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belphegor1982So here's "story 1" I talked about in the previous post! It's a day at the beach, uncle and nephew, and I put a lot of personal stuff into it as I always do when I'm writing about uncle/aunt & nephew/niece interaction 🥰
Title: Beside the Side of the Silvery Sea
Fandom: The Mummy films
Genre: humour, family, a little bit of m/m romance
Rating: PG
Summary: Salt, sandcastles, and sunburns: a well-established recipe for a good day at the beach. Tastes even better with the addition of sharks, skipping stones, and (with a lot of luck) secret flirting with good-looking strangers.
Brighton, July 1933
There was something about the proximity of the sea, Jonathan decided, that turned even perfectly well-behaved children into tightly-wound human springs. Or jumping beans. Even Evy hadn’t been immune when they were kids. Naturally Alex, who had inherited her giant heart and passion for learning but also had an occasional mischievous streak a mile wide, was so excited he could hardly sit still on his seat.
“I can see the sea, Uncle Jon!”
“Oh can you?”
“Sure, it’s just behind that hill!”
Unlike his nephew Jonathan knew perfectly well that the English Channel did not, in fact, lie just behind the hill Alex was pointing at. Nevertheless he nodded with the acquired wisdom of the seasoned uncle who had learned by now some humouring was sometimes better than arguing. Especially when at the wheel of a car.
At least looking for glimpses of blue in the distance kept Alex from counting the minutes till they arrived. At six years old, the boy was quick and bright, though easily bored – but, fortunately, equally easily distracted. He absorbed knowledge like a sponge and was always eager to share it. Knowing this, all Jonathan had to do to avoid the dreaded “Are we there yet” was to ask a random question to get an enthusiastic conversation going.
The drive down the Old Steine – particularly once the sea did finally come into view – had Alex stare straight ahead with shining eyes.
“When we’re there,” he chirped while Jonathan looked for a place to park his car, “I’m gonna show you what I can do with the sand. Last time Mum and Dad took me to the beach I made the Pyramids of Giza and even the Sphinx! Well, Mum had to help me ‘cause I didn’t remember which one was in the middle – I thought it was the biggest pyramid but it’s actually the middle one, er, Khephren’s1. Anyway, now I know how to do it right!”
“Sounds great, partner,” said Jonathan somewhat distractedly as he manoeuvred the car into a fitting spot. “But you might rethink your plans. No sandcastles for you today, I’m afraid.”
Alex wrinkled his nose.
“Why’s that?”
The answer came all too soon when uncle and nephew set foot on Brighton Beach. Alex’s jaw dropped open.
“But… But…”
His flabbergasted stare quickly became an open-mouthed look of horror.
“It’s all rocks!”
“Shingle, actually,” said Jonathan cheerfully, looking around with some satisfaction at the assorted beach-goers stretched out on towels or reclining on deckchairs.
“But where’s the sand!?”
“Busy being sand on other beaches, I suppose. You didn’t think all beaches were the same, did you? Besides, I thought you’d have your share of sand by now.”
Alex squinted up at him from under the brim of his cap.
“You’re only saying that ‘cause of that scorpion you found in your shaving kit last time we went to Egypt.”
“I was not, but thank you for the reminder. Anyway, no scorpions here. The only things one might have to watch out for are crosscurrents and the occasional angry jellyfish. It’s a perfectly good beach, you know.”
“But I can’t make sandcastles.”
He looked so dejected that Jonathan nudged him and said, “Well, you can always go for a model of Stonehenge. And if we find a place that’s not crowded and the water is flat enough I can show you how to make ducks and drakes2.”
Alex did brighten at that.
The beach was not, as Jonathan had feared, packed. While there were plenty of people, setting down a rented deckchair and making a space for themselves only took a minute. Getting Alex’s clothes off of him until all he had on were his shorts took a little more time, as the boy kept wriggling, torn between wanting to head straight for the water and the discomfort of having hot pebbles under his feet for the first time. His dilemma was short-lived, however, and once he was decided Jonathan had to dart after him before he ran into the sea with his socks on.
