Fresh Meat on the Rocks

Fresh Meat on the Rocks

“Can I have ten Benson’s as well please?” I ask, placing a tin of chicken soup on the counter. The shop bloke takes it and scans the barcode, placing the cigarettes next to them and totting the whole lot up on his till.

“That’ll be ninety-eight pence please.”

I don’t really want the soup, not yet, that need will come later and isn’t as urgent as the desire for nicotine. The papers on the counter talk of a royal wedding, not the future king but one of his brothers. I don’t know much about it, that sort of thing was never talked about in the place I used to live.

Outside the shop it’s raining, a sort of sea drizzle and I shelter in the doorway and light the first of the cigarettes. I have two pence to my name.

“Do you want to earn a few quid?”

I hadn’t noticed the bloke approach, busy as I am doing nothing much. He is big and fat as well as strong. I’m not any of those things. I notice that he stinks of sweat and has missed bits shaving.

“Nah, I’m fine thanks.” Two pence fine. I really was, happy with my cigarettes and soup- for- later.

The badly shaved bloke grabs my elbow. “You’re the lad sleeping in that old Renault parked by the pier.” It’s a threat or maybe an invite but it isn’t just an observation.

“Look, I’m not interested.” I speak firmly, not rude but sort of decisive and final because I already know what he wants. This is supposed to be a break from that, permanent and forever.

“We’ll have to see about that.” He has one bloodshot eye, why just one? The other eye is fine. I pull away.

“Why don’t you just clear off?” I could use stronger language, but I don’t want to spoil the nice clean world, drag it back to the cess pit I’m escaping.

The bloke with the bloodshot eye grunts and goes into the shop, his name is Keith- I know because the shop keeper addresses him as such above the tinkle of a bell over the door.

The sea drizzle turns to sea rain and so I head back to the car. It has a parking fine under the wiper, the council want ten pounds, but I don’t have that and wouldn’t give it to them if I did. Anyway, it isn’t my car so what do I care?

It’s all good- my trip. Maybe the telling of it sounds otherwise-‘Oh, he only has two pence, a tin of soup and a parking ticket. It’s raining and there seems the promise of potential danger from a bloke called Keith.’ That’s how it sounds, I know it. But I am happy, sitting on the vinyl seats, looking at the grey sea and the incoming tide wondering all the time how I’ll open my tin of soup. I still have nine cigarettes so I light one. I think about the present, not the past which is best staying put. But what of the future? It doesn’t matter; tomorrow I’ll find work, but today I’m happy watching a group of French exchange students messing about on the pier, crab lines, cigarettes and not much English spoken. I reckon the girls to be about my age and decide to ask.

I splash through the puddles in the car park, they could use my ten quid towards a bit of maintenance if I paid, but I won’t so the potholes can stay. It wouldn’t go far anyway.

“Bonjour, je m’appelle Thomas.”

I’m speaking to a pretty girl, wavy dark brown hair and about five foot three-not that her height is important.

“Hallo, I’m Caroline.”

I’m pleased to switch to English, my French more or less exhausted. I offer her a cigarette and she smiles, taking two from the pack. That leaves six, but I didn’t mind.

She puts both in her mouth, lighting them with a lighter produced from nowhere.

“There, for you Thomas.” She places the lighted Benson’s into my mouth and I smell perfume on her wrist.

“How old are you, Caroline?” I wish I knew it in French, it would sound cool.

“I’m seventeen, what about you?”

I tell her and we smoke side by side, the rain is back to drizzle and there’s that funny ‘about to be sunny’ thing happening. This is nice, better than Keith, bad memories rekindled and the problem of how to eat chicken soup. None of these things are foremost in my mind and I’m not actually that hungry which is odd, considering my meagre rations over the past week.

The other girls in the group approach, laughing, happy and making fun. I don’t understand the words but know what they are saying and am pleased that Caroline is laughing along. She pronounces it Caroleen. The name probably has accents or things above or below some of the letters, but I guess it is spelled the same. She rolls the ‘r’ too and I like it.

“Tu as de beau yeaux tu sais.” Caroline is saying. I sort of knew that-it’s been said before in my own language.  We kiss, passionate and French and I am very happy with the way things have turned out, really very happy indeed.

