Jonathan Buckley - So He Takes the Dog

Henry turned, smiled graciously, said nothing.

‘Are you OK, sir?’

‘Yes. Thank you,’ Henry responded, nodding slowly, drawling the words as if, after deep thought, he was deciding that he was indeed, on balance, OK. ‘And you?’ Henry enquired. ‘Is everything all right with you?’

‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

‘Yes,’ Henry mused, giving Ian a benign, mild, examining kind of look that made Ian feel somewhat uncomfortable. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’ It was a fresh day, a two-T-shirt day, and Henry was wearing a white buttoned-collar shirt over them, open like a jacket. Wavy lines of salt were all over his jeans, but the ensemble was remarkably clean, Ian observed. What’s more, Henry had whiter teeth than Ian, though his beard looked like something you’d find hanging off the walls of a cave and his hair was a mess, an inch-thick carpet of grey matting. You could lob a dart on to the top of his head and it wouldn’t reach the scalp. ‘Well,’ said Henry, pushing a shirt button through the wrong buttonhole, ‘I should be going. Thank you, officer.’

‘Just thought I’d check, sir.’

‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘Thank you,’ he added, with a sincerity that wasn’t altogether convincing.

‘Hope you didn’t mind me asking.’

‘No,’ replied Henry vaguely, examining askance the photo of the dinghy. ‘No. Not at all.’ His fingers fastened the buttons of his cuffs, then worked them free again. ‘Well, goodbye,’ he said, and he sauntered away, gazing at the sky, in imitation of a carefree stroll, or that’s how it seemed.

This was the first occasion on which Ian spoke to Henry. Not long after, in January, the acquaintance was renewed, after a call from Mrs Darrow. Dear Mrs Darrow was a serial complainant. If a party started up within a mile of her house, Mrs Darrow would be on the phone within the half-hour to protest about the noise. If a camper van were to be left in a nearby car park overnight, Mrs D would be on the blower, reporting an invasion of tinkers. Now Mrs Darrow had called in to say that there was a naked man wading in the water. She could see him clearly from her window, cavorting in the sea, making a display of himself. Would we please do something about it right away? Ian was sent down to the beach to have a word with Henry.

It was a couple of degrees above freezing and an aggressive wind was slicing in off the sea. The water was chopping up heavily, but Henry was out there, frisking around in the buff while Ian stood on the shore, beckoning this nutcase to come out. Henry noticed Ian. He waved back at him and dived under, as if he thought Ian might be waving for the fun of it. Ian took a couple of steps into the water; he started yelling. Eventually Henry got the point and staggered out, starkers and shrivelled and turning blue.

‘Good morning,’ Ian called.

‘Good morning,’ Henry replied.

‘We meet again,’ said Ian, and Henry smiled, having no idea what Ian was talking about. ‘We’ve had a complaint, sir,’ Ian went on.

Long pause. ‘I see.’

‘From a lady.’

Longer pause. ‘I see.’

‘About your attire. Lack of.’

Even longer pause. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to cover yourself up.’

Very long pause. ‘Someone has complained?’

‘Yes, sir. A lady.’

Henry looked around. There was no one in sight except Ian.

‘I take your point, sir,’ said Ian. ‘But the lady has seen you and has lodged a complaint.’

Once more Henry considered the vast frigid vacancy of the beach. ‘Got a telescope, has she?’

‘I think we must assume that she has.’

‘And I’m blocking the view?’

‘So it would appear.’

Henry’s skin had by now turned the colour of a dead mackerel and his private parts looked like three tiny acorns in a nest of singed grass. He was on the brink of hypothermia but he was talking to Ian as if they had just happened to bump into each other on a street corner. ‘Can’t she look the other way?’

‘It would appear not. Where are your clothes, sir?’ asked Ian, by now alarmed at Henry’s hue.