While Alex splashed about in the shallows, water up to his knees, Jonathan took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs above the ankles, and turned his face towards the sun, eyes closed.
Sunshine on his eyelids, a slight breeze on his face, smooth warm pebbles under the sole of his feet. And no sand whatsoever.
Oh, this was the life.
For all that he tended to divide his time between a few clearly-defined geographical areas – London, Cairo, the Carnahan house in Surrey – Brighton was always a welcome irregularity in Jonathan’s schedule of (mostly) leisure. In the off-season it was often cold, sometimes melancholic, always a balm for the soul; in the summer it was lively, cheerful, the perfect escape from things like the oppressive heat of the metropolis or the insistent inquiries of disgruntled cardsharps.
For once Jonathan was fleeing neither. He was simply looking forward to an afternoon at the beach with his nephew, whom his parents had entrusted him with for the weekend. Evy had been invited to a series of conferences in Cambridge, of all places, by some of the Bembridge Scholars; the invitation only had one ‘plus one’ and there was no way Rick O’Connell would ever let his wife into such a nest of vipers alone.
Hence, Alex. Who, just past his sixth birthday, fancied himself quite the grown-up and had been chuffed at the prospect of spending a couple of days in London with his uncle. They had seen a talkie at the Gaumont Palace, tried to make crêpes and ended up getting fish and chips instead, and at Alex’s insistence gone to see the Peter Pan statue at Hyde Park, where Jonathan had barely managed to keep him from diving into the Serpentine.
Alex was a decent swimmer for his age. But if they had trailed muddy water up the stairs to Jonathan’s flat, the landlord would probably have kicked him out.
“Mummy, Mummy! Can I play with the little boy?”
The shrill voice made Jonathan’s eyes pop open. A little girl of about Alex’s vintage, wearing improbable swimwear apparently cobbled together from a pair of women’s drawers two decades old, was standing near his charge, short blond curls bobbing up and down at the same frequency she seemed to vibrate at.
“May I play, darling, not ‘can’. Have you asked him if he wanted to play with you?”
The woman who answered could only be the girl’s mother. Blonde, lively, she had a cheerful face and the same twinkling eyes. Her own swimsuit – unflattering as only this species of garment could be – did nothing to hide the sort of delicious curves only women over the age of thirty could boast of. She had probably spent the last decade in what modern society now refused to call a corset. There were plenty of changes in fashion that had made Jonathan like the Twenties a lot, but flattened curves and boxy silhouettes were not one of them.
Evidently some negotiations had already taken place between Alex and his prospective new playmate. He agreed quickly, all the better to pick up their conversation where they had left off. He also did not ask Jonathan for permission. Whether because his trusting nature overruled propriety or because he simply was not in the habit of asking adults for permission, Jonathan genuinely had no idea.
The woman looked wrong-footed at the blatant disregard for rules for a minute, but acknowledged Jonathan with a polite nod and a “That’s children for you” smile before walking away, presumably back to the spot she and her daughter had claimed on the beach.
Jonathan watched Alex and his new friend flap about like a couple of happy seals in about a feet and a half of water with a smile. Then he retreated to his deckchair, where he could keep an eye on Alex – the slope of the shore provided him with an excellent vantage point – and enjoy the beach like any day-tripper worth his salt.
After a while spent soaking up the sun with his hat over his eyes, he was comfortable enough to strip down to his swimming trunks. Resolutely ignoring the little voice that whispered he looked absurd and a little ridiculous – it was only a happy few who didn’t, after all – he checked on Alex before reaching for his hat again.
And in doing so, caught the eyes of a man sitting on a wooden bench a few feet away, looking at him.
No, not looking – looking.
Ah.
