Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

‘The bloody bastard,’ Hathaway said. ‘I don’t bloody believe it.’

‘What?’ she said again, laughing.

‘Aren’t books supposed to explain by the end what’s been happening?’

‘Not always.’

‘I don’t mean the kind of books you study, I mean regular books. Stories. This guy John Fowles has just been stringing me along. It’s like a five-hundred-page shaggy dog story with no punchline.’

‘Did you enjoy the stringing along?’ she said.

‘Yeah – but part of it was wanting to know why it was all happening.’

She smiled.

‘If only.’

‘At the end the guy is sitting on a park bench waiting for someone to turn up to tell him why he’s been dragged through shit through most of the book – admittedly on a beautiful Greek island by beautiful twins, but even so. And nobody turns up. And the last sentence of the bloody book-’

‘Calm down, John – they’ll hear you in Piraeus.’

‘The last sentence of the bloody book,’ he said in a loud whisper, ‘is in fucking Greek!’

She laughed at that and rolled over towards him. They went for a dip and he checked out a rock for sea urchins, then he pressed Elaine against it and started to have sex with her. Suddenly she cried out as she trod on a sea urchin with the one foot that she was using to try to keep her balance.

It would have been funny if her bikini bottoms hadn’t drifted away and if, as he was hoisting her out of the water, one of the Greek men from the restaurant hadn’t come by.

Hathaway didn’t notice him at first. He was busy examining the sole of Elaine’s foot. He’d located the black dot on the fleshy pad below her big toe where the spine had broken off when he saw movement from the corner of his eye. The Greek man was standing leering at Elaine’s nakedness.

Hathaway gave him a hostile look and grabbed a towel to thrust at Elaine.

‘We’re not alone,’ he said.

She looked over.

‘Who cares? That’s Yannis – we met him last night.’

‘You met him last night,’ Hathaway muttered, trying to pick at the black spot with his nails. Elaine yelped.

Yannis stepped off the road, calling something in Greek.

‘We’re fine, thank you,’ Hathaway called, adding under his breath: ‘so fuck off.’

‘You need to make water on it,’ Yannis said, dropping down on to the patch of sand, his eyes fixed on Elaine’s still naked breasts.

‘What?’ Hathaway said.

‘Pee-pee? Do pee-pee.’

‘Who?’

‘You.’ Yannis grinned at Elaine. ‘Or I will if you wish.’

He patted his crotch, leaving his hand there, the grin widening.

‘You’re serious?’

‘Chemicals. The spine comes out.’

Hathaway looked from him to Elaine.

‘Well, are you going to do something?’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘Not when he’s standing there.’

‘Jesus, this is no time to worry about the size of your cock.’

‘I’m not fucking worried,’ Hathaway said, ‘I just want this guy to fuck off.’

Yannis’s smile disappeared.

‘You say fuck off?’

‘For God’s sake, will somebody piss on my foot?’

‘Piss on your own bloody foot, you’re so clever,’ Hathaway said, thrusting his chin out and taking a step towards Yannis.

Yannis was in flip-flops; Hathaway was bare-footed. Hathaway knocked him down with a roundhouse kick that caught the Greek on the side of the head just above his left ear.

Yannis fell heavily. Hathaway heard the hollow clunk as his head hit rock. He stepped forward and picked up another rock, raising it to smash down into Yannis’s face. Elaine screamed his name.

His father had wangled Elaine a speaking part in Oh! What A Lovely War but Hathaway wasn’t sure whether she’d taken it as, after Greece, she wasn’t speaking to him. He couldn’t see her anywhere in the crowd and then he and the other Avalons joined the procession on to the pier. They did it once, twice, three times before Attenborough declared himself satisfied. It had taken five hours.

‘Well, if this is film making, you can keep it,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve had more fun watching paint dry.’

Hathaway sauntered off, still in his uniform, down to his father’s office. Halfway there, he saw his father walking towards him, flanked by Victor Tempest, Tempest’s wife, Elizabeth, and, in a very short skirt, the chief constable’s wife.

‘How’s the war going?’ his father shouted before they all met and shook hands.

‘No action yet,’ Hathaway said, giving the women his best smile and trying not to ogle the length of bare leg on show.

‘John,’ Tempest said. ‘You should say hello to the scriptwriter on the film – I assume you’re still reading spy thrillers?’

‘I am, Mr Tempest – Mr Watts, I mean – I don’t know what I should call you.’

‘Victor Tempest is only my working name. Why not call me Donald?’

‘All right, Donald. I’m not sure this is my kind of film, really.’

‘Great cast, though,’ Donald Watts said. ‘All doing it for a nominal sum. Johnny Mills was telling me he got Attenborough involved. Dickie wanted to do a film about Gandhi but said he’d have a go at this. He phoned up Olivier – you know he lives in Royal Crescent? He’s not been well but he agreed to do it for peanuts, then everyone else came on board.’

‘I see,’ Hathaway said. ‘But what’s that got to do with thrillers?’

‘You’ve read The Ipcress File?’

‘Of course. Len Deighton. Very good.’

‘Well, he wrote the script for this film.’

Hathaway was impressed.

‘I’ll look out for him.’

‘Do that. If I’m around I’ll introduce you.’

Tempest turned to Hathaway’s father.

‘We’d better be getting on, Dennis. Good to see you.’

‘I’ll let you make your own way – I need a word with my son.’

‘And I need the toilet,’ Elizabeth Watts said. ‘I’ll say my goodbyes now – don’t wait.’

As she disappeared into the nearby toilets and his father led him towards the office, Hathaway caught sight of Tempest and the chief constable’s wife in a prop mirror leaning against the side of a stall. Presumably thinking no one was watching, Tempest had slipped his hand under the back of her mini-skirt and up between her thighs.

Hathaway was hardly listening when his father said:

‘Philip Simpson has resigned and the twins have been arrested.’

Hathaway nodded absently. He was thinking about Tempest’s hand slipping up between those white thighs.

‘Is that it?’ his father said, sitting back in his chair. ‘Is that all the excitement you can muster?’

Hathaway switched focus.

‘So we can let loose the dogs of war.’

Dennis Hathaway laughed and squeezed his arm.

‘Soon, sonny boy, soon.’

By the time Bruce Reynolds, the last Great Train Robber to be captured, was sentenced in January 1969 to twenty-five years, Hathaway was still waiting to see his father take over Brighton. Philip Simpson was no longer chief constable, though he was still visible around town and up at the racetrack. He’d become a father for the first time a year earlier but it had coincided with him coming down with cancer. He looked like a skeleton. The twins’ empire had crashed. But Cuthbert was still being a pain in the arse, and Dennis Hathaway didn’t seem to be doing anything about it.

Hathaway and Charlie discussed it many times but Hathaway dissuaded Charlie from bringing out the clown costumes.

There was talk of closing the West Pier down. It was rotting at the far end – Hathaway could kick a hole in the floorboards in the office. Charlie had done so. His father tended to use his office in the Laines most of the time.