. It must have been the wind or an echo you heard."

Or
did you call him, Chris? You senile old nutcase. Take two Paracetamol
and lie down in a darkened room.

He
looked up at the little boy looking down at him. It must have been
the perspective or the light or something, but David looked further
away than he could possibly have been. And above him was that black
cavern-just a whistling great emptiness.

His
mind flicked back to those holidays in Scarborough when he would
watch children on the seawall steps as the sea, hissing like a great
shapeless beast, swelled up against the walls, swallowing the steps
in a gush of foam. They would run up screaming with glee, not
realising how dangerous their game was. He found himself imagining
David playing the same game. Running, chuckling, down toward the
shifting mass of dark water, then running back up as the next wave
rose up to eat the steps one after another. Of course, David would be
too slow. The muscular rush of water would shove him off the stone
steps and into the body of the ocean. He would hear David's cry, "Dad
... Dad ... Get me out!"

David's
face disappearing beneath foam. Chris's agony at his helplessness.

If
the sea pulled David out into deep water he would drown beneath the
heaving ocean. If it swept him back to the seawalls, his body would
be smashed against the stone blocks.

To
jump into the sea there to try to save him would be suicide. No one
could swim in those waters.

Would
he try? Without hesitation, he knew the answer.