Another reason Jonathan liked Brighton so much was of a much more personal nature than enjoying the sea air and a stroll on the piers. Like in London, the crowd of tourists and day-trippers mingling with the locals meant a certain anonymity for the passer-by; unlike London, Brighton was notorious in some select circles as a place where you could get away with a little leeway with what certain laws strictly prohibited elsewhere. It wasn’t freedom, far from it – two fellows could still get arrested if they weren’t careful – but you could, at least, meet a kindred spirit, or take a special friend, and none would be the wiser. It was like a parallel world, really, once you knew what to look for: the moment Jonathan had set foot on the beach he had spotted two young men with nervous eyes, looking anywhere but at where their hands touched as they sat on the ground, and further west a couple of sunbathing middle-aged women lying very close together, one of whom had her head on the other one’s shoulder. To the many happy (oblivious) families sharing the shingle with them they looked like old friends, or maybe close relations. But Jonathan – who at almost thirty-eight years of age had been aware for over two dozen years that his tastes had a wider range than most, and was well-versed in some subtle signals – knew better.
He’d had his own couple of flings in Brighton. They were easy and uncomplicated in a way such encounters couldn’t be anywhere else. Not really the place you hoped to meet your one true love, if you even believed in such a thing, but if you were lucky, you could have a discreetly flirty conversation on the beach, followed by a shared drink or a meal in good company at one of the nearby restaurants, and – if you were really, really lucky – spend some time in a nice little hotel room with someone as lonely as you and looking to forget that fact for a day or two. Plus lounge on the beach. As intense and colourful London could be, the sound of waves and the taste of salt and sunshine on a lover’s skin were a very special treat.
Of course, this time Jonathan hadn’t come down to Brighton in search of company of any sort. He already had a lot of it in Alex, even though the boy had temporarily deserted him for a friend his age. But still he chanced a glance back. No harm in just looking, he supposed.
Good Lord.
The fellow wasn’t very tall – average height, or just about. From the look of it he was Jonathan’s age or slightly older; from the whisper of silver at the temples to generous muscles softened by a hint of embonpoint, just enough to be comfortable, everything spoke of that vibrant part of life that had left youth behind but hadn’t yet tipped into middle age, either. And he was handsome. Full lips, bright eyes, sharp cheekbones, and – didn’t that just take the biscuit – tousled hair just on the longer side of fashionable, shining with salt and sea water.
Jonathan realised, belatedly, that he was staring.
Oh, bad idea.
The man must have got the message Jonathan had not intended to actually send, for he stood up and walked towards him, a clear limp in his step. One glance lower confirmed to Jonathan that he’d been so busy staring at the fellow’s upper body he had completely overlooked the nasty scar running down his thigh. Now that he had noticed it, it was impossible to miss, especially when all the chap had on were swimming trunks.
The man followed his gaze down and gave a wry smile.
“Ghastly, I know. Little souvenir from Passchendaele.”
His voice was low-pitched and warm, with a slight Midlands accent. It suited him perfectly.
Jonathan let the first comment fly. The scar did not actually look ‘ghastly’, although from the man’s gait it must still be painful after a decade and a half. But acknowledging the fact that he hadn’t even seen it because his mind had stayed stuck on everything else was just as inappropriate as though he had been staring at it in the first place.
“Shrapnel?”
“Machine gun and a wound that would not heal. Where did you get yours?”
He nodded in Jonathan’s general direction. The glance and the word “yours” were vague enough that he could allude to Jonathan’s own ‘souvenir’ from the Second Battle of the Marne3 – a jagged mark on the outer side of his right thigh – or to the ones he had brought back from Hamunaptra a few years ago, the rough tear in his palm and on his shoulder. For the sake of simplicity Jonathan chose his own interpretation of the question.
“Personally I like answering this question with ‘in an unfortunate cricket accident’,” he said airily. “It spares people the trouble of being embarrassed for asking.”
It also conveniently deflected potential talk of the Great War. Jonathan’s relationship with his twenty-two months long service in France was a peculiar one, in that he liked nothing more than forgetting it had happened at all and avoided reminders at all costs.
