The Apocryfan (12)
Continued from: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.com/2006/10/apocryfan-11.html
Part II
The Coming of the Augusthog
Denise Dumond – as the seasons slid by into the aging garb of years – could often be found haunting the customer’s catchment area of Robert Smee’s fish stall at the entrance to Bonnyville Pier. She had a crush, one she did not admit to herself nor to her best friend, June Derleth. Perhaps June herself was caught up in the same inadmissible crush, although it is difficult to believe they didn’t privately talk about it, if in code. Summer Visitors of even younger ages and persuasions, could also be found uncharacteristically indulging in healthy fish feasts having persuaded their parents or other older escorts to patronise Robert’s stall. Indeed , since the clearance of ‘the rubbish of dreams’ epoch by time-wasters, Summer Visitors no longer came to Bonnyville singly, but now in increasing droves, much to the help of its otherwise insular economy … putting paid, too, to all the journalistic concoctions of near-collapse of coastal communities that had done a tour of semi-belief in recent years. The blue ‘train’ was ever athrob with happy flag-wavers on each of its pointless curvets down the prom and back again. These smiling faces were now known collectively as Day-Trippers. Meantime, young local women like Denise and June often found it difficult to recognise the pigeon-holes wherein they should file the self-nobodies they found extending clawholds of personality within themselves during the growing-up process. Day-trippers were immune to any benighted features that seemed to be prevalent in coastal communities of Warm England. Denise was one of the local doctor’s daughters, who carried her class as well as her ethnicity with a proud sweep of her mane. She knew her father was central to Bonnyville life. June was nearly in the same class as Denise, her father, Mr Derleth, being one of the town’s few traders, who had run a clock and watch shop (recently diversified into much else) in the High Street.
Things got mixed up, concerns at cross-purposes with frivolities, demarcation lines tangled by whatever viewpoints were available at the time any view was taken. Today, for example, Robert Smee had a large catch of snoutfish to purvey. His was a rather loosely-termed ‘business’ – a makeshift slimy stall or trestle-table which he erected after having himself personally fished the catch in a small boat, between a dinghy and a trawler. He had one male member of staff, who accompanied him and cut incisions into the snouts to make them more presentable on the ‘slab’, indeed more cosmetically palatable. This other man did not help on the stall itself, for similar reasons. He merely vanished into wherever he had first emerged at the early calling of the ever earlier sun. Not until recently had Robert been able to fish so openly, but following the lifting of life-style quotas, he could now cast-off with pride into the tissue of lies that dawn prefigured as sunny weather, chasing his own fishtail, as it were, just as monsoons bred off Holland only to emerge without warning here on the North Sea coast of Eastern England. The snoutfish had grown plumper with the changing conditions, so any risks were worth forgetting. Robert was rather intrigued by the two girls who chatted him up during the stall hours. They looked too young to be out of school. It rather gave him a sense of masculine power but he understood full well how important it was for him to resist temptations in the current climate. He was relieved to be able to deceive himself into believing they were only down here for art lessons - with him and his stall merely unpaid life-models. Ah well, he might need a doctor one day. If not a watch. He looked at his bare wrist. No need to fish further than the topmost tides of timelessness, where there was plenty to catch already without reaching deeper.
CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/the_apocryfan_13.htm
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