We sit on the pier for a good few hours and chat, sometimes we kiss too. Mostly we laugh and tease each other as we speak each other’s language in our own accents-mine clumsy, hers beautiful. I suppose I’m surprised at how much French I know, or maybe I don’t and that is why we laugh so much. Anyway, it is a happy afternoon, and I’d like to say one of the best parts of my life so far.

I was right about the sun too; it eventually breaks through the clouds and is watery warm rather than hot as we enjoy the loveliest of days. I try to not think in clichés, but really, I do want it to last forever. We promise to meet again, the next day at the same time here on the pier and then kiss a passionate goodbye.

“Au revoir!” I wave as I walk backwards and Caroline giggles as I bow, tripping and stumbling before turning reluctantly away, already I’m wishing the time until tomorrow would hurry along a bit.

Much later I try to get into the local camp site for a shower. I choose not to take a towel-it’s still wet anyway-and the manager stared at me last time, knowing I wasn’t one of his. Having bathing things is a dead giveaway when you are trying to covertly make use of the washroom. I have soap in the pocket of my jeans and saunter, that being the most casual and innocent way of walking in my mind.

“HEY, YOU!” The voice from behind makes me jump and I stop with the sauntering. I spin around and the manager is there, his shorts don’t suit him and make his legs look spindly with his stomach protruding.

“Yeah?” I sound affable in my head but don’t know how he hears it.

“You can’t use our showers; I’ve been watching you all week and you aren’t a camper.”

“Okay.” I say, being on the whole an agreeable sort and knowing myself to be in the wrong.

“Clear off, I’ll call the police if you come back.”

“Okay.” I say again.

I don’t mind, they are after all his showers.

Back at the car it’s warm. A sunny July evening making sparkles on the sea, flat and calm apart from where it meets the beach. Even there it only makes a polite pebbly sound as the waves gentle in.

“I’ll bathe in the sea.”

I’m telling this to a seagull who is eyeing me with the look of a bird that knows I am the owner of a tin of soup, though in his mind he is probably hoping for chips.

We change places. Strictly speaking this isn’t true; the gull was already on land so the exchange of locale is at best a delayed swap. He is on land and I-after a bit of gasping breath holding-am in the water. The ocean makes for a far better wash than the spindle legged camp manager’s shower and despite the cold is greatly enjoyable as well as necessary. I have the anticipation of meeting Caroline the very next day and the soapy sea bathing is invigorating.

Back on land I saw through the top of the tin with an old hacksaw blade, the whole messy operation I carry out on the bonnet of the Renault. The meal of congealed cold soup is delicious and I thoroughly enjoy the experience, watched throughout by the seagull.

Two pence isn’t enough to go to the pub, I know that and I don’t have a car radio, book or much else to do other than watch the sea and think French thoughts. After a while I climb into the back and fall asleep in fading daylight with my booted feet sticking out of the window. I’m woken up at midnight by two drunks.

 “Warra yer doin’ in yer car?” One of them asks.

I tell him I’d been sleeping but that I was pleased to meet him. My demeanour seems to surprise the man and his friend, both of whom are sporting Arsenal football shirts and short spikey hair. This prompts me to ask the drinkers how their team is faring in the football league thing that I know nothing about. I must be using the right phrases though because they appear to warm to me all the more.

I’m envious of the curry they carry, it smells good and by now I am ravenous but of course too well-mannered to ask for a share. It is hard to listen to their boasts about the football club-which apparently is doing rather well-when all I can think of is food. Eventually they announce that it is time to leave, and we part on good terms, me choosing to sit for a while on the bonnet of my Renault, staring at the departing drunks and listening to the sounds of the well- mannered waves breaking on the beach

A bit later I walk along the pebbles, drawn by the smell of madras or tikka masala or some such. The meal is half eaten, in its tin foil container cold but tempting despite the pool of vomit alongside. Yeah, of course I eat it; I’m thinking anyone would after little more than soup and fags. I only have three left now, I can’t remember exactly when I smoked all those since I’d been with the beautiful Caroline. I light a Bensons and lay back on the stones, looking at clouds and stars in a half-moon sky.