The man’s mouth twitched. From the slight crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes he wasn’t stingy with his smiles. He must not be a stranger to the game: his stance was loose, casual, even as some subtle clues signalled he might not be adverse to getting closer.
Hope made Jonathan’s heart leap in his chest. He squashed it mercilessly. Until he had a clear reading of the situation any hoping could be dangerous. Besides, he had Alex to think about this afternoon.
“And I thought I had a good conversation starter,” said the man, a smile in his eyes and his voice. “Hell of a cricket match, eh?”
“The worst I’ve ever seen. The umpires were just shoddy and I thought the innings would never end.”
“It was all a bit of a sticky wicket from the start, wasn’t it?” They exchanged a look, one veteran to another, but to Jonathan’s relief the fellow did not try to press the issue. He only held out his hand. “I’m Harry.”
“Jonathan.”
Harry’s handshake was strong, dry and warm, and lingered a second longer than the socially acceptable kind. Jonathan’s doubts about whether the man was indeed interested in him in that way or not vanished on the spot, leaving enthusiastic – though discreet – reciprocation in their wake.
But…
“Do you come here often?” Harry asked, all false innocence. The insinuation in his voice was so transparent it felt like a shared joke rather than an innuendo. Jonathan rested his elbows on his knees and grinned up at him, pulled into the game in spite of himself. God, the fellow was attractive.
“Not as often as I’d like. This is a great little town, it deserves to be enjoyed properly. Seeing the sights and all that, visiting the aquarium, not just the beach.”
“Well,” said Harry, warm and casual with just a touch of diffidence, “if you ever w—”
He was interrupted by a small whirlwind, sopping wet, that descended on Jonathan and sprayed him with droplets of salt water.
“I saw a shark!” Alex wailed, sounding half-terrified and half-excited.
Jonathan’s brain, caught square in the no man’s land between ‘being an uncle’ and ‘flirting with a stranger’ (and a male stranger, at that), screeched to a stop.
“Wait, what? What do you mean, a shark!?”
There was a sharp intake of breath beside him. Jonathan’s head swivelled to Harry, who had gone tense and a little pale.
“I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding here,” he said stiffly as he took a step back. “My mistake. Have a nice day.”
Jonathan’s heart sank. He had to bite his tongue to swallow the “No, wait!” that almost burst out of him. Whatever Harry had inferred couldn’t be much different than the truth: his priority was Alex, and Alex alone. No matter how interested he was in continuing this conversation wherever it may lead – and interested he was – he just could not afford to run after a potential date.
Being an uncle was the one responsibility Jonathan Carnahan refused to skirt. He may be a layabout and own up to the fact, but everyone had standards, and by God so did he.
He allowed himself one glance at the retreating form of Harry, doing his best to keep the regret from his face.
“Who was that, Uncle Jon?” asked Alex.
“A friend.” For some reason Jonathan made it a point of honour to never lie to Alex. I lie to everybody, he’d said to Evy once, what makes you so special? That was before Alex’s birth, and since then he’d had six years to ponder the fact that he somehow refused to tell his nephew an outright lie. Stretching the truth was fair game, as long as it was still a truth. Saying Harry was “a friend”, by Jonathan’s reckoning, was not a lie. Rather wishful thinking. “What did you do with yours? Don’t tell me you abandoned her to your shark.”
Alex shook his head and gripped Jonathan’s arm, dripping water all over him.
“Her mum called her back earlier. C’mon, come and see! Maybe it’s still there!”
The boy’s enthusiasm, while not quite as infectious as it could be, was still as endearing as always. Jonathan put his hat on his chair and let Alex tow him to the water with a small smile.
“You mean the shark.”
“Yes!”
“The shark you were so afraid of you ran out to get me?”
“Well yeah, but I figured you’d scare it off if it tried to attack me.”
