Tigers on the Beach Read online

  ‘The children are traumatised,’ says the mother. ‘They won’t leave the cabin.’

  ‘We are sorry about the hanging teddy bears,’ says Dad.

  ‘Oh, that’s not what scared them. That old woman told them a horror story.’

  Dad’s face falls. ‘A horror story?’

  ‘It was about space monsters.’

  Dad shakes his head and picks up the phone. ‘Doris, could you please come to the office?’ he says.

  Only now do Mum and Dad notice me.

  ‘Did you have a good morning?’ Mum asks, a weary look on her face.

  ‘Very good,’ I say. ‘I was nearly stabbed, but this gay guy saved my life.’

  Mum and Dad are too preoccupied even to register this.

  A few moments later, Grandma arrives. The meek couple looks at her angrily.

  ‘How dare you frighten our children!’ snaps the mother.

  ‘Are they the little ones with the big round eyes?’ Grandma asks. ‘Like tarsiers?’

  Dad shoots Grandma a warning look. ‘Doris, did you tell them a story?’

  ‘Yes, I did. They seemed bored. They were running around the yard, making a racket.’

  ‘What story did you tell them?’ Dad asks, dreading the answer.

  ‘We sat in the shade and I started to read them The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. They must have enjoyed it, because they went very quiet.’

  The mother fumes. ‘You read them a story about the end of the world!’

  ‘Yes, but it was a very funny story.’

  ‘There were monsters.’

  ‘Funny monsters. Called Vogons.’

  ‘The children didn’t think it was funny. They’re worried the earth is going to blow up.’

  ‘But they’d have to be complete cot-cases to think –’

  Dad cuts in. ‘We’re very sorry. Doris is very sorry too.’

  ‘It was just a funny story!’ Grandma protests.

  ‘Please apologise to our guests,’ says Dad.

  ‘I apologise,’ Doris says, softly.

  ‘And please don’t tell any more stories.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ says Grandma.

  She leaves the office. The tarsier couple remain, as if expecting something else.

  ‘What about some compensation?’ says the father.

  ‘Of course,’ says Mum, ‘we would be happy to offer you a discount.’

  Dad turns to Mum, surprised. Before he can speak, the parents ask what kind of discount Mum is talking about.

  ‘Thirty per cent off,’ says Mum.

  Dad opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

  ‘That seems acceptable,’ says the father.

  The parents leave, satisfied. I notice that their happy children are playing noisily in the yard again.

  Dad takes a deep breath. ‘You handled that very well,’ he says, sarcastically. ‘Don’t you think we should confer before we offer such enormous discounts? We are supposed to be a partnership, after all.’

  ‘It would help if you could be a little more supportive.’

  ‘Why don’t we let the guests stay for free?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ken.’

  I bang the counter with my fist. ‘Could you please stop arguing? It’s all you seem to do these days.’

  Dad looks guilty. ‘It isn’t your fault, Adam.’

  ‘And it isn’t my mother’s fault either,’ says Mum.

  Dad looks as though he’s about to disagree but Mum glares at him and another fly hits the counter.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ Dad is crestfallen.

  ‘You’re making it a horrible place. It used to be good. I liked working here, because we were a team, running the place together.’

  ‘We still are a team.’

  ‘No we’re not. No wonder Nathan wants to leave.’ Mum looks surprised. ‘He hasn’t said anything.’

  ‘Can’t you tell?’

  The phone rings and Dad picks up.

  ‘We’re sorry, Adam,’ says Mum, quietly. ‘We’re sorry we’ve upset you, darling. And of course you don’t have to work here if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Sam is a nice girl. You could bring her around –’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Not at the moment.’

  ‘We really are sorry.’

  Dad firmly hangs up the phone. ‘Another cancellation,’ he says. ‘Maybe you’re right, Adam. Maybe The

  Ponderosa isn’t that great a place.’

