They were real loud, the men that turned up on the beach that night. Shouting and laughing. There were five of them. Maybe six. They were carrying plastic bags and they sat down on the sand and started drinking from cans. Ma didn’t know them cos she didn’t say hi or anything.
‘Ma, I’m hungry,’ I said, cos I didn’t want to be there any more, listening to those men. It was getting dark anyway so we walked back up to the tent and grabbed our plastic bottles for getting water. We carried them to the tap in the shipyard behind the harbour wall to fill them. I brought the small one back and Ma took the big one. The small one was for drinking and the big one was for washing.
We ate some bread and those blocks of cheese where you tear off the wax coat and inside they look like little wheels. Then I brushed my teeth and got into my pyjamas. I was real tired then, so we climbed into the tent and I pulled the sleeping bag around me, and I didn’t ask Ma when we were going back to Gran’s. Instead I asked her to tell me a story about a castle.
Ma made sure my sleeping bag was zipped up tight and then she said, ‘There once was a princess who lived in a castle. ’Cept she didn’t know she was a princess.’
‘Why not?’
‘Cos no one had ever told her.’ She paused for dramatic effect. Then she said, ‘The princess didn’t know that she lived in a castle neither.’
‘How could she not know?’
‘Cos it was old and run-down and she’d never lived anywhere else. How could she know it was a castle and not just an ordinary house if she had never seen or been anywhere else?’
‘Why didn’t her friends tell her?’
‘She didn’t have any friends. Just a harp that sang when the princess played it.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I wanted to ask why the princess had never been anywhere else but my head was starting to get all droopy.
‘There was an old forest around the castle. And the trees had scars where branches used to grow. And in the scars were eyes.’ She made another pause for dramatic effect.
‘If the princess went for a walk, the eyes of the trees would follow her . . .’
I thought that was cool. It was real creepy. But I don’t know what happened to the princess cos while she was wandering through the forest I fell asleep. And I never found out what the Moral was cos when I woke up, there were voices outside the tent. I could hear Ma too. But now she sounded like she was playing that game where you chew a biscuit and then try to talk without spraying crumbs everywhere. And I knew that meant she was drunk.
Ma must’ve invited the men on the beach up to our tent. I couldn’t believe it. How could she? It was our dune. There weren’t supposed to be other people in it.
They had lit a fire. I could see their shadows on the side of the tent. Then I felt the twang of someone tripping over the rope of the tent. Something came crashing into the side of it. It was squashing me. The whole tent was bending. I squeezed out from under it and unzipped the door.
That’s when I saw him.
A huge man. He’d fallen into the side of the tent. Everyone was breaking their hearts laughing. One guy tried to help him get up, but the huge man fell back down again. He dragged the other guy with him till they were both lying on the side of the tent. I heard the snap of the centre pole breaking.
Then he stood up. The sound of his laugh mixed with the spitting of the fire.
I jumped back.
He had three eyebrows cos one was cut in half by a scar. He was tall. Square shoulders, so big they almost touched his ears. His hair was as red as the fire’s flames and his skin as white as the foam on the waves. He was an evil red devil monkey.
And Ma was laughing along with him. They all were.
He was massive compared to the others. They just looked like hungry chickens, all stooped over and cackling, with their eyes darting all over the place.
My eyes started stinging. I turned cos I didn’t want them to see me crying. I ran away and I was halfway to the harbour wall when Ma caught me.
‘Here, stop – what are you doing?’ she said, and she grabbed a handful of my pyjamas.
‘What are you doing, Ma?’ I said and I wiped my eyes so she wouldn’t see me crying cos I knew she’d tell me I was being silly.
‘Nothing, just having a laugh with a few mates.’
She tried to take my arm but I pulled away. ‘They’re not your mates, Ma.’
‘They are now,’ she said, real happy with herself. ‘Ah, come on, don’t be silly.’
‘I don’t want to be here any more, Ma.’ And I didn’t. Cos Ma and her new mates had ruined it. ‘I want to be in Gran’s house.’
‘Ah, love, they’re only having a few cans. It’s Saturday night.’
But I didn’t see what Saturday had to do with it. ‘I don’t want to be here any more.’
‘What are you talking about? You love the beach. And we had a laugh today, didn’t we?’
I didn’t answer her.
‘Look, I’m sorry about the tent. I’ll get us a new one tomorrow – a bigger one.’
I didn’t care about the tent. I didn’t want a bigger one.
‘Come on, you can’t stay out here. It’s late. Just go back to sleep and we’ll fix the tent in the morning, okay?’
‘Can we go back to Gran’s tomorrow?’ I asked.
But then Ma’s voice went all hard, the way it goes when she’s had enough. ‘Look, don’t start stressing me out, okay? I’ve enough going on. I just needed to relax, all right?’ I didn’t answer cos it didn’t make sense. She’d spent the whole day relaxing on the beach. ‘I’ll get them to move so you can sleep, okay?’ She meant Monkey Man and the chickens. ‘They’re leaving soon anyway. Now come on, stop whinging, all right?’
Ma grabbed my hand and I tried to pull away but Ma’s real strong. She dragged me back to the tent, even though I kept saying I didn’t want to go. When we got there, Monkey Man was standing over it and he’d tied something to the top.
‘Just like new!’ he said, and he smiled. But it wasn’t a nice smile.
‘See?’ Ma said. ‘All fixed! Now, lads, do yis mind if we move away from the tent so madam here can get some sleep?’
They all started standing up and saying, ‘Not a bother,’ and they went off down the beach. Ma looked at me real proud, like she’d just made everything all better, but then she left too. I didn’t know what she meant by ‘madam’ but she said it in the same voice she used to tell me I was being silly. It made me want to shout at her. But I didn’t say anything, cos there was no point. There never was when Ma had been drinking.
I just crawled back into the tent where the poles were broken and the side was all floppy. I lay there for ages trying to sleep. But I couldn’t cos every time I heard the wind moving through the grass, I thought it was Monkey Man crawling around outside, glowing like a sick moon.
I couldn’t believe Ma would bring them to our dune. I was so angry that it stung my fingers and toes. I hated her and her stupid laugh and her stupid drinking.
I still wished that she was there with me, though.
But even when it started getting light, I could hear her laughing from the beach.