No Comebacks

It was ten o'clock when Murgatroyd walked through the main doors of the St Geran and into the light of the hallway. The doctor was still with him. One of the guests saw him enter and ran into the dining room to tell the late eaters. Word spread to the pool bar outside. There was a scraping of chairs and clatter of cutlery. A crowd of holidaymakers soon surged round the corner and came down the hall to meet him. They stopped halfway.

He looked a strange sight. His arms and legs were thickly smeared with calamine lotion, which had dried to a chalky white. Both hands were mummified in white bandages. His face was brick red and gleamed from the cream applied to it. His hair was a wild halo to his face and his khaki shorts were still at knee-length. He looked like a photographic negative. Slowly he began to walk towards the crowd, which parted for him.

'Well done, old man,' said someone.

'Hear hear, absolutely,' said someone else.

Shaking hands was out of the question. Some thought of patting him on the back as he passed through, but the doctor waved them away. Some held glasses and raised them in toast. Murgatroyd reached the base of the stone stairway to the upper rooms and began to climb.

At this point Mrs Murgatroyd emerged from the hair-dressing salon, brought by the hubbub of her husband's return. She had spent the day working herself into a towering rage since, in the mid-morning, puzzled by his absence from their usual spot on the beach, she had searched for him and learned where he had gone. She was red in the face, though from anger rather than sunburn. Her going-home perm had not been completed and rollers stuck out like Katyushka batteries from her scalp.

'Murgatroyd,' she boomed — she always called him by his surname when she was angry — 'where do you think you're going?'

At the midway landing Murgatroyd turned and looked down at the crowd and his wife. Kilian would tell colleagues later that he had a strange look in his eyes. The crowd fell silent.

'And what do you think you look like,' Edna Murgatroyd called up to him in outrage.

The bank manager then did something he had not done in many years. He shouted.

'Quiet...'

Edna Murgatroyd's mouth dropped open, as wide as, but with less majesty than, that of the fish.

'For twenty-five years, Edna,' said Murgatroyd quietly, 'you have been threatening to go and live with your sister in Bognor. You will be happy to know that I shall not detain you any longer. I shall not be returning with you tomorrow. I am going to stay here, on this island.'

The crowd stared up at him dumbfounded.

'You will not be destitute,' said Murgatroyd. 'I shall make over to you our house and my accrued savings. I shall take my accumulated pension funds and cash in my exorbitant life-assurance policy.'

Harry Foster took a swig from his can of beer and burped.

Higgins quavered, 'You can't leave London, old man. You'll have nothing to live on.'

'Yes, I can,' said the bank manager. 'I have made my decision and I am not going to go back on it. I was thinking all this out in hospital when Monsieur Patient came to see how I was. We agreed a deal. He will sell me his boat and I will have enough left over for a shack on the beach. He will stay on as captain and put his grandson through college. I will be his boat boy and for two years he will teach me the ways of the sea and the fish. After that, I shall take the tourists fishing and earn my living in that manner.'

The crowd of holidaymakers continued to stare up at him in stunned amazement.

It was Higgins who broke the silence again. 'But Murgatroyd, old man, what about the bank? What about Ponder's End?'

'And what about me?' wailed Edna Murgatroyd.

He considered each question judiciously.

'To hell with the bank,' he said at length. 'To hell with Ponder's End. And, madam, to hell with you.'

With that he turned and mounted the last few steps. A burst of cheering broke out behind him. As he went down the corridor to his room he was pursued by a bibulous valediction.

'Good on yer, Murgatroyd.'

THERE ARE SOME DAYS …

THE ST KILIAN ROLL-ON ROLL-OFF ferry from Le Havre buried her nose in another oncoming sea and pushed her blunt bulk a few yards nearer to Ireland. From somewhere on A deck driver Liam Clarke leaned over the rail and stared forward to make out the low hills of County Wexford coming closer.

In another twenty minutes the Irish Continental Line ferry would dock in the small port of Rosslare and another European run would be completed. Clarke glanced at his watch; it was twenty to two in the afternoon and he was looking forward to being with his family in Dublin in time for supper.

She was on time again. Clarke left the rail, returned to the passenger lounge and collected his grip. He saw no reason to wait any longer and descended to the car deck three levels down where his juggernaut transport waited with the others. Car passengers would not be called for another ten minutes, but he thought he might as well get settled in his cab. The novelty of watching the ferry dock had long worn off; the racing page of the Irish newspaper he had bought on board, though twenty-four hours old, was more interesting.

He hauled himself up into the warm comfort of his cab and settled down to wait until the big doors in the bow opened to let him out onto the quay of Rosslare. Above the sun visor in front of him his sheaf of customs documents was safely stacked, ready to be produced in the shed.