I thought ‘The Sea Horse’ was a pub. Well, it had a sign outside swinging in the salt wind, indicating as much: a picture of a sea horse, silhouetted like a vertical caterpillar set against the image of a beer pint-pot of the old school, but more an image of a pewter tankard than a glass vessel, judging by the artist’s attempts. And don’t talk to me about the so-called pub’s interior – full of grim sea-scarred faces, by the look of them, scowling at me as I came in from the cold. Not exactly a warm welcome.
But was that the beginning of things? I suppose not. I had come to this (god)forsaken coastal resort with the best intentions in the world … and, yes, the best words I could muster to describe it. Not that I was brought up posh. But words tripped off my tongue, often with the cloak of sleek vocabularies and, indeed, my parents could not have guessed where I got them from. I was often clumsy in my delivery, but the words making up such clumsy constructions were, in themselves, top notch. I had been employed – so the letter of acceptance said – as interpreter in a town council which received many refugees. I didn’t know the languages that would be needed, but I must have impressed the authorities with the adaptability of my own ‘gift of the gab’, spoken as well as in print. From rough to smooth and back again.
Judging by the locals in ‘The Sea Horse’, they had made a judgement that I was one of those very refugees or asylum seekers … which, in a sense, I was, because I had escaped some pretty awful repercussions in my home city, where I had lived for the whole of my previous life, or life previous to the new one I hoped to carve for myself here by the sea. Those repercussions I feared would follow me here, repercussions stemming from gang warfare and crazy drug deals back in the city. I hoped, however, I was clear of such repercussions, having carefully covered my tracks, especially choosing an off-timetable train trip from a different city to a different coastal town, i.e. not the correct coastal town where I was expected as interpreter and where I had now eventually turned up after a journey in an unlit and unnumbered coach from the train station’s town to this different town … only to face the flat-capped uglies in ‘The Sea Horse’. From the frying-pan into the fire is something that springs to mind.
As I eventually found out, ‘The Sea Horse’ was not a proper pub, but more a club, a drinking club, and I was expected to be signed in as a guest, short of joining as a member itself. One of the less grim of the clientele – but still with some bad grace – agreed to sign me in, seeing as I stood my ground, knowing there wasn’t a pub any closer, and my Bed & Breakfast would not be ready for at least two hours … and I hesitated for some while with the stub of a pencil hovering over the guest book and debating on what to call my occupation in the occupation slot of the page. I discounted ‘Asylum Interpreter’. And, in the end, I plumped for ‘Vocabulary Consultant’. (I still carried my small vocabulary notebook that I had been given in junior school, to jot down any new words I might discover.) And then the least grim of the grim regulars appended his signature below mine. My name showed as Roy Kelp and his as Trevor Kelp. A sheer coincidence, I’m sure.
‘The Sea Horse’, being a club not a pub, entailed it staying open longer. In fact, I soon gained the impression that it was forced to stay open longer than pubs, even if there were no drinkers left to stay and drink. I assumed the place was expecting even later drinkers to arrive who would kick up a fracas if they found the doors shut. The barman told me a ship was due in around Midnight, full of grizzlers who were ignorant of our country’s drink-licensing laws. Despite an afternoon’s and evening’s wall-to-wall boozing, Midnight still seemed a long way off.
“Will they need to be signed in, like me?” I asked innocently.
The barman frowned and looked towards the only regular left. The one who had signed me in.
“I’ll sign ‘em in, if need be,” the latter grunted, taking a swig from his Sea Horse tankard.
It seems as if anyone could be signed in as a guest in this place, I thought to myself. As if reading my mind, the barman said: “We only have the guest-book to get round the law.” I nodded knowingly. I had guessed as much.
The barman milked one of the optics for a gill measure of hard stuff and floated it along to me upon the slippery wet mahogany bar. After gulping the gill, I needed a breath of fresh air and wandered outside towards the churning sounds of the sea. Strange how time catches up when you’re not waiting. My Bed & Breakfast was probably still expecting me, but I was the sort who needed always to have a last drink for the road … and then another one for the road … and another… Surely, the B&B would keep the doors open for me. Still, I hadn’t yet introduced myself to them (thus establishing myself with a room to go back to) – and my luggage still sort of accompanied me, left by my bar stool in ‘The Sea Horse’. Looking at my watch, I saw it was nearly midnight. I was cutting things a bit fine. If I didn’t look out, one of the new ship arrivals would take my booking at the Bed & Breakfast. I’d better shape up.
The sea shore was freighted with starlight aloft and silver fireflies skimming the waves below eye-level. Luminous jellyfish jewelled the very weft and woof of the tides, further stitched by radiated oyster-pearls in necklace-lines steeplechasing their own crimped shells.
When in the countryside, one could view the rolling landscape that reached out to the horizon of hills and one could be confident – short of an earthquake – that all that one viewed was static and at peace with itself. Here, however, the world’s surface which I viewed into the uncertain distance was as if disease-ridden, undulant with life, sown with shifting salt.
I saw the ship reach through the horizon, like a tapestry-worker’s paddle penetrating its loom: sprinkled with gems of light. It steamed towards the sea-shore where I stood. I couldn’t imagine such a huge liner docking on a tourist beach. There was a pier nearby but it was derelict. I cast a glance behind me where I spotted the last regular (the least grim one) leaving ‘The Sea Horse’, his neck be-seamed, as it were, with the droplets that had escaped his tankard. He waved. That must have taken a lot of friendliness to muster, I guessed. Friendliness was not a common commodity round here. How I slept and where I slept, after nodding off, beats me. My watch, as if it had woken me with a loud ticking, pointed exactly to Night’s Noon, the time of precisely Moon.
But the real moon – now escaping the star cover to warrant a new name, a new pointer towards its sister the Sun – indicated it was no longer night at all. I had drifted off to the sound of relentless churning, that may not have been just the sea. Dawn had swivelled into place. I had now knew I had slept on the beach, surrounded by new found friends. Still half asleep, I wanted to open my vocabulary book and ask them to sign it.
Meanwhile, the Sea Horse barman must have thrown my luggage onto the beach, and the vocabulary book was found tucked away amid my smalls. I promised to find these new friends Bed & Breakfast’s before the next nightfall, something I managed to explain in pidgin words, the linguistic basis of which I am still unsure. They had webbed fingers, perforations of gills in their necks and fins in strange random places on their bodies. One of them asked me where the local betting-shop was. I shrugged and told him I was a new arrival, too. I nodded towards ‘The Sea Horse’ as if such information could be gained there.
Frightening.
One of them even called me Roy. Bowing as he did.
I was told, in no uncertain, terms that they expected me to ask about the betting-shop on their behalf and to sign them on somewhere and give them jobs to do. I seemed to speak for them. My mouth opening and shutting, opening and shutting, in tune to what they wanted to express.
I looked wistfully towards the now nearer horizon where I saw – in the uncertain light of what had turned out to be a false dawn – all methods of transport in a shimmery mirage of passage: all the beasts of land, air and sea (made from metal or flesh or both), their own mouths opening and shutting, opening and shutting, pistons hissing, churning towards the shore through seaweed that was thicker than any Sargasso dream.
I scarcely escaped towards the sanctuary of the Bed & Breakfast establishment I had assumed to be the one I had previously booked by phone (en route through a different town between train and coach) as closely pursued by my left luggage. But the digs I’d booked eventually turned out to be called ‘The Sea House’ and had no roof. I signed in as Trevor Kelp.
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