Homicidal urges
Jeremy Clarke During the wettest July since records began, I was completely dry. As usual, not drinking made me angry and withdrawn. As usual, I had homicidal urges and couldn't read. And, as usual, cleaning and polishing was the only way I could distract myself. I cleaned and polished the floors, windows, furniture, tools, ornaments and, of course, the car. Three coats of polish had the bonnet of the car reflecting the blackening sky like a mirror. This afforded me a momentary glimmer of satisfaction. Later I valeted the car inside and out using old favourite aerosol cosmetic valeting products such as Alloy Bright, Back to Black and Dashboard Shine. My aim was to bring the car up to showroom condition and I was patient and thorough. When I'd finished, however, it looked like nothing more than an 11-year-old car that had been valeted.
It was a pleasant change, though, to drive around in a car that no longer smelt of putrefying banana skins and damp dog. To keep it that way, I barred Joe from the car until further notice. Joe is a collie I'm looking after for an elderly neighbour who is in hospital. He's a quiet, unassuming character, but shockingly unfit and overweight. Going for a walk seems to be a novel experience for him — as is being continually shouted at by a short-tempered idiot trying to get by without a drink.
For our daily walks I was driving Joe to places where the walking is easy and on the flat. But after the recent deluge, flat ground means standing water. And standing water means mud transferred to the back seat of the car on the way home and more angry shouting from the unhappy man. Now that I'm taking care of my car, we go instead down a steep and overgrown cliff path to the naturist beach, where he does his business, then we come back up. It's a more strenuous walk than Joe's been used to, but he's making progress and no longer collapses in the ferns on the way back.
The beach is what is called a 'permissive' naturist beach. That is to say it is naturist by tradition rather than by decree. There are no signs or fences. The naturists keep to the far side of a traditionally recognised, though undefined, boundary, and those they like to deride as 'textiles' — that's to say people who prefer to wear clothes — keep to their side and pretend not to stare. The naturist section is further subdivided by another invisible line, beyond which gay naturist men seclude themselves from everyone else. The remoter gay naturist section of the beach is the limit of our daily walk.
Last Tuesday, not only was it not raining, but amazingly the sun was shining. After having a wet and windswept beach to ourselves for over a week, it was therefore a bit of a surprise to find the place suddenly warm and tranquil and dotted with naked sunbathing men.
We navigated a more or less straight course between these sun worshippers. Almost all were conspicuously alone. Many hadn't even an outspread towel to sit on as evidence of forward planning. As we passed across their line of vision, some of them gave Joe and me a friendly smile or a cheery wave. Others' stony glares or nervous glances suggested that sunbathing on one's own on the gay section of a nudist beach in Devon is a far more serious business than it actually looks. Look at us all, I thought, toppling back into depression. Here's me, nearly off my head because I need a drink and a fag. And here's this loving, unloved dog. And here are all these middle-aged and elderly nudists lying naked and alone on a dogs' toilet with more heavy rain forecast. Outcasts from life's feast, the lot of us.
At the far end of the beach, just before we turned for home, a mahogany-coloured man was lying on his back behind a windbreak. His eyes were closed and he looked very peaceful. Joe limped across to this inert figure, stretched forward and delicately sniffed his groin. The man's eyes remained placidly closed. 'Come away, Joe!' I hissed. Joe took another sniff to verify whatever it was he was verifying. Still the man's eyes remained lightly closed. Joe cocked his leg and urinated against the windbreak, then turned and headed back.
I smiled at this all the way home. If I wasn't careful I was going to start liking the old chap. When I got home, though, the smile froze on my face. While we were out, someone had scoured the word 'Tosser' in foot-high letters across the newly polished boot of my car with a sharp instrument.
I've begun to read again. But the homicidal fantasies have intensified.
Previous page
