style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Yes, dear,’ replies Benjamin.
‘And when would that be?’
‘Soon.’
‘How soon?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘That would be nice. Please do it.’
‘Yes, dear.’
She closes the cupboard and opens another one. There’s a sharp hiccup of irritation and she turns round, showing him the small round handle that’s just come off in her hand. She presents it to him, Exhibit 3227 in the never-ending case of Kemp versus Kemp. ‘Why does it always take you so long to do the tiniest little job?’
‘And why is the tiniest little job always my job?’
‘You said you’d do it. It’s not as if you’re rushed off your feet, is it?’
‘No, dearest. It’s not as if I’m rushed off my feet. You’re quite right.’
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘When are you going to fix it?’
‘This afternoon, dear. After I’ve fixed the squeak that I alone can fix.’ And so on. They have each other now, all day long. Just each other, all day, every day. It’s too much; it’s not enough.
The niggling becomes a raised-voice row, and as usual it’s Benjamin who retreats. What can he say? That he hasn’t fixed the bloody cupboard door because he’s bored out of his head, today as every day, the same as she is? What would be the point? He puts down the paper and leaves the room. ‘That’s right,’ Christine calls after him, ‘you just walk away.’ She hears him picking the keys off the table in the hall. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Out.’
‘Out where?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘What about that blasted dog?’ she yells. So he takes the dog, a decision which is really going to knock a divot out of his day.
Milo, that’s the dog’s name. Milo is a sullen and overfed mongrel, part labrador, part something very much less handsome. They get into the car, Milo beside his driver, and they drive down to the seafront, where Benjamin – seeing that the tide is out – turns eastwards, towards the headland, and parks in the very last bay, where the road comes to an end against the cliffs. They walk on the beach all the way to Straight Point, and there Benjamin takes a rest. He sits on a rock, feeds a handful of biscuits to the dog, stares at the sea. The scene could not be more appropriate to his mood: the sky is a filthy old sponge, the air is thick and cold and damp, the sea is an infinite pavement of grey sludge. It’s not truly raining, but there’s so much water in the air that he’s getting soaked as he sits. He watches Milo moping around the pools, picking a path through the dull green slime that coats the rocks. When you’re feeling despondent, gazing into a mirror can make you feel worse, and this is the same: the longer he stays here, the gloomier Benjamin is becoming. He whistles for the dog, and they set off back towards town.
It was a rough night, the night before, and the sea has dumped piles of bladderwrack and rubbish in a thick continuous scum at the foot of the cliffs. Nose lowered, Milo is following the line of seaweed and flotsam, pausing now and again to root about in whatever’s been washed up. Short of breath, Benjamin stops again, and the dog disappears into a corral of stone blocks that fell off the rockface in the autumn. When Benjamin reaches the stones, Milo has moved on: his tail is visible, about fifty yards off, wagging above a hummock of sand, between two car-sized slabs. Benjamin whistles, but Milo doesn’t come to him. Having been ignored three or four times, he walks a few steps closer and sees that the dog is standing in a long wide groove that the tide has scoured in the sand, and has shoved his muzzle into a well-stuffed black bin liner. Benjamin waits. The dog’s pulling something out of the bag, a thick cable or a length of stout rope, and he’s having a good chew at it. There’s no hurry. Benjamin waits, eyes closed, dozing on his feet.
Milo is still busy with the oversized rope when Benjamin opens his eyes again. The dog’s head is snapping from one side to the other, as if playing tug-of-war, and he’s making a low snarling noise, of a sort Benjamin has never heard from him before. ‘Here, boy,’ calls Benjamin, but there is no response. He’s covered about half the distance to the bin liner when he notices there’s something peculiar about the rope, about the rigidness of it, and the sharp angle at which it’s bending. A moment later he stops – or is stopped, because he’s reacting before he knows exactly what it is he’s reacting to. Then he sees that the thing that Milo’s gnawing isn’t a rope or a cable: it’s an arm, and the bin liner is a body in a waterlogged coat, partly covered by sand. The legs, in sodden grey tracksuit bottoms, are twisted as if they’ve no bones in them, and there’s a gash in one shin, with a mush of dark green stuff coming out, where something, possibly Milo, has taken a few bites out of it. Eyeless, teeth agape, a purple-black face lies wrapped in a veil of wet hair. Beside it a naked arm emerges from the sand at a low angle, the rotted palm directed skywards, as if to make a catch. Scraps of skin dangle from the fingertips, like a shredded glove of black muslin. Worm-like things, white and slick as lard, are squirming in the earhole.
Benjamin is in shock, as who wouldn’t be? He’s a gentle old man who has reached the age of sixty-seven without ever seeing anything very nasty, and this is very nasty indeed. It’s so nasty it’s not real. Traumatised, he’s looking at the mouldering head and the empty eyes, and it’s like a display from a chamber of horrors, a dummy of a man who’s been ripped to bits. He stares and stares, as if the body might go back to being a bin liner if he stares long enough, but soon he is seeing the corpse for what it is, a dead man, a real person destroyed. And while Benjamin is being transfixed by the dead man, Milo is continuing his wrestle with the cadaver’s right arm, a struggle that ends with a gristly tearing sound and the dog flying backwards, bringing away a hand and a length of forearm, with ribbons of muscle trailing off it.
The dog goes cantering off down the beach, with the limb in his jaws. ‘Come here,’ calls Benjamin. ‘Here. Here,’ he yells. Several repetitions later, Milo at last obeys, bringing the half-arm with him. ‘Drop, boy,’ Benjamin orders. ‘Drop. Drop. Drop.’ Milo cocks his head, inviting Benjamin to wrestle the thing from him. ‘Drop. For Christ’s sake, drop.’ The beast is not trained in any way. This is another of Benjamin’s multitudinous domestic crimes: he brings this flatulent mutt into the house and can’t be bothered teaching it the basics of civilised canine behaviour. A stick is needed, something he can chuck to make the dog lay down his plaything. From the ridge of tidal debris he takes a length of wood and flings it over Milo’s head. Milo watches it fly and fall to earth. A second stick is similarly spurned. ‘Drop. Good boy. Drop. Drop.’ As a rule Benjamin doesn’t swear. Benjamin swears once or twice a year, when things with Christine get out of control, but he’s almost hysterical now. ‘Drop the bloody thing. Please, please, please drop. Put it down. Down. Put the bloody thing down. Now. Drop it. Drop.’ Milo deposits the limb on the ground, gives it a shove with his snout, and grabs it the instant Benjamin makes a move.
All Benjamin can think to do is walk towards the town and hope that Milo, losing interest, will relinquish his burden en route. As fast as he can, which isn’t fast, he strides across the sand, attended by his faithful hound. Every now and then Milo deposits his portion of corpse on the ground, turns it with his nose, and takes it up again. ‘Leave it, for Christ’s sake,’ shouts Benjamin, looking the other way. The road isn’t much further. ‘Stay. Stay there,’ yells Benjamin. ‘Sit. Stay. For God’s sake, stay.’ Milo sits, and the moment Benjamin turns his back, the dog gets up again to follow in his master’s wake. They are about a quarter of a mile from the beach-grave