The mind of a child works in mysterious ways, Jonathan mused. He was most likely the least scary member of their little family, Alex included, but somehow to his precocious six years old nephew he was enough of an Adult to scare away sharks. His heart hitched itself back up a little in his chest as he walked into the water with something of a swagger in his step.
Sure enough, when Jonathan stood mid-calf in the shallows, Alex beside him with his little hand around his, their portion of the sea was completely devoid of sharks.
“Are you sure it’s a shark you saw?”
“It was, Uncle Jon, I swear!”
“What’d it look like?”
Alex’s whole face scrunched up in thought.
“It was small, with spots all over and a round head. Its tail moved like that, look. I know it’s a shark, I saw it in a book about sharks Dad read me. I just don’t remember what it’s called.”
Alex still couldn’t read complex sentences or write more than his own name and words like “Mum”, “Dad”, “Uncle Jon” and “Egypt” (the latter was a feat in and of itself), but he could draw the statues at Abu Simbel by memory and name all three of the Pyramids of Giza. If he said “I saw it in a book”, Jonathan was inclined to believe him.
Then something clicked.
“I say, Alex,” Jonathan said with a smile, “I think you saw a catshark.”
“A what?”
“A type of dogfish. Don’t worry, though, it couldn’t have attacked you it if tried. Too small for that.”
Emotions flashed across Alex’s face in rapid succession: relief, disappointment, puzzlement.
“Wait. How is a catshark a dogfish?”
“I have no idea. But that’s how it is.”
“And you’re sure it wouldn’t have eaten me?”
“Oh, I’m sure. I take dangerous wildlife very seriously.”
It was half a self-deprecating joke, and Jonathan almost expected Alex to snicker. Instead the boy tilted his head to the side and grabbed his left hand for a look.
“Is that ‘cause you got bitten?”
Sometimes Jonathan wondered if all kids were this blunt or if Alex was just special. His honesty was somewhat refreshing, though.
“Yes, it’s because I got bitten.”
“Oh. Okay.”
And just like that, the matter was dropped.
If only things could be so simple with everyone else…
“Uncle Jon?”
“Hm?”
“Want to see how good I can swim?”
To be fair, Alex wasn’t forthright all the time. Now, for instance, was a perfect example of him being sneaky. What he really meant to ask Jonathan for wasn’t only attention, but also possible support in case things didn’t go quite as well as he hoped. Alex was getting rather good at bravado.
Jonathan nodded gravely.
“Show me, then.”
They ended up venturing a little deeper into the sea, until Alex had water up to the armpits and could paddle about happily, splashing as much as he could while still remaining afloat. Naturally, this led to Jonathan doing some splashing of his own in retaliation, because if you couldn’t be goofy and childish with an actual six-year-old, then when?
The fun lasted until Jonathan noticed Alex’s lips were turning blue from the cold. His own shoulder was beginning to twinge as well, as were some of the tendons in his left hand. And no wonder: even at the height of summer, the English Channel would never be the Mediterranean.
Thus Jonathan grabbed his squirming nephew, who at that point felt like an enormous fish spouting half-hearted colourful protests in the place of water, and walked up the gentle slope back to dry land. Thank God the boy was still on the small side. One or two years more and the only one left with enough strength to pick him up would be Rick.
Alex still appeared mutinous bundled into his towel. A little later, though, when he had donned his shirt and short trousers again, warm and dry with the sun on his head and warm pebbles under his feet, he had completely finished his thaw, both external and internal.
And promptly declared he would – for lack of sand to make sandcastles – undertake the construction of the Saqqara Step Pyramid out of pebbles.
“It’s not as pretty as the Sphinx,” he said with a theatrical sigh, “but it’ll do, I suppose.”
Jonathan bit on his lip to keep from laughing out loud. That kid really could ham it up with the best of the West End actors.
They chatted about this and that, uncle and nephew, while Alex built his pyramid and Jonathan let the sun finish drying him up and warming him to the tips of his toes. And then out of the blue Alex asked idly, without even looking up at him, “Uncle Jon? Why don’t you have children?”
