Cynan Jones - Everything I Found on the Beach

He was Jake’s age, thereabouts, when it happened. His father’s act had been a willful decision and Hold made a promise to himself — with the great affecting seriousness and belief of a child’s promise — that he would never let people down that way.

It was only when he was older that he saw the drink take great lumps from his mother, thought guiltily of how he would bring her glass after glass and feel somehow privileged at the smile she gave him.

He grew overprotective, perhaps, especially of his younger sister. She was out in Australia now. They hadn’t really spoken for years. She said she couldn’t cope with him being so protective of her, like he was throttling her. He blamed his father.

He wanted to make things right. He believed that you could sort things out; that you shouldn’t give up on things. There was always a way. He felt that he had not been old enough to prevent his mother’s drinking, hadn’t understood it then; that he was wrong to be so protective of his sister; how perhaps the early baby was a way of screaming finally in his face that she could do what she pleased. He felt a great sense that he had got it wrong back then because he didn’t know enough. It had just solidified into a haunting determination to do better. That had been the most crippling thing about Danny’s death. That it could not be sorted out. But this was different. He thought of Danny and his belief in the impossible. “Something will always come along. If you do things for the right reasons.” He had not believed in chance and Danny had, and here it was. He thought of their ambergris, the hallowed newspaper cutting, the one in a million find. This was it. Ambergris. Something had come along. And all he had to do was see it through.

He passed through the changing landscape, noticed the rhododendron begin to grow loose on the hills, and he went on north. In among the evergreens, the bare deciduous trees had the silvery and papery look of wasp nests.

He thought of Danny’s shed and then of the nest on the house. They had taken up the old floorboards, exposing the ceiling beams so you could see right through to the roof of the house. They piled the wood outside and watched the wasps strip the paper-fine layers off the boards with this repetitive, constant sound that seemed way too loud for something so small to make, gathering the pulped wood in their mouths.

While they rebuilt the annex they could hear the industry of the wasps crunching in the late spring warmth and they watched the small acorn of nest grow in the gable in the sun. All the time, this thing building that was dangerous and beautiful, but unnerving in its purpose.

By the time they had got the walls of the annex up the nest was as big as a football. When Hold went out there at night and stood below the nest he could hear it humming as the wasps fanned the warm air out of the nest with their wings.

“I want Jake here,” Danny said. “I can imagine us all. Get that garden cleared. You have to have something to be doing things for,” he said. “There has to be a purpose.”

I guess we didn’t come far, thought Hold. We grew up playing in that house and making up dreams in it, and we were still doing it in our thirties. He could feel the brick in his hand now, the weight of it, its roughness. The purposeful process of putting one brick down upon another. “They’ve been the same for thousands of years,” he thought. “The size of a man’s hand. That dictates everything — the size of the thing we can handle. What we can build like that.”

“I want Jake here,” Danny said.

In the end, the great robins had taken to battering into the nest to knock the young grubs out. Then the magpies watched, learned, and just came in and hammered it down. All of that constructed because they were programmed that way. All that careful building and something just came along and battered it all down.

“I have to stay focused,” thought Hold. “I have to stop thinking of things.”

For a while he considered throwing the rabbits and their dangerous guts to the side of the road, and of turning home. “These thoughts are little tests of you,” he said to himself. “You know you have options.” But he was haunted.

He couldn’t stop thinking of the Polish woman. Of the distraught tone of her voice. He could picture her too clearly. His mother, Cara. It would be the same scene. The same collapsing. Checkham. Vrooj prosser. Checkham, checkham. He thought of the dead man in the boat. It would be out of fuel by now, adrift again with the stiffened body. And then he saw the police car.

His stomach turned over. The car gained on him a few yards and then steadied, keeping a distance behind him.

Why were they out here? This was nowhere. Hold thought of the tires, the brake lights, hoped nothing would draw attention to him. He drove carefully, but felt a nervous hesitancy on the corners that made him seem conspicuous.

“They can’t be here for you,” he thought. It was like his thoughts were out loud. “Why would they know? There’s just the random chance they’ll stop you. Why would they even look at the rabbits?”

He looked at the mirror. There were two men in the car. “I should stop,” he thought. “This is madness. Just stop and tell them everything.” The possibility of it made him feel sick. Then they turned on the lights.

They’d timed it so that he could pull over easily into the turnout that came up on his left and he fought this crazy urge to try and outrun them. He felt drained of focus. Give it up. This is your chance to get out.

He pulled the van into the stop and switched off the engine. “Choose,” he said to himself. “Choose now.”

The police officer knocked on the window and Hold wound it down.

“Afternoon, sir,” said the policeman.

Hold could sense the cooler with the rabbits on the front seat.

“Hello,” he said.

“Do you mind stepping out of the car.”

Hold got out of the van and saw the other policeman checking the vehicle.

“Your van, sir?” asked the first policeman.

“Had her for years,” said Hold.

“And where are you off to?”

Hold veered. “Can I ask why I’ve been stopped?”

“Oh. Just routine, sir. Just a check. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. Full MOT?”

Hold nodded. The other policeman was checking the tires.

“Mind if we take a look inside?”

It’s your chance, right here, to give it up. You can end this now.

“No. On you go.”

The policeman nodded to the other policeman. “Do you have your driver’s license? Insurance documents on you?” The other policeman had opened the back and the doors squealed as he leaned into the van.

“I don’t, no.” Hold thought of the box on the shelf in Danny’s shed, had a fleeting image of Cara finding it. Of his being jailed. “They’re at home.” I can’t let that happen. I have to get back to her.

“Which is where, sir? Your address?”

Hold told him.

“And your name?”

Hold gave him the information.

“Any ID?” asked the policeman.

“No, not with me,” he said. Hold thought of the box again.

“I’ll have to ask you to present your documents to your local station within seven days. Just routine, sir.”

“No problem.”

The other policeman came round with a handful of cartridges. “You own a shotgun, sir?”

“Yes. Sorry. They must have come out of their box. I have a license.”

The two police looked a little more thoughtful. You could see this cautious change come over them.

The one doing the talking got on the radio and radioed the information in, asking about the driver and the shotgun licenses.

“You can tell them. You can tell them now,” thought Hold. He waited while the voice through the radio came back with the information. There was this static squeak. The other officer was going round again kicking the tires.