Canvey Island

Canvey Island by James Runcie Page B

Book: Canvey Island by James Runcie Read Free Book Online
Authors: James Runcie
Tags: General Fiction
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scar remained white.
    She looked at me without waving or smiling, and it seemed that she was already a stranger. I couldn’t understand how quickly I could feel so detached from my own past.

Linda
    I didn’t give up, of course. I borrowed my mother’s Ford Prefect and drove up to Cambridge to talk to him. It took me an hour and a half and we sat in a pub, the Baron of Beef I think it was called, and I listened to students talking about their holidays in France and their second homes in Switzerland. They either had Christian names like Crispin and Jasper or nicknames like Rodders and Pimple. Martin told me he had joined the Backwards Club and that once a term they ran a whole day the wrong way round. They started with a brandy and soda and worked their way back to a boiled egg and soldiers last thing at night. It was such a good laugh, apparently.
    He said I couldn’t stay in his rooms. It wasn’t allowed and he didn’t want the gyp to find out.
    â€˜What’s a gyp?’
    â€˜He’s a servant; a type of cleaner. It’s what we have here.’
    â€˜I thought a gyp was a bit of trouble: like my mum and her varicose veins. Her legs giving her “gyp”, that kind of thing.’
    â€˜He also comes in to check I haven’t topped myself.’
    â€˜I don’t believe you.’
    â€˜It’s true. Someone did it last year.’
    â€˜I’m not surprised in a place like this,’ I said. ‘It’s a wonder more people don’t do it.’
    Martin couldn’t get me out fast enough. I suppose he didn’t want his posh new friends to see me, even though I was at art school and he should have been proud to have such a groovy girlfriend, for God’s sake. We went off to Aldeburgh for the weekend instead.I could tell that he wasn’t that interested in me apart from the sex and even that had a ‘for old times’ sake’ ring to it.
    We pretended to be married – Martin and Linda Turner, we certainly looked sulky enough – and we booked a guest house where the landlady asked questions that we couldn’t answer and expected us to be ‘up and out’ by half past eight.
    There were sheep walks covered with grass, fern and brake furze, and Martin wanted to see how the wind affected each piece of vegetation and how much each could protect the land behind. He pointed out that the trees had been blown back; lilac, privet, sycamore and chestnut were listing badly, the salt of the winds wearing away their easterly sides. Then, when we got to the beach, he kept stopping to find places where he could test the sand, telling me about infiltration and hydraulic conductivity like I really wanted to know. He’d only allowed me to come if I didn’t get in the way of his experiments into what he called ‘swash flow’ and ‘sediment transport’. I had to hold a cylinder that he was going to insert into the sand to see how quickly the tide drained away.
    â€˜What about us?’ I wanted to say. ‘Why don’t you give this much attention to us?’
    He connected six tubes to the cylinder, pushed it into the sand and asked me to fill it up with water. He got out his watch and we measured how long it took for the water to drain away. Whenever it fell an inch Martin recorded the time taken in his notebook.
    â€˜I want to see how compact the beach is, and how quickly contaminants can infiltrate the coastline.’
    Nearby a man was lying down while his wife sat up to look out to sea. She had a pair of binoculars. Although the man’s eyes were closed his hand rested on her lower back, checking that she was still there.
    The clouds over the sky were suspended like a child’s mobile, with low streaks of grey and darkening. Martin told me that if I was bored I could search the beach for other places where the sand varied in texture. He told me he wanted to see how the size of the particles and their

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