Jonathan opened his mouth. Closed it. Possible answers popped up in his mind, only for him to knock each of them down.
The traditional answer for a single man was “I haven’t found the right woman yet”, but did he really want to do that, knowing it could then segue into a very different direction? Was Alex even aware that it took two people – two adults – to make a child? What if he simply hadn’t thought about it before, and thus hadn’t asked Evy and Rick the awkward questions yet?
Jonathan was in no way, shape or form ready to go down that rabbit hole. He doubted he would ever be.
In the end, the answer was simple and self-evident.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t want any.”
“Why?” asked Alex between two pebbles.
“I don’t know. It’s like catsharks and dogfishes. Sometimes that’s just how things are.”
“Okay.”
And, like earlier, Jonathan’s answer was accepted at face value. No further questioning, no Someday you’ll meet someone who’ll make you change your mind, only tranquil acquiescence before moving on to more important things. Like how to protect your pyramid from bandits and did the Ancient Egyptians have pirates.
For all that Alex could be a handful sometimes, some things about him were refreshingly simple. Hence why Jonathan – who had with the concept of truth the kind of relationship you might have with an elderly next-door neighbour, whom you waved hello to but rarely engaged in conversation – Jonathan Did Not Lie to him.
Not outright, anyway.
The conversation moved from pirates to ships, from ships to the sea, and from there to uncomfortable truths.
“I swear, the first time your mum set you down on a beach you howled.”
“Not true!”
“Of course it’s true. Nothing to be ashamed of, either. You were yea high, not even a year old, the ocean was a big loud scary thing.”
“Well,” said Alex, his voice ringing with conviction, “I’m not scared now. Being scared is for babies.” He picked up a handful of pebbles and asked, hesitant, “Nothing to be ashamed of? Really?”
“Really.”
“Huh.” A beat. “Ronnie, from school. He’s scared of birds. Kenneth says that’s dumb.”
“Oh?”
“But last year we found a snake in the playground and Ronnie wasn’t scared at all. He said ‘That’s a grass snake, don’t hurt it, it’s not a bad snake’ and he made it go away.”
“Good show. What did Kenneth say, then?”
Alex’s expression went glum.
“He didn’t say anything. Just yelled and grabbed a stick to beat the snake with. But it wasn’t even doing anything! Ronnie’s afraid of birds but he doesn’t want to kill them.” Then, just as Jonathan was racking his brains for a good, adult remark, something that would lift up Alex’s spirits, the boy looked up at him and asked, “Can you kill the ocean?”
It took all of Jonathan’s willpower not to burst out laughing. He squinted at Alex with his mouth partly open, hoping his face wasn’t twitching. Sometimes it paid to have a good poker face.
“…No, you can’t kill the ocean.”
“Can you kill sand?”
The urge to laugh abruptly died, replaced by a flash of memory – ground, sky, everything gone and replaced by sand and motion then a shock that rattled every single bone in his body and almost made him throw up his lungs—
“I don’t think so,” articulated Jonathan after dragging himself with an effort out of the memory of the worst flight in his life. Alex appeared thoughtful.
“So… If water and sand could fight, who d’you think would win?”
Perhaps the most uncomfortable thing about talking with a child was how often the words I don’t know crossed your mind. No wonder so many fellow adults limited their interactions with children to a lot of nodding and smiling without truly listening and patronising pats on the head. It was never pleasant to be made to appear ignorant.
Jonathan ignored the part of him that wanted to throw out his arms and exclaim How would I know that!? and searched for an adequate answer.
He was saved from having to find one by the little girl from earlier, now wearing a summer dress instead of swimwear. She navigated her way around the clusters of people on deckchairs or towels and stood in front of the two of them diffidently, rocking her shoulders back and forth.
“Hi, Gladys!” said Alex gaily, all thoughts of elemental warring forgotten.