  The only good thing in my life is Sam. She rings me that night and it’s like sun shining through the clouds. She tells me how nervous she is about playing at The Carlington Prehistoric Festival. Felix has written an arrangement for the theme music from Doctor Who. Sam has to carry the tune, only she’s worried that she hasn’t practised enough. I tell her she’ll be awesome and I promise to be there. And then maybe when she’s done playing the flute, we could go swimming. Sam says the beach at Carlington isn’t that good. I become its keenest defender. Carlington is one of the best beaches on Port Argus Bay, I say. It’s true that the water is very shallow, but this means there are refreshingly few drownings. Eventually I wear her down.

  ‘Okay, maybe we’ll go swimming too,’ says Sam. ‘I bet you look nice in board shorts.’

  ‘I bet you do too,’ I say.

  I’m thrilled that I will have the opportunity to confirm that there are sixty-seven freckles on Sam’s back.

  ‘How was your afternoon?’ Sam asks.

  ‘Not great,’ I say.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘My parents are still arguing.’

  ‘My parents always argue.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m not used to it.’

  ‘Poor Adam.’

  ‘Yeah. Poor me.’

  ‘I’ll send you a joke,’ says Sam.

  ‘. . . okay.’

  ‘You sound nervous.’

  ‘No, I’m not nervous.’

  ‘You know that I like you even if you don’t get my jokes.’

  ‘I feel the same way about you.’

  We say a few more lovey-dovey things before the battery on my phone runs out.

  Ping! My computer receives an email from Sam. It’s another cartoon from The New Yorker. This time there are two hippopotamuses in a swamp. One is saying to the other, ‘I keep thinking it’s Thursday.’ This makes no more sense than the cartoon about the two tigers on Bondi Beach. I think about both cartoons, trying to work out where the joke is. I could go crazy worrying about stuff like this, so I decide not to.

  Xander refuses to go to sleep. He’s angry because Mum and Dad have confiscated his wacky balls. He’s been throwing them at Grandma again. She unknowingly walked around The Ponderosa with five balls stuck to the back of her cardigan. When she found out, she blew her stack at Xander, and insisted that he be properly punished. She added that having Asperger’s isn’t an excuse for putting balls on people.

  ‘Guess what?’ says Xander.

  ‘I’m not interested,’ I say.

  I pick up my special-effects book and pretend to read. I try to think of good things, like the two original Star Wars movies, or the fact that I will be swimming with Sam tomorrow.

  ‘I have a plan,’ says Xander.

  ‘I’m still not interested,’ I say.

  ‘I’m going to booby-trap Grandma’s toilet.’

  I look up from the book. ‘How, exactly?’ I say.

  ‘I’m going to make it explode when she sits on it. Then everything will be back to normal.’

  I put the book down. ‘Even for you that’s insane.’

  ‘I could make a flash pot,’ says Xander.

  A flash pot is something that they use in special effects. When you see an explosion in a movie, it’s usually a flash pot: a well of gunpowder electrically ignited by remote control. They add the sound effect of the explosion later.

  ‘I read about it in your boo
k,’ says Xander.

  ‘Don’t muck around with my things,’ I say, as if this would stop him.

  ‘All I need is a battery with two wires and a push-button. I could hide them under Grandma’s toilet seat, with the gunpowder. She’d never know. Her toilet would explode, just like in Grandpa’s story.’

  It sounds frighteningly believable.

  ‘Xander,’ I say, ‘don’t blow up Grandma.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You might hurt her, you muppet.’

  ‘You didn’t get hurt when Dad lit the gunpowder.’

  ‘We weren’t sitting on top of it with our pants down.’

  ‘I’ve done a diagram,’ says Xander, holding up a piece of paper with scribble on it.

  Now I’m seriously worried. ‘Promise me you won’t blow up Grandma,’ I say.

  ‘Okay, I promise.’

  ‘Would you swear on a stack of bibles?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Should I go and get them?’

  ‘I cross my heart and hope to die that I won’t blow up Grandma.’

  I have to be satisfied with this. One of Xander’s bugs makes an odd ticking sound, just like a time bomb. Tik tik tik.

  ‘Hey, Adam?’

  ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘Adam?’

  ‘Not listening.’

  ‘Adam?’

  ‘If you don’t shut up I’ll set fire to your bed.’

  ‘I’ve become mature. I’ve started thinking about girls. Tony Palin showed me some magazines and I liked the pictures.’

  It’s just like Tony Palin, the petty crim of Port Argus Bay, to show my little brother pornography.

  ‘You shouldn’t be looking at dirty magazines,’ I say to Xander. ‘Use the internet, like everyone else. It’s more economical.’ I am being a bad role model for Xander, but it’s my parents’ fault, for making me share a room with him.

  ‘Tony wanted to sell them to me cheap,’ says Xander.

  ‘Don’t buy them.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ says Xander. ‘But Tony said he could get anything I wanted.’

  ‘Go to sleep, Xander.’

  ‘Anything at all.’

  Tik tik tik.

  I get out of bed early the next morning to find that Xander has dismantled the torch and left it in pieces. I tread on a battery as soon as my feet touch the carpet. At this rate I will have to start sleeping with my shoes on.

  The usually vacant park at Carlington is full of tents and trestle tables displaying food, arts and crafts. It’s the Carlington Prehistoric Festival, which has been going for ten years and I’ve been lucky enough to avoid every single one till now. Carlington people like dinosaurs. They make artwork with a prehistoric theme. There are miniature dinosaurs made from wire, wood, shells and seed pods. People have knitted jumpers with dinosaurs on them. There are cakes with little dinosaurs on top. Kids have their faces painted green, which actually looks better than fake-tan orange.

  All of the hedges have been especially trimmed for the occasion, so that for this weekend at least they do actually resemble dinosaurs. A man in a dinosaur suit is wandering around the park, pretending to be scary. It isn’t working. Kids keep coming up behind him and jumping on his tail. When one of the kids kicks him in the leg really hard, the guy pulls his dinosaur head off and yells angrily at the kid, who starts to cry. A mother comes up to claim the kid. She’s angry with the dinosaur man. How dare he yell at her darling boy. He was only playing. If you go around dressed as a dinosaur you have to expect kids to kick you. I can see that the dinosaur man wants to kick the mother, and I’m disappointed that he doesn’t.

  A stallholder is selling T-shirts with pictures of dinosaurs and a slogan: I’ve visited The Carlington Dinosaur Park. It doesn’t seem the sort of thing I’d boast about. Other visitors must feel the same way. The shirts have been reduced to half price. Maybe they’d sell better if they said, I have absolutely no intention of visiting The Carlington Dinosaur Park now that I’ve actually seen it.

  I hear music playing from the side of the park that borders the sea. I walk around the hedges and the various craft stalls. The five members of Il Gattopardo Pazzo are seated on a makeshift stage with a cyclorama representing a prehistoric landscape. I notice that Felix and Oscar have been kept apart, and sit at either end of the group, but they keep giving each other meaningful looks. Sam sits at the centre, and everyone in the audience must be thinking the same thing. Who is this stunningly beautiful flautist in the emerald tights, and why is she playing the theme music from Doctor Who?

  I watch. After the Doctor Who theme, they play ‘Turkey in the Straw’. There is no dancing, however. I guess you have to be in a nursing home for that to happen. By now, the man in the dinosaur costume without a head has also lost his tail. I don’t know if kids have torn it off or if he decided to shed it himself. He looks as though he can’t wait for the ice age to come.

  There is an announcement that Il Gattopardo Pazzo will be taking a break, and will return in fifteen minutes.

  ‘Hi.’

  I call to Sam. She comes over and I get the chance to kiss her on the embouchure again.

  ‘Say cheese,’ I tell her, taking out my phone.

  ‘Stilton,’ says Sam.

  I take a picture, but the sun is in Sam’s eyes and she is squinting.

  ‘Say cheese again,’ I say.

  ‘Gruyere,’ says Sam.

  This time it’s a perfect snap. Sam takes the phone and aims it at me.

  ‘Your turn.’

  ‘Mozzarella,’ I say.

