That sand-dribbling thing is all very well but it gets boring after an hour or two.
It’s Saturday. The day of the Sculpture on the Beach contest. It was Eric’s idea, and Mrs Mawes’s and Mum’s and Dad’s actually, but at no point was it my idea that I should enter. I don’t like sculpture, I don’t know anything about art, and I don’t much like beaches. Except when they’re empty or with jet skis or something. Not Bywater-by-Sea’s skanky dead-starfish beach, with sunburned families in too-small bathing suits and REAL ARTISTS.
There’s this tall skinny couple hopping around with seaweed that they’re draping over a broken piece of fibreglass boat. ‘Reminds one of Hockney, don’t you think, Orlando?’
‘You’re so right, Sappho. It’s etiolated, and so in the now, of the moment. Genius.’
To me, it looks very much like a piece of yellow fibreglass with a blob of seaweed. I turn back to my creation. So far I’ve moved a lot of sand from one place to another and found a toothpaste-tube lid and the head of a Barbie doll.
Eric is, in theory, helping me. In fact, he’s watching everyone with his binoculars and taking notes. He’s doing it from underneath a sheet of black nylon. ‘It’s a fact: black is better at keeping out the UV rays, Tom.’ But I notice that the tiny corner of his elbow that sticks out is already turning red. I move my beach umbrella so that it covers him better.
I can see that everyone else on the beach had an idea before they arrived. In my case it was last minute. Like, eight o’clock this morning last minute.
‘So what I’m thinking,’ said Eric, ‘is that I’ll help you do the Sculpture on the Beach contest and that way keep an eye on things. We can both be on duty as it were.’ Which is why we’re here, unprepared, with a bunch of arty people who actually want to do it.
I knock the top from my sand dribbling and flatten the site. Even though there’s only an hour left, sometimes things just have to start again.
‘How’s Leonardo getting on?’ asks Jacob, appearing behind me, ice cream in hand. ‘Want any help?’
‘I’m doing that empathy thing,’ he says, taking a large lick from his ice cream, which is already flowing freely over his hand. ‘I imagined that what my mum wanted was some soup, so I made her some.’
Eric pulls the black sheet from his head and stares. ‘You made your mum some soup?’
Jacob nods happily. ‘Yes. I got a load of stuff from the fridge, stuck it through the blender and boiled it up.’
‘What sort of stuff?’ I ask, plunging my spade into the sand, and digging a ring around a central pile.
‘Oh, you know – onions and pineapple and bacon and yoghurt and stuff she likes. She was so pleased she sent me off with the money to buy myself an ice cream.’
‘Wow,’ says Eric, pulling the sheet back over his head. ‘Wow, wow and double wow.’
‘So I’m wondering if I can help you now, Tom?’
Jacob’s feet sink slightly into the sand and his ice cream drips on my trench. I’d really like to send him away but I know, because Eric has told me, that if Jacob is ever to become a better person he needs to understand how much pleasure being nice can give to everyone.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘you could dig this ring for me. I was thinking of something … striking. Something modern.’
The skinny couple along the beach catch the word ‘modern’ and nod at each other and rub imaginary beards.
Jacob digs with enthusiasm, much like a dog, scattering sandy blobs over me and Eric and his sheet and even towards the arty couple. ‘So what are you doing, Snot Face? Turning red?’
‘I’m watching out,’ whispers Eric.
‘More anomalies,’ says Eric.
Jacob looks confused.
‘More things like the violent deckchair and crazed bucket,’ I say. ‘He’s being a kind of lifeguard.’
The light of understanding comes on behind Jacob’s eyes.
And we dig.
‘Five minutes,’ calls the man with the megaphone. ‘Five minutes to finish your creations.’
Eric wakes up under his sheet. ‘What? Has anything happened?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘What shall we do with this? Suggestions – quick.’
We stare at our construction. It’s a mound. Not round, not square, not rectangular, just a mound. Like a termite nest or a pile of gravel. I look across the beach. Stretching away towards the sea are dozens of beautifully arranged castles, sand people, shells and creatures made of driftwood, all obviously made by people with more than a gram of art in their bodies. People for whom artistic achievement means more than tracing a badger from a book.
I look back at the mound and feel about 13% good. It’s not that I want to be good at art. I just don’t want to be laughed at.
‘Can we do anything?’ asks Eric, staring across the acres of other people’s efforts.
‘I could trash all the others?’ says Jacob helpfully.
We ignore him.
Beyond the arty couple, a family have built an enormous sand house with gardens and plants and bridges and tiny people made of driftwood. For a moment I wonder if I should just shrink something to put on the mound. Something that would be unbelievably cute and win us the prize, and then I remember that that would be wrong. I stuff my hands in my pockets and, along with the toothpaste-tube lid, I find Barbie’s head. Pulling it out, I yank her sandy knotted nylon hair straight and jam her in the top of the mound.
‘There,’ I say.
‘What? That’s it?’ asks Jacob.
‘Yup,’ I say. ‘Where’s the entry form, Eric?’
Eric pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and hands me a pen.
Buried, I write. And then I put my name and address and skewer it with a seagull feather to the sand.
‘Done,’ I say, wiping the sand from my hands on my shorts.
Which is when it all kicks off.