Henry pointed inland, but Ian could not make out what he was pointing at. Together they walked across the sand, Ian and this shaggy nude lunatic, chatting about the weather. On a low mound of sand there lay a small pile of clothes and a towel that would have done fine for lightly rubbing down a chihuahua after its bath. Ian handed him the tiny towel and Henry took it. He held it in one hand, by his side. They regarded Henry’s meagre wardrobe and the big red nylon bag lying nearby – a laundry sack, which Henry used to sleep in, until someone gave him a proper sleeping bag.

‘Do you have any swimming trunks, sir?’

‘No, I do not,’ Henry regretfully admitted.

The next day Ian bought him a pair of swimming trunks, but before long Mrs D was back on the line, offended again by the exposure of Henry’s genitals. Ian returned to the beach. The wind was Siberian and the waves were going twenty different directions at once. Henry was frolicking in groin-high water, slamming his head in the foam. Summoned, he trudged out of the sea. ‘Henry, you’re underdressed,’ Ian observed. ‘You’re not wearing them.’

At a loss, Henry frowned. ‘What?’

‘Your nice new trunks,’ Ian explained. ‘The trunks I got for you.’

‘Yes?’ Henry responded, still baffled.

‘The trunks I got you last week?’

‘Yes,’ said Henry, the light dawning.

‘You’re not wearing them.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘She’s complained again.’

A blank pause. ‘Who has?’

‘The woman.’

‘The woman?’

‘The lady with the telescope. The one who complained last week. Before we acquired the trunks.’

Long pause. ‘I see.’

‘What’s the problem? Don’t you like them? I thought you liked them.’

‘Oh no. I like them.’

‘So where are they? Over there?’ asked Ian, pointing towards a dash of red on the rocks.

‘Yes,’ Henry confirmed.

‘Why not there?’ asked Ian, pointing to Henry’s nether regions.

‘They’re not dry.’

‘Come again?’

‘It’s a horrible feeling, putting on wet clothes.’

Ian sympathised, but insisted that Henry must make himself decent. This was not to be their last conversation about Henry’s swimwear.

For almost three years Henry was here, but he was in residence intermittently, which is why nobody was worried when he’d been missing for a while. He’d left the town before, for weeks at a time, months at a stretch, so no one thought anything of it. But it was odd that he’d gone missing in winter, because previously it was always in summer that he went away.

The post-mortem established that Henry was not as old as had been thought, probably nearer fifty than sixty, and that he’d been under the sand for a couple of weeks or thereabouts, before the sea scooped him out to lie in the open air, where he’d remained for a day or so before the arrival of Milo. It was also discovered that he had died because someone had inserted a knife into his chest cavity. Examination of his clothing revealed two small slits in the outer T-shirt; in the layer underneath there were two matching slits, and so on, all the way through to the flesh. Decomposition and wildlife activity had made a mess of the flesh itself, but not enough to eradicate wholly the two wounds, which had been inflicted by a thin-bladed weapon held in the attacker’s right hand. One blow had pierced the heart; the other struck a rib, chipping the bone. No signs of defence injuries were discovered on the remnants of his hands, so the attack seemed to have been sudden and brief.

Henry slept on the beach near Straight Point, or in the grass above the cliffs, but most often under the bushes of The Maer, so that’s where we searched for his belongings, though nobody could be sure what belongings there were to find, other than the sleeping bag: the superfluous swimming trunks might have been discarded long ago and it was possible that every item of Henry’s clothing was on his back when he was found. For a whole day a squad combed The Maer in the quest for Henry’s estate, while another squad worked out from the crime scene, looking for a weapon. The next day we began to trawl the whole beach. Come nightfall we’d gathered a few dozen bottles and cans, a couple of camping gas cylinders, three paperbacks, half a deckchair, a syringe, enough driftwood to build a replica of the Golden Hind , and a backpack containing one lady’s hairbrush, one condom (unused), twenty-four pence in loose change and a substantial quantity of sand. And no weapon.