“Mummy says,” the little girl said in a lilting voice with a bit of a lisp, hesitating like she had trouble remembering lines she’d been made to memorise, “Mummy says I’m to ask your uncle if you can… may… If you want to have afternoon tea with us. And biscuits. We are over there,” she added with conviction, pointing at a spot a few yards away where her mother sat looking at her daughter encouragingly. Obviously little Gladys was a lot more shy than Alex had ever been. She did appear slightly younger, too.
“Sure,” said Alex, and the girl beamed. Her smile had random gaps where baby teeth were missing. Definitely younger than Alex, then. “Uncle Jon? Can I go, please?”
Alex was capable of asking for permission. He just didn’t bother most of the time.
“You can and you may,” said Jonathan.
“Watch my pyramid for me?”
“I’ll guard it with my life.”
Alex’s grin told him his deliberate exaggeration had been taken in the spirit it was intended. He sprang up to follow the girl, and Jonathan called after him, “Bring me back a biscuit?”
“You betcha!” Alex yelled back, startling a few beach-goers – either by the volume of his voice or the American colloquialism.
Ah, well. It was inevitable that the kid would get his mannerisms from both his parents, after all. A little exoticism in his speech was only to be expected. And seeing a couple of old folks figuratively clutch their pearls as Alex walked past them was, admittedly, hilarious.
Jonathan settled back into his deckchair as comfortably as he could and pulled his hat low over his face again. Since Alex was being looked after right now, perhaps he could afford to close his eyes and drowse for a moment…
An uneven footfall reached his ears just before a shadow fell across him.
When Jonathan opened his eyes and lifted his hat, Harry was standing near, a pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, caution spelled clearly in his posture and the lines of his face. He had changed his bathing trunks for trousers and a soft linen shirt, light enough for the breeze to play a little with his open collar. It didn’t make him look any less appealing.
“I heard the boy call you his uncle earlier,” he said in a low voice, “and I thought… First impressions can be misleading, but maybe I misunderstood the misunderstanding after all.”
“That depends,” said Jonathan as casually as he could. “What was your first impression?”
Harry put out his pipe and looked away for a second with a sheepish smile.
“‘There’s a fellow I’d like to drink with’, mostly. I’d never heard anyone call the War a cricket match before. And I hoped we’d share… common interests.”
“Oh, I think it’s safe to say we do.” Jonathan saw him lean more of his weight on his good leg and gestured to his beach towel, which he had spread on the ground next to his chair. Harry put his extinguished pipe in his pocket and sat down with a grateful look. “And… Your second impression?”
“Er. ‘Bollocks, he’s actually a family man and I’m done for if I don’t scarper’.”
The phrasing and the self-deprecation in his voice made Jonathan shake his head with a grin, which faded when Harry added a little more quietly, “I noticed you didn’t try to disabuse me of that notion.”
Jonathan’s breath caught in his throat for a second, sharp and brief.
“Believe me, any other day I would have, like a shot. Today, though…”
His gaze strayed to Alex and his two hosts in the distance, chatting away happily as they snacked on biscuits and a thermos of tea. Maybe that was what childhood was all about, in a way: sunshine, adventures with sharks, and lifelong friendships that lasted all of one afternoon before fading into oblivion. Goodness knew Jonathan had had his share of it as a little boy. Including – on one memorable occasion – the shark part.
“Well,” he concluded with a sigh, “it’s just rotten timing, isn’t it.”
“Is that all this comes down to?” Harry’s voice was low, though without hesitation. “Timing?”
“Doesn’t everything?” Jonathan said, falling back to irony like he usually did when things hit uncomfortably close.
Despite his jokes, he had – to his own surprise – been truthful enough. While he didn’t regret a single second of time spent with his nephew, he was at least self-aware enough to know the bitter taste of a missed opportunity. Being practically propositioned like this in earnest was rare enough, let alone by someone he was actually attracted to, maybe even liked. And now? He and Harry would part ways, a chance encounter cut short, and the might have beens would become never weres. Exchanging last names or addresses was out of the question; this went against every rule in the book. One-night stands with a fellow (or one-day stands, or two days if things got really good) were only safe if they stayed casual, almost anonymous. Letters one thought were private could always fall into the wrong hands. Even Jonathan, with his elastic connection to rules, didn’t want to risk everything just for the sake of a few hours of fun.