I smell him first, sweat and the faint tang of alcohol. I’m sure my sense of smell has been getting better the hungrier I’ve been and I’m stubbing the cigarette out and considering having another when I catch the first scent.

“Still not interested?” Keith asks. He’s waving a fiver and swaying slightly in the semi-light as the waves politely do their thing, unobtrusive and minding their own business.

Not for five pounds or even five thousand pounds. Maybe five million? I’m not certain even at that-not anymore. I sit up but Keith is keen for me to stay flat and kicks me violently back with a booted foot to the face. I gasp as the back of my head hits the stones nauseous and dizzy. Blood trickles down to my collar, warm and tickly on my neck.

My nose is bleeding heavily, perhaps it’s broken. I see more stars than just those in the half moon sky and worry that my French girl won’t like a man with a mushed-up face. But there’s more to concern me in the here and now.

The man of violence is in his forties or fifties and as strong as someone his stature can be. Alone on a shingle beach in the early hours of a summer morning the escape that should have been forever is fast turning into a familiar nightmare. I think about chicken soup, my last two cigarettes and about whether the incoming tide will wash away the blood from my head. Keith has the upper hand, being as he is so powerful.

“I watched you with that French bird,” he grunts, pulling at his belt.

Yeah, I bet you did.

“You like fresh French meat, eh?” he leers; well, I prefer mine English.

Don’t talk about Caroline; don’t spoil her, and who says the home-grown meat is as fresh as you think? I don’t want to go back; all that is supposed to be over and frantically and half blinded I reach into the back pocket of my jeans. Keith doesn’t see what I’m doing as his fat, stinking body belly flops onto mine.

When the sun rises on the beach car park to the east of England my Renault is gone, and I’m away too. There is enough fuel in the tank after all; just enough to be clear of the place where the waves are cleaning the pebbles, and a seagull feeds happily on a meal that is neither soup nor chips. It’ll take more than the gentle tide of an over polite sea to wash away the banquet.

The thought makes me smile and I watch as the sun rises on what promises to be a perfect summer’s day. There are skylarks singing, I hear them, but I can’t see where they are-just somewhere free and untroubled. I stop with the smiling and feel suddenly sad because this day will illuminate a pretty French girl, summer dress and wavy brown hair. In my head she’s sitting, waiting as the shadows grow long and the sun sinks behind that place where we’d been so happy. Caroline will wait a long time, or maybe she won’t but either way she will be long gone if ever I make it back to that place by the sea.

“Ten Bensons for you again this week is it Thomas.” My thoughts are interrupted, my recollection of that trip on hold. I nod and smile at the man behind the mesh screen in his tunic and kind face. His name I always forget, my memory isn’t what it was before that night, before I ran out of fuel and sat waiting for help-alone in a Renault half a mile from the sea. I can’t be certain but I think they might be putting something in my tea.

I remember some stuff alright, camp site managers the man called Keith with body odour and bad breath, but I forget things too. Why do I have an image of a hacksaw blade, sticky in my hands and the scream of a man who haunts the dreams I don’t understand? There is the French girl too- called Caroline and pronounced with an extra ‘e’ or two, maybe with accents above and below the letters, who knows?

I know I liked Caroline who’d said that I had beautiful eyes. Those same eyes are moist sometimes as I imagine her sitting there on the pier. The day is sunny and the clouds that filled the potholes in the carpark (that I will never pay to repair) are gone as she lights two cigarettes.

“Tu as de beau yeux du sais.”

Yeah, I did, before they were filled with tears.

Soup for tea tonight, the bloke with the white tunic tells me. It’ll come in a bowl, no need for a rusty hacksaw blade to open the tin, no need for butchery on the beach and a meal I would never finish. Chicken soup, served in a bowl, not fresh meat carved with the trusty hacksaw blade I always carried in the back pocket of my jeans.

Yeah, it is a bit fuzzy, but I can coax out the odd fragments from time to time and they help in the long, mindless hours after the evening meal. For some reason the thoughts make me happy, and I always remember more after we’ve had chicken soup or curry for tea.  I’ll save my first cigarette for then, it’ll be nice, a trip to a happy place I share with a beautiful French girl who always lights two at once.