  Sam laughs and takes the picture. I have never felt better. We are teens in love. We will buy each other jewellery. Songs on the radio will constantly make us think of each other, provided they aren’t rap songs that use the word ‘bitch’. We will upgrade our relationship status on Facebook.

  ‘Can you take our picture too?’

  It’s Ben Beacham, with Michaela Debeljak in tow. They are both wearing the half-price shirts advertising The Carlington Dinosaur Park. Michaela cannot stop laughing about the fact that she and Ben are wearing the same tops. I have never seen anyone get so much joy out of identical shirts. It is blindingly obvious that Michaela is not wearing a bra. Sam takes their picture.

  ‘You were good,’ Ben says to Sam. ‘Especially the Doctor Who music. That was fantastic. You should play more music like that. Do you know the music from The Simpsons?’ He hums it in case we haven’t heard it, even though everyone has.

  ‘You sound a bit drunk,’ I say.

  ‘I drank green beer,’ says Ben. ‘Have you ever had green beer before?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘And I don’t think I ever will.’

  ‘They’re selling it over by the brontosaurus.’

  ‘Apatosaurus,’ says Sam.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not a brontosaurus. It’s an apatosaurus.’

  ‘Oh, right. Apatosaurus. Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  Ben isn’t going to argue. He had enough trouble pronouncing ‘brontosaurus’ without also attempting ‘apatosaurus’.

  ‘Go on, Adam,’ he says. ‘Get some green beer before they run out.’

  ‘I don’t want green beer. Anyway, I don’t think they’ll serve me. I’m underage.’

  ‘They served me.’

  ‘You look older than I do.’

  ‘Then I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  Michaela has found something to say. ‘Where are the toilets?’

  Ben points. ‘Next to the . . . um . . .’

  ‘Triceratops,’ says Sam. ‘They gave me a guide.’

  Sam takes a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. Sure enough, twelve different dinosaurs are listed, though the hedges don’t bear much resemblance to them. And Sam is correct. According to her guide, the toilets are next to the triceratops.

  Michaela runs off, holding onto her big boobs as if they might somehow get away from her.

  ‘Is
Michaela all right?’ I ask.

  ‘She drank too much green beer,’ says Ben. ‘Sam, are you sure you don’t want any?’

  ‘No thanks,’ says Sam.

  Ben is even more talkative than usual. I hope he doesn’t talk about seeing Michaela naked.

  ‘I wonder why they started clipping the hedges to look like dinosaurs,’ says Ben. ‘Does anyone know?’

  ‘Someone must have thought it was a good idea,’ I say.

  Ben ponders this for a moment.

  ‘Ben, maybe you should see if Michaela is okay?’ I suggest.

  ‘Oh, she’ll be fine.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She’s found the toilets. She’ll probably just be sick.’ Sam is annoyed but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Ben, if Michaela is sick then she isn’t fine, is she?’

  ‘You worry too much, Adam.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be her boyfriend,’ I say.

  Ben looks guilty. ‘Yeah. You’re right. I should go and see if she needs a drink of water or something.’

  He heads off in the direction of the triceratops.

  Sam gives me a long and wonderful kiss. She holds my hand tightly.

  ‘You’re thoughtful,’ she says.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Worrying about Michaela like that.’

  I try to be modest. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘And I really like the way you danced with the old lady at Park Lake. Most guys wouldn’t.’

  ‘She was a very persuasive old lady. She wants to be called Flipper. I probably wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t made me.’

  ‘I like that about you too. You’re modest.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘And you’re supportive. And I am in love with you, Adam Cartwright.’

  ‘And I am in love with you, Sam Koenigsberger. I hope we stay together forever.’

  ‘We probably will,’ she says.

  ‘And when people ask us how we met, we’ll tell them about the queue at a pharmacy. Isn’t that romantic?’

  We kiss again as we stand alongside a hedge shaped like a velociraptor. I smell cherry lip-balm and swoon.

  ‘Are your parents here?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘They wanted to be, but they had to go to town to see my brother.’

  ‘The molecule man,’ I say.