Old George Read online

for Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion barges. On the return journey he walked further down the beach, probing sand and shingle, inspecting the clumps of weed, until he had regained his starting point near to the Manor End swimming pool, recently abandoned after the East Coast floods had cracked its bottom. If time allowed he might make a small detour towards the RAF camp, for here were a few rock pools which occasionally caught and held the odd treasure. Sometimes when this regime paled and became tedious or when the tide was against him he struck, inland instead, skirting the small docks where the occasional boatload of Norwegian timber arrived and a few archaic sailing barges made the short sea voyage down to London, filled with flour milled from the rich East Anglian grain. Emerging onto the muddy shore of the river estuary he trudged as far as the disused rectangular lagoons where many years before an attempt, now long abandoned, had been made to cultivate oysters. On the way back he usually gathered a rich harvest of the fat, black-shelled winkles, nourished to giant proportions by the town's outfall sewer. Arriving home he carefully washed them free of mud, then boiled them in a large battered saucepan until they were tender and succulent. Wielding a hatpin with amazing dexterity for the owner of such pudgy fingers, he piled the tiny green and yellow corpses in a steadily growing mound until, when all had been successfully extracted, they were doused in vinegar and the banquet commenced.

  George, it would have seemed, was destined to pass an uneventful life until the Great Beachcomber gathered him in. Unfortunately this was not to be. His doom and his destruction had their genesis one day in late autumn when the weather was becoming unpleasantly cold and frequent biting rain squalls made his daily excursions increasingly uncomfortable. For some reason, perhaps chance or an unknown vagary of purpose, when he set out that morning, instead of heading up the bay he turned in the opposite direction, to inspect the rock pools being left by the out-going tide, its heavy waves whipped to white froth by a hard wind. While he was cautiously making his way across the tumbled blocks he glimpsed what he first took to be a log, tossing, almost submerged, in a nearby gully. As he approached the sight of a white hand rising from the surf shockingly confirmed its real identity. Without stopping to think he plunged knee-deep into the water and grasping an arm tried to pull the body onto the beach. The task was more difficult than he had anticipated. The shore shelved quite steeply and the shingle, stirred by the pounding waves, provided only a treacherous footing. As he tugged and pulled the body turned over. George cried out aloud in dismay, the face was hideous, eye sockets empty and raw, lips and nose tattered by fish and gulls. It was then, as he stared in horrid fascination, that he became aware of the hand he was holding. It was the left hand. On the third finger there was a thick gold ring set with three small diamonds. George stood entranced. Without conscious volition he found himself pulling at it. Firmly held by the grey, water-swollen flesh it wouldn't budge. Panting, almost crying with frustrated rage, he jerked and twisted in frenzy. The cold sea frothed around his legs and the heavy body banged against him with every wave, threatening to knock him down. He stared wide-eyed along the beach. It was deserted. From his coat pocket he pulled a large, black jack-knife. Savagely he hacked and sawed, levering at the gristly knuckle joint between bone and hand, until, with a dull crack they parted company. Freed from his grasp the corpse was seized by the undertow and carried out to sea.

  George stood rooted, staring as the mutilated corpse disappeared into the heaving waves. With a cry of anguish he wrenched off the ring and hurled the finger as far out into the surf as he could, then scuttled back up the beach, wet trousers flapping clammily around his legs. He ran home as quickly as he could, burst inside the bungalow and slamming the door behind him, locked and bolted it and pulling to the curtains, spent the rest of the day shivering in abject fear in the gloom, the horror of what he had done tormenting him over and over again. The ring lay on the mantelpiece, gleaming dully in the dim light. Finally, late at night, he crammed it deep into the recesses of the bottom drawer of the sideboard and went to bed, to toss restlessly, re-living over and over again the savage butchery of the dead hand, until as dawn seeped through the grimy muslin curtains he fell into a fitful exhausted sleep.

  From that day on his life disintegrated. He became filled with a morbid apprehension; guilt soured his previously happy existence. The beach was no longer his well-known friend but became a strange, alien landscape, windswept and desolate; the cries of the gulls mocking and accusing. On his travels, the few people he met seemed to stare surreptitiously at him or to avert their gazes, repulsed and disgusted by his terrible crime. His appearance changed he grew gaunt, neglecting to eat. Often as he slept the water-soaked corpse would come to him, skull-faced, grimacing, mutilated hand outstretched, demanding the return of the ring, then George would wake, sweat-soaked and screaming. As the winter drew to its close and passed into a raw, ragged spring, George became shrunken and old before his time. The memory of his deed haunted him, filling his every waking hour. He became convinced that the entire world knew of his crime, was pointing accusingly at him behind his back. He was obsessed with fingers and could not bear to look at his own, keeping his hands tightly clenched in his coat pockets when ever he could. Eventually the neighbours realised that they hadn't seen him for quite some time. Uneasily, respecting his right to be a recluse, unwilling to intrude but concerned with his absence, they informed the police. Forced entry and a brief search quickly revealed that the little bungalow was deserted. A week, later, to the very day, a gang of small boys hunting for crabs in the marsh pools around the old oyster beds sighted his body out on the mudflats where the ebb tide had stranded it, coated in mud and slime, face ravaged, staring sightlessly up into the bleak wind-scudded march sky.

  The ring was never found. Whether George had hidden it too well or whether he had taken it with him into the sea's last cold embrace, perhaps to relinquish it to its rightful owner can only be a matter of conjecture.

  ..oo000oo..

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