What?
Lily crossed her arms.
Im going to the beach now. Its too cold to stand around talking.
Fine.
The man he was called Luke Hamsun, he was forty-seven and a professional photographer walked past Lily and on to the beach. Lily turned and watched his retreating torso, then she threw down her bike and went to peer inside his prefab.
Luke had found the idea of a shell beach appealing, initially. It brought to mind the image of Venus rising from her oyster. This whole place is practically deserted, he thought bitterly, and yet fate brings me bang into contact with Prissy Miss Moon Features.
He wondered what Lilys name was. He wondered whether shed prove photogenic.
No people. He recited this like a mantra. No people. Thats why Im here. No drink. No fags. No people. No sex. No stress. No people. Just emptiness. Thats all.
The sea was brown. It wasnt even the sea, really. It was the channel. This place is truly the back of beyond, Luke thought smugly. It was grey and bleak and very flat. It was like the moon, in fact But did they have seas on the moon? He remembered hearing something similar in a way-distant geography lesson but he couldnt decide if the seas in question were wet seas or dry seas.
How could you have a dry sea? And if the sea on the moon was wet, wouldnt the water float off because there was no gravity on the moon to hold things down?
He walked along the beach. The shells were actually quite hard on his feet. His feet were tender, underneath, and so was he. He held in his paunch. Nothing moved. He supposed that the muscles on his gut had stopped working. He breathed out. No, they had been working after all. He coughed. His belly hurt.
The brown water lapped at his feet. It was icy.
Oooohhhhh! Much colder than hed imagined. He was naive like that. This instance was entirely typical. He moved back a step. The sky was massive. Flat land, flat sea, and a great big, dirty, mud-puddle of a sky.
It looked like it was going to rain. He shivered. He peered over his shoulder to see if the girl had gone. It seemed like she had.
As Luke strolled back to his prefab he confidently sidelined any thoughts of his own physical timidity (shouldnt the sea feel warmer in cold weather? Hed certainly always thought so. Hed been misled, clearly) and instead he bolstered himself by imagining the cosmos; black, enormous, dotted intermittently with diamond-chip stars, and then a sea, floating. A giant sea with waves and foam and everything. Just, kind of, floating.
He imagined himself, Luke Hamsun, on the moon, moon-walking. Hed been sent to the moon to recapture the sea, to tighten it up, to winch it down.
Over his shoulder Luke pictured heavy ropes which were weightless because nothing weighed on the moon, and in his hands a dozen giant tent pegs. He was supernaturally powerful. He was Hash Gordon. He had no back problem. No gut-ache. His sciatica was a phantasm. He would never keel over and die. He was no longer forty-seven.
And in some respects this was actually true. At least it could have been true in a different world. It just so-happened that Luke Hamsun was an earthling, and as such, he was obliged to endure the drag of gravity. He was grounded.
But he endured phlegmatically, cheerfully almost. He didnt complain. He saved his breath. In fact he hoarded it. He held it.
Lily, meanwhile, had made herself comfortable on Lukes sofa and was inspecting one of his portfolios.
Oh good, she said calmly, when he strolled back inside, turning a photo around so that he could see it properly, now youve returned you can set me straight on this. Is that a pickaxe up her arse or
Oh good, she said calmly, when he strolled back inside, turning a photo around so that he could see it properly, now youve returned you can set me straight on this. Is that a pickaxe up her arse or
How did you get in here?
Lily lifted the photo and reappraised it. If youve got no trousers then youve got no pockets. If youve got no pockets then youve got no keys.
Luke felt enraged, violated, defiled, but when he finally spoke it was with great softness. Put those down and get out of here.
Lily, rather surprisingly, responded to the softness. She closed the portfolio.
Youre a bit of a pervert then, on the quiet?
Youre a silly little sneak.
A what?
Lily stood up, smirking. Luke felt embarrassed by his nakedness and picked up a coat from a chair by the door. He put it on. He looked ridiculous now, naked, wearing only a coat. The coat was incriminating.
So thats why youve come here, she said, pouting deliriously, to take some more of these dirty pictures?
They arent dirty pictures.
Shed struck a nerve. She knew it. She always knew. She laughed. So whats that then?
Against the wall, yet to be hung, stood a picture of a naked female cupping her breasts like they were two neat apples, but the breasts had been yanked up high as though she planned to pillow her chin on them. It looked uncomfortable.
Its a nude.
A nude. Oh. I get it.
