Cynan Jones - Everything I Found on the Beach

The voice went quiet again.

“It’s nothing to do with them.”

“Make sure it isn’t.” The phone stayed quiet. Then it went dead.

Hold just sat there with his head in his hands and couldn’t think.

The two men walked past the policeman onto the ferry over the gangplank and handed over their landing cards and went into the boat. The passengers inside were spreading out to explore the levels of the boat. It was stuffy inside and smelled like someone was trying to cover up some other smell. There wasn’t any moving air in it. Already you could hear the thrum of the huge engines and the noise of the vehicles loading on downstairs.

The two men went up to the top lounge and took seats and looked over the port and out to the sea. There was a chop coming to it and the little white crests showed up in the light that spilled out into the bay from the port now in the dark. The big man was sure the ferry was the wrong way round to start the journey.

Out on the dock a JCB worked in floodlight, moving stone, picking through the boulders like it had intelligence, and the dust of the moved stones whirled in the light like moths about him. The way the machine looked deft was like the big man making a cigarette. The lounge smelled of stale pubs and the chairs swivelled and tilted back and forth. There were big No Smoking signs everywhere inside.

Stringer got up without saying anything and went down a deck to the bureau de change and got some pounds and came back and gave some to the big man. The bar was filling up with people and some of the people were drinking already, and some were looking over the snack menu. There were children running about like in a park. The lounge was really high off the water.

When they were under way Stringer went off to the gambling area and in a while came back and said, “Let’s go eat.”

They went down to the restaurant level and ate. The restaurant was like a service station restaurant. From the middle of the restaurant where they sat you couldn’t see anything but the dark sky and its oddness in the lights of the ferry. The windows were all scratched with salt like there was a glaucoma to them.

They were coming out and gathering, like birds dropping in to roost at dusk, starting to line the end of the street. He slowed the car down. He had a plan, and he’d kind of snatched at it. He had no idea how this went. He slowed the car right down and pulled in to the curb, and after a moment a girl walked over. She stood while he wound down the passenger window and leaned in and asked him if he was looking for business. She wore a short skirt and a puffer jacket. He looked at the black puffer jacket like the Pole had worn. He noticed when she leaned in how lank the hair looked.

“Any foreign girls?” he asked. The puffer jacket had prompted this quick thought. He looked in the mirror. Behind him the girls were writing down his number and the time in their notebooks. There were about six girls now. They were smoking and chewing gum and looked cold. There was none of the American glamour to it.

“Ani!” the girl called over and walked away.

The girl called Ani walked over. A . “Another A ,” he thought. It was like a strange sign. She was pale and underfed and when she leaned in he saw the cheekbones and he said:

“Where are you from?”

And she said, “Europe.”

He said, “Get in,” and she opened the door and looked him up and down and then she made some signal to the other girls and got in and shut the door.

“Checkham,” he said. “What does it mean?”

She looked at him.

“Is it a name? Checkham. Vrooj prosser checkham ?”

“I don’t know.” Her accent was thick.

“Is it the way I’m saying it?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” she said.

She looked round onto the back seat, at the cooler with the rabbits, and he saw on her bare legs the roughened red skin of the knees and the bruises at the tops of her thighs disappearing under the skirt. He didn’t feel anything for her.

“What do you want to do?” she said prettily. “You’re good looking.” She was wearing a denim jacket and she took it off and he could see the small red bra through her shirt and the points of her breasts pushed forward as she leaned to get the jacket off in the seat.

“Who runs you?” he said.

“What?”

“Who runs you? Who runs the girls?” She began to get scared.

“Don’t get out of the car,” he said. He said it really factually and she sat back.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you police?” She said police like two little words.

“No, I’m not police.” He held up some of the money in his hands. “Put the jacket back on,” he said. He could see the goosebumps on her arms.

He gave her a twenty.

“Who runs you?” he asked. He looked dead at her. Her face was like the woman from the phone photos. Colder, hungrier, younger, but like her. The structure was the same.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Who is in charge of you? Who is the boss?”

“We look after each other. Girls,” she said. It was cold in the car. “I don’t understand.”

Hold waited, looked at her.

“Where can I buy drugs around here? Cocaine?” The other girls were now looking at the car that hadn’t moved. He gave her more money.

“No drugs,” she said. “Clean.” He could feel that her nerves were up. The other girls were coming up to the car.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Europe.”

“Where?” He was looking at the bone structure. The wide apart eyes.

“Europe,” she said.

She grabbed the jacket and got out of the car and left the door open like it was practiced. She was holding the money.

“Bastard,” she shouted. The girl who had come over first was on the phone. He turned on the engine. “Checkham,” he said. “What is it? Is it a name?”

He was looking her right in the eye. “Vrooj prosser checkham.” He felt the car nod and heard the crackle as one of the girls put her heel through the rear light. The door snapped half shut as he accelerated away.

At eleven o’clock, the ferry was about halfway through its crossing.

The big man was out on the promenade deck. He just wanted to lie down but could not. He was staring down at the pools the rain had left as they sloshed back and forth at the bulkheads. Nothing he had tried had made him feel better but he had stopped being sick.

“This is a bad sign,” he thought. “I should never have left Dublin. Water’s not good luck for us.”

He looked down at the luminous waves, cresting in the unusual light. He’d been sick into his hand on the way out of the restaurant and had thrown it into a urinal and gone and thrown up over and over, all this half-chewed peas and fish and the paste of half-digested sandwiches coming out of him. The pile of it sat and stank in the urinal, and when it flushed automatically it washed the mess out onto the floor. It was pea-green and mixed with the piss where people had missed. The big man felt like death. He looked like he was at prayer over the urinal and the way he felt it was possible he was.

Stringer came out from the gambling room and found the big man and saw that he had got the shakes. Stringer blasphemed at him.

The big man couldn’t get the stink of sick out of his hands. He hadn’t brought a toothbrush, nothing to wash with, and he felt a strange embarrassment at the idea of buying a toothbrush, a vulnerableness in society. Things that had always been done for him by his mother. He welcomed the cold, trying to numb himself.