So He Takes the Dog. Jonathan Buckley
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that swims with the fishing boats, some have an inquisitive seal that’s famous for a summer, or a monster seagull that snatches burgers from holidaymakers’ hands. This place had Henry, the hobo of the beach. A lot of people knew Henry, by sight if nothing else. If you went down to the beach at the start of the day and waited, sooner or later you’d see Henry, guaranteed. Any day, whatever the weather, you’d see him. Rip van Winkle, he was known as, or Captain Birdseye, or Robinson Crusoe, or Howard, as in Howard Hughes.
He was slightly taller than average, about six foot, and broad in the shoulders, but skinny. He looked like a once-hefty man who’d been whittled down by years of living in the open air. When he walked his T-shirts used to flap on his body like towels on the back of a chair, and the legs of his jeans were mostly empty air. In his first summer here that’s what Henry wore, every day: a pair of jeans that ended up the colour of salt and frayed halfway up to his knees, and a T-shirt advertising some long-gone medical conference in Acapulco. When the weather cooled, Henry added another T-shirt, and he kept on adding layers until, deep into his first winter on the beach, someone gave him a second-hand overcoat, the one the corpse was wearing.
He was already old-looking when he arrived, but nobody knew how many years Henry had clocked up. Look at the face and you’d think he wasn’t far short of seventy, but living rough can easily add a decade to the appearance, so all you could say was that he was somewhere between his late fifties and late sixties, probably. Watch him walking, though, and you’d be confused, because Henry used to move across the beach at the speed of a man in his prime, a fit man at that. Like a mechanical scarecrow in overdrive he’d appear by the cliffs, and within five minutes he’d have covered half a mile of sand, as though there were somewhere he had to be, an urgent appointment at the other end of the beach. Head down, as if striding into a gale, he’d follow a line close to the water’s edge, with not a glance to right or left, even when the beach was packed, and he’d keep on going, slaloming through the children, all the way to the harbour and all the way back to Straight Point. No heatwave could slow him down and no downpour could put him off: alone on the beach there was Henry, his T-shirt plastered to his ribs, the tramp in a hurry, battering his head through the deluge. You could watch him until he was out of sight, fleeing into the rain and spray, and if you waited long enough you’d see him return, most likely, charging out of the mist, his beard like a hank of sea-soaked cloth.
Ian first came across Henry only a week after starting at the station. It was late on a Sunday afternoon in August and Ian was on the beach with that month’s girlfriend. Some kids were playing volleyball and Henry – coming from the direction of the harbour – was heading right for them, full throttle, eyes fixed on the ground. He was going to plough right into the net, thought Ian, and then, ten yards short, Henry suddenly came to a stop, an absolute standstill, as if there were a glass wall running across the beach and he’d just crashed into it. The kids had noticed him now, and they were looking at him, wondering what was up, waiting for him to move, but Henry was in a world of his own. He was like a man-sized puppet dangling from invisible strings: his mouth was hanging open, his arms dangling by his sides, and his eyes were staring over to his right, towards the town. Of course, there would have been plenty to stare at on a day like this, lots of of nicely filled swimwear, but Henry didn’t seem to be seeing any of the girls. Ian and his girlfriend were quite near, near enough to notice that Henry was wearing an Adidas trainer on one foot and a Reebok on the other, and from where they were sitting it seemed that Henry wasn’t looking at anything in particular: the eyes were wide open and aimed towards the road, but they were blank, like puppet eyes. And then he did this shudder or jump, as though someone had just clapped their hands by his ears, and he was off again, swerving round the volleyball game. Off around the headland he went, oblivious of everyone.
A few weeks later Ian encountered him again, in town this time, gazing into a shop window. Ian was having a moment with a local nuisance out on the street, about a car that’d been separated from its rightful owner, and on the other side of the road there stood Henry, reading a small ad in the window. It was only a postcard with a photo of a dinghy stuck to it, but all the time Ian and this lad were talking – a good ten minutes – Henry was studying the card. When he was done, Ian crossed over and took up a position a couple of shopfronts away. Something about this dinghy was really troubling Henry. His nose was on the glass and he was frowning as if the advert simply did not make any sense. For a couple of minutes Ian kept an eye on him. Henry didn’t budge: his face was locked in this expression of bewilderment. Finally Ian went up to him. ‘Everything all right, sir?’ he asked.
Henry turned, smiled graciously, said nothing.
‘Are you OK, sir?’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ Henry responded, nodding slowly, drawling the words as if, after deep thought, he was deciding that he was indeed, on balance, OK. ‘And you?’ Henry enquired. ‘Is everything all right with you?’
‘Yes, thank you, sir.’
‘Yes,’ Henry mused, giving Ian a benign, mild, examining kind of look that made Ian feel somewhat uncomfortable. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’ It was a fresh day, a two-T-shirt day, and Henry was wearing a white buttoned-collar shirt over them, open like a jacket. Wavy lines of salt were all over his jeans, but the ensemble was remarkably clean, Ian observed. What’s more, Henry had whiter teeth than Ian, though his beard looked like something you’d find hanging off the walls of a cave and his hair was a mess, an inch-thick carpet of grey matting. You could lob a dart on to the top of his head and it wouldn’t reach the scalp. ‘Well,’ said Henry, pushing a shirt button through the wrong buttonhole, ‘I should be going. Thank you, officer.’
‘Just thought I’d check, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘Thank you,’ he added, with a sincerity that wasn’t altogether convincing.
‘Hope you didn’t mind me asking.’
‘No,’ replied Henry vaguely, examining askance the photo of the dinghy. ‘No. Not at all.’ His fingers fastened the buttons of his cuffs, then worked them free again. ‘Well, goodbye,’ he said, and he sauntered away, gazing at the sky, in imitation of a carefree stroll, or that’s how it seemed.
This was the first occasion on which Ian spoke to Henry. Not long after, in January, the acquaintance was renewed, after a call from Mrs Darrow. Dear Mrs Darrow was a serial complainant. If a party started up within a mile of her house, Mrs Darrow would be on the phone within the half-hour to protest about the noise. If a camper van were to be left in a nearby car park overnight, Mrs D would be on the blower, reporting an invasion of tinkers. Now Mrs Darrow had called in to say that there was a naked man wading in the water. She could see him clearly from her window, cavorting in the sea, making a display of himself. Would we please do something about it right away? Ian was sent down to the beach to have a word with Henry.
It was a couple of degrees above freezing and an aggressive wind was slicing in off the sea. The water was chopping up heavily, but Henry was out there, frisking around in the buff while Ian stood on the shore, beckoning this nutcase to come out. Henry noticed Ian. He waved back at him and dived under, as if he thought Ian might be waving for the fun of it. Ian took a couple of steps into the water; he started yelling. Eventually Henry got the point and staggered out, starkers and shrivelled and turning blue.
‘Good morning,’ Ian called.
‘Good morning,’ Henry replied.
‘We meet again,’ said Ian, and Henry smiled, having no idea what Ian was talking about. ‘We’ve had a complaint, sir,’ Ian went on.
Long pause. ‘I see.’
‘From a lady.’
Longer pause. ‘I see.’
‘About your attire. Lack of.’
Even longer pause. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to cover yourself up.’
Very long pause. ‘Someone has complained?’
‘Yes, sir. A lady.’
Henry looked around. There was no one in sight