“You are not sure?” Those long brown fingers curled around the cash. Rayne shook his head at once.
“I… I can do it. I’m… just…”
“You are not sure about the examination?”
“Like I said, it’s been a long time. I’ve… I’ve been…”
“You’ve been a dirty boy,” Leland nodded his head knowingly. “Antoine has told me as much as he knows. I am not judgmental, Rayne Wilde. If you scope clean and you are willing I will give you another chance. Mess me about, lie to me, take drugs on my boat and I will make sure your bones rot at the bottom of the Med. Do You Understand?”
Rayne nodded his head silently. Leland seemed satisfied. He held out the money in one hand and his companion snatched it like a chameleon snaring a fly.
“You have about fifty pounds there,” Leland said gravely, watching as the boy shuffled the notes from hand to hand. “You might want to find something to put it in. Don’t spend it all at once.”
Rayne flashed him a dazzling grin and blew him a kiss, then he was gone.
A Boy Who Came In from the Cold
EXPLORING THE CAP:
The old-timer who had been tinkering with his motor launch when they arrived was still pottering about on his small boat when Rayne came virtually skipping back along the pontoon to the harbour. He waved and smiled and the boy shouted; “Bonjour!” as he let himself out at the small gate and set off in the direction of the handful of bars and small shops across the road from the marina. He bought a little turquoise suede pouch on a long cord fairly inexpensively from a shop that sold leather belts and handbags. It provided some small change as well and he tucked his money inside and hung it around his neck.
The initial strangeness of being naked on a public street soon gave way to curiosity about his new environment. Not everyone went from place to place completely nude but the majority of people that he passed seemed unhampered by clothing. He was surprised to find that the older visitors seemed to have fewer inhibitions. A lot of younger men and women still wore towels to and from the beach but the middle aged and the elderly let it all hang out quite happily. People stopped and chatted as if it was quite the most normal thing in the world to wander down to the shops or go for a morning stroll in the all together. He found a small arcade around a circular pool area where families congregated and children ran around splashing and playing together, naked as the day they were born. There was a supermarket on the ring of shops and he wandered in, bemused at the sight of a balding man in glasses pushing a trolley around, blithely nude.
He bought a can of French lager and some white chocolate. The girl on the till was wearing a denim skirt and a bikini top and he wondered if she got fed up of staring at limp cocks and saggy tits all day but when he asked her she just shrugged and did not seem to understand. There was a tobacconist’s shop three doors along, which also sold a proliferation of inflatable dinghies, beach towels and lilos. He contemplated buying postcards but remembered Daniel’s warning about not spending everything at once and restricted himself to a couple of 20 packs of Marlboro Lites.
Halfway down a covered street between shops selling skimpy outfits covered in sequins and buckles, exotic shoe stores and a handful of busy restaurants, he realised that he had left his lighter in his jeans back on the boat. He was contemplating going back to the shop to buy another one when he spotted a young man with a blond buzz-cut lounging in a tight tee-shirt and baggy shorts against the entrance to the shoe shop, smoking a roll up. Extracting a cigarette he wandered over and gestured towards the fellow’s smoke with his own. The lad nodded and he bent his head towards Rayne’s as they juggled cigarette ends until the young Englishman was able to exhale a grateful plume of smoke.
“Cheers,” he said instinctively.
“Where you from?” asked the other lad at once, in an accent that was so familiar that Rayne initially wondered if he was dreaming.
“Kent coast,” he said distantly. “Dymchurch, via London.”
“Rochester,” the blond told him with a grin. “Bloody ‘ell it’s a small world!”
“D’you live out here?” Rayne took a pull on his cigarette, shaking his head in amazement.
“I come up in the summer, work ‘ere ’til October then I go down to Spain for the winter. My uncle’s got a couple of shops in Malaga and Torremolinos as well as this one.” He put the roll up in the corner of his mouth and extended a hand. “Phil Honeywell.”
“Rayne Wilde,” Rayne shook the proffered hand.
“For real?” Phil grinned at him.
Rayne nodded. “Hippy parents!”
“Mad!” Phil declared, still grinning. He looked Rayne up and down quickly. “You’ve not been ‘ere long, ‘ave you?”
“Where’s the best place to get a tan then?”
“Depends what ‘else’ you want,” Phil told him ambiguously.
Rayne sucked on the filter of his Marlboro, taking his time. “Such as?” he prompted when Phil did not elaborate.
“If you wanna be left alone then the top beach nearest the lighthouse is your best bet. It gets busy though and there’s kids. If you go down a little way towards Heliopolis, the big crescent development, past the yellow bar it’s more couples and singles but it’s a bit cruisey sometimes, y’know what I mean.” Phil eyed him speculatively all of a sudden.
“I don’t mind,” Rayne said, blowing a plume of smoke
“And then…” Phil added as if he had not spoken. “If you go a bit further, down past the residential bits and the blue bar, you get to the nature reserve. You wanna watch yourself down there, specially if you go on your own.”
Rayne looked quizzically at him. “What d’you mean?”
“You wanna watch your bum. ‘Cause you can guarantee that someone’ll be watchin’ it already!” Phil winked at him.
“Seriously?”
“Dead serious,” the blond said with a shake of his head. “Predators, the lot of ’em. Stay on the beach if you go that far. If you go up into the dunes you’re fair game.”
“Fuckin’ hell!” Rayne was laughing quietly. “Thanks for the warning.”
Phil shook his head incredulously. “You’re gonna go now aren’t you? I can tell. You’ve got that look on your face!”
“Maybe not today,” Rayne demurred, lighting another cigarette from his first before it expired. Seeing Phil’s expectant glance, he lit one for the blond as well. Once Phil was drawing on the filter with a satisfied smile, he lowered his voice. “D’you know where I can get my hands on something a bit stronger than Marlboros?”
Phil shot him a look then beckoned him inside the shop for a moment. “What you after? Mary Jane?”
Rayne shook his head.
“There’s a place up on the boardwalk that sells poppers and maybe a bit of speed if you’re lucky,” Phil whispered.
“Junk?” Rayne asked in a low, solemn tone.
Phil shook his head for a moment. “Not unless Giovanni’s got anythin’. A couple of guys got busted in the spring for punting heavy goods. They’ve been extra vigilant this year, the cops. You can go down for a long time if they catch you.”
“Where’s Giovanni?” Rayne pressed him.
Phil managed a tight-lipped smile. “He runs a bar up on the boardwalk, next level, past the Collines, just before you get to the beach. There’s a pool club up there and he’s got a bar called the Laguna. Be careful if you get mixed up with Giovanni, Rayne.” He looked deadly serious again.