James Smythe - The Machine

The flat?

The island. I’ve seen it when I’ve been running. Used to be an amazing place. He doesn’t ask what happened to it, or why she’s there. No inquisition at all, she thinks. He takes everything at face value.

I want to go, Beth says. I’d like a new start.

Well, while we’re here then. He pulls his shoes on, sitting on the chair by the door. Come on. It won’t kill you.

Beth’s terrified that they’ll open the door to Laura, but there’s nobody around – it’s so early, Vic somehow operating on the rigid wake-times he got used to as a soldier – so she takes his hand and leads him through the estate, even though he’s run it a few times now and knows the way out. She takes him down the stairs. It makes a difference, having him with her. She’s not threatened by the blind corner.

As they walk down the path, the whole strip is empty. She’s grateful: the boy is probably still asleep, sleeping off whatever it was that he did last night. The restaurants and takeaway look like they’re dead rather than just closed; and the Tesco – Beth winces as they pass, because she can picture the pharmacist at the front, waving his fist at her as if they’re both in some cartoon, and saying, Get out of here, and don’t come back! – is quiet inside and out. The shutters are up, which means they’re open at least.

I fancy a pastry, Vic says.

Not here, Beth tells him. There’s a place along the front. We can sit down there.

They walk down to the bit of beach and tread along the pebbles. Vic picks up a few stones, the flatter ones, and he goes to the edge where the water is almost still and he winds his arm back. He takes on the stance of a professional, if such a thing exists: a posture that looks ideal, to Beth, somehow absolutely perfect, Adonis-like. He is a work of art, a creation carved from marble and memories. She wonders if the models for those ancient Greek statues would pose, without a break, for the duration of the sculpture’s creation, or if it was done in sessions. The seemingly unimportant parts – the flats of their backs, or the flattened plateau of an inner-thigh – carved out when the muse wasn’t there any more, when the artist was left to his own devices. Vic’s tight arm springs and his fingers splay and the stone fires out at such a flat angle that it’s almost imperceptible for a second, and then it hits the water. It bounces, and again, and then carries on, almost gliding.

Still got it, Vic says.

He throws another, and another, and then one followed so quickly by another that the stones almost dance together, the second ricocheting off the ripples that the first creates.

Jesus, he says. Still got it.

They walk further along the beach, picking their way over the most stable areas: the larger stones that aren’t likely to slip, avoiding the scree closest to the water. Beth threatens to slip on one rock, but Vic catches her. He rights her. They get to where the sand has been placed – hundreds of tonnes of the stuff, brought here by the council to entice people to the beaches when the tourism started to die, the inspiration for hundreds of costly promotional photographs that only helped to sink the island faster – and that lets them get closer to the water. Vic takes his shoes off – he’s not wearing socks – and he paddles.

Freezing.

Should be.

How can people swim in this?

I did. I do.

Really?

Most mornings. It’s always this cold.

But the air’s so hot.

Doesn’t make the water boil. It would be a worry if it did. The cafe is down the way, so Beth tells him she’s going.

No, he says. I’ll go. You stay here. Sun yourself.

Milky white.

Milky white?

That’s what they call a latte, she says.

Milky white it is. She watches him head up the embankment and onto the pavement, and then pulls a lounger – one of those old-style ones, with the different-coloured rubber bands making up the bulk of the bed – and makes sure that the legs are dug in. She sits on the end and watches the water, and she zones out – watching the waves – until she hears the footsteps behind her. Too many for Vic alone. She knows before she turns.

What the fuck is this, the voice of the boy says. She’s here looking at the fucking sea. It’s not going anywhere, love. Beth turns round to look at them. Four of the boys, and two girls with them this time. Bikini tops, shorts, hair cut so short they are almost bald, like the boys, but with length at the back, pulled into ponytails. They’re almost identical, but one is fatter. You going for a swim, love? the boy asks.

Please go away, Beth says.

Fuck’s sake, get her? He laughs. I’m being all fucking nice, and she tells me to go away!

Please, she says.

You can fucking beg for all I care.

My husband is only getting coffees.

They all laugh. So now she’s got a husband, has she? Never seen you with him before, love. What’s he look like?

Like a vibrating plastic cock, one of the girls says. They all laugh.

Yeah, that’s what he looks like. And you sent that to get a coffee did you? What’s he going to do, stir it with the tip? They laugh again: from the back of the pack, the laughing is almost incessant.

He’s a soldier, Beth says.

Coo! They all coo. Sounds like a threat. What’s he going to do? Have my eye out? Beth notices his hands: he’s got a stone in one of them, and his fingers are tight around it. His other hand flexes, in and out, as he breathes. Fist, open. Fist, open. Come on, he says. Tell me what he’s going to do to me.

Beth cries instead. Please, she says, please leave me alone.

They start to back up, because she’s making real noise, huffing breaths in, and spitting them out as sobs. They back up, ten feet, and they start to turn, apart from the boy, who stands firm. He’s not budging. He can smell weakness.

And then Vic shouts from the road. Beth looks up and sees him pelting towards them.

Get back, he shouts. They ignore him as he runs, and screams. What are you all doing? He gets to Beth and puts an arm around her, shielding her as she cries, and he looks at the boy. What the fuck did you say to her?

The boy ignores him. He looks at Beth, and he kisses his teeth, and spits onto the sand.

Another time, he says. As he walks away, Beth sees his fingers open and the stone falls to the sand, patting into it. One of the only stones on this part of the beach, a lump of solid black stone in amongst all the gold. As soon as they’re all out of earshot – on the street, all laughing, all grabbing at each other and heading back towards the estate – Beth starts crying harder, almost hyperventilating as she tries to breathe.

Oh my God Beth, don’t, Vic says. She can’t help it. He rubs her back. Shh, he says. He makes soothing noises and tells her that it will be okay. Come on, he says. Come on.

When she’s pulled herself together she tells him what happened. She can hardly get the words out, her breath still tight and hard to find.

And then I saw you coming, she says.

Yes.

You didn’t get the coffees.

I dropped them when I started running. I can get more.

No, she says. Don’t leave me. Let’s wait here. They sit on the sun lounger, and then Vic leans back.

Can’t even really see the sun under the clouds, and yet this is how hot it gets, he says. He’s making observations on phenomena that the rest of the world’s lived with for five years. It’s crazy.

What would you have done? Beth asks him.

With what?

With that boy.

I told him to get off you.

Would you have done more? Would you have hit him?

If I had to. How old is he?

He’s done this before.

What?

Lots of times. He’s made me so scared. Beth says the words, and thinks how weak she sounds to herself. That’s living here, and being alone, and being so nervous all the time. And, she briefly thinks, the Machine. Something about it.