Lily continued to eye the picture.
Ouch! she said.
Get out.
Certainly.
She sauntered towards the door.
If you break into my house again Ill call the police.
Lily just giggled. I didnt break into anything. It was wide open.
Get out.
Im getting out.
The sea lapped coldly outside the prefabs door. Three giant steps and she was in it. Fully dressed. Feet, knees, hips, breasts. She waved her arms at him.
Im freeeee! she screamed.
He hated her then. She was free.
In fact she had screamed Im freezing! but a small wave had hit her.
She had no grand scheme. Not yet. Nothing like that.
Four
No one else would do these jobs. It was like being a spaceman, but with all of the discomfort and none of the glory. In the trade they called them skins. There was a theatrical side. Ronny did that sometimes but he hated being around children.
Then there was the industrial side. Councils hired him to spray weedkiller, to clean stuff up, to juggle with noxious chemicals. Someone had to do it. So Ronny obliged. He was that someone. A consummate professional.
Others found the precautionary clothing bothersome and claustrophobic. Several people had sued after contracting breathing difficulties and skin infections from handling dangerous substances. Ronny knew that this was because they took off their helmets when it got too hot. They didnt take precautions. He always took them. That was his trademark, his hallmark. That was his stamp of quality.
Anyway, it was part of the kick. No air. To be enclosed. The chafing, the sweating. The chronic discomfort. That was all part of it.
He wore white shoes. Special shoes. In fact the entire get-up was white, even the helmet. Ronny peered down at his shoes. He thought about the man on the bridge, wide open, and in the same instant he thought of Monica.
Monica.
She had been his confidante. His correspondent. His best friend. His only friend. Hed liked it that way.
Monica had an opinion on everything. She had an interest in biology. Physical things. She was an adventuress. She hated to be enclosed, which was why, finally, she ended up in Sumatra, in the rain forests. She was working out there with a journalist.
They were interested in DNA; all that complex genetic stuff which, quite honestly, meant precious little to Ronny.
Monica could never simplify the nature of her work in conversation without becoming impish and flirtatious. If Ronny couldnt understand what it was that she was doing shed crystallize it by saying, Im interested in what it is that makes a man a man, Ronny. Im interested in apes.
So they were searching for a missing ape in the forests of Sumatra. A missing link. A great ape. A fantastic ape. A pale giant. He walked on his hind legs and to all intents and purposes he resembled a man but his feet turned inwards. And unlike his human relations he had no big toes.
Monica had never seen him. Shed seen Ronny though, but only fleetingly, a long time ago. Hed made a great impression. Hed become indelible. Hed left his footprint in the mud of Monicas brain. She couldnt shake him.
Oran-pendic. That was the apes name. Mr Unpronounceable. In his dictionary Ronny saw that orang or something quite like it was Malay for man. Like in orang-utan which roughly speaking translated as man of the forest.
Oranpendic was not in his dictionary. He didnt exist. Not yet, anyway. When Monica found him he would exist but not before. When Monica found him Ronny too would see him, not physically nothing nearly so dramatic but slotted in among all his other words and definitions. On paper. In print. In bold.
But for now the oranpendic was their own special creature. Not a fact or a definition. Nothing absolute. Merely a fragment.
Ronny looked up pendic for the exercise but could find only pend which meant to hang (as in pendant). He guessed the word had something to do with per-pend-icular. Upright. Vertical. But frankly he found both this description and the original name unsatisfactory.
Oranpendic.
Monica didnt give a shit. It didnt matter. She was more interested in the hunt. Shed been called a hoaxer. Well, not Monica so much as the journalist, Louis, who was the truly infamous half of the duo.
Shed heard him on the radio and then shed saved up all her money working as a lab assistant at a school in Swindon to fly out and join him. She was impulsive like that. Some called it gullible. Either way, she was never afraid. Nothing daunted her.
Initially the journalist had been discomfited by Monicas presence. Hed felt invaded. Monica could have that effect sometimes. But then he grew accustomed to her and they began the hunt proper.
Ronny had seen several articles about the hoax. Naturally people doubted the existence of the oranpendic. But the journalist claimed to have seen him, briefly, and his account of this fantastical discovery was fairly convincing.
Monica had a theory about faces. She said honesty was something you could see in a persons face. Someones sincerity, their integrity, was as apparent to Monica on the first meeting as their hair colour or the shape of their nose. This was her preoccupation. Her instinct.