Harry would simply remain one small regret on an ever-growing list.
“Well,” said Harry, cutting across Jonathan’s wallowing in self-pity, “if this is only a question of timing, I’m free all week. We could work something out.”
Jonathan, abruptly pulled back to the here and now, turned in his deckchair to stare at him, leaning a hand on the ground for balance.
“Didn’t you have plans for today?” he asked, unable to keep a trace of suspicion from his voice. Chemistry or not, who upended their schedule for a perfect stranger?
Harry shrugged. “Not even one. The papers said it’d be a sunny day so I hopped on a train to Brighton. It’s about an hour away and a favourite beach of mine.”
“Same here,” said Jonathan with a crooked grin, allowing hope to flicker into existence again. Perhaps things could be simple, after all. “You never know what you’ll find. For instance, my nephew found a shark and surprise biscuits, and I – well.”
The deckchair was so low they were practically level with each other. Jonathan still had one hand on the sand, next to Harry’s; it would only take half an inch for their fingers to meet.
And meet they did. (Discreetly.)
Somehow, the smaller the touch, the louder it resonated through Jonathan. Especially in public, and especially with a man. It was a familiar blend, a mishmash of boyish glee at getting away with something dangerous and forbidden, tired exasperation at even this harmless gesture being treated as dangerous and forbidden, and a thrill down his spine at the silent promise of more to come. Given the right circumstances, even the tiniest, simplest contact had the power – or at least the potential – to unmake him. If he let it.
“What did you find, then?” Harry asked in a voice that made Jonathan’s mouth very dry all of a sudden.
He smelled like sea salt, sunshine, and pipe smoke. From up close his eyes looked even brighter, framed by dark eyelashes.
To hell with never weres. Jonathan had always been partial to doing things, at the risk of regretting them later, over not doing things and regretting that later. Even if all this ever amounted to was a pleasant chat and a couple of stolen hours, chances like that were too rare and this one too good to be allowed to become one more might have been.
Jonathan’s thumb brushed the palm of Harry’s hand for a second.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s definitely worth looking into.”
Harry replied with a smile that told Jonathan he’d made a good decision. More of that smile in more private circumstances would be simply splendid. As for the rest…
He let go of Harry’s hand with regret and settled back into his deckchair, relaxing his body language into something that telegraphed friendly nonchalance. At a cursory glance, at least. It wouldn’t fool any of his regular poker partners, but – and this was part of the charm of Brighton – people here were nowhere as attentive.
“If I said the West Pier is best enjoyed at eleven o’clock on Wednesdays,” he asked with a smile as falsely innocent as Harry’s question of Do you come here often had been earlier, “do you think I might meet you there next week?”
Harry laughed out loud.
“Eleven, eh? All right, I’ll be there.”
“We might even go see the aquarium while we’re at it.”
“You know what? I’d actually like that.”
The smile they shared had a lot of words in it, gone unsaid. They would have have been wry, amused, wary still. Ultimately, saying them out loud didn’t feel very important.
In the silence that followed, Harry’s eyes fell on Alex’s mostly-completed pyramid and he raised his eyebrows.
“…Is that a Mesoamerican pyramid?”
Jonathan blinked.
“Egyptian, actually. Djoser’s Step Pyramid, in Saqqara. My nephew has an eye for art and architecture.”
“Bloody good eye. He’s what, about seven?”
“Six. And you should see his drawings.”
Even as the words left his mouth Jonathan wished he could have held his tongue for once. Meeting family was not the reason men – and women – met here. Many even came down here to get away from family.
Honestly, certain business with mummies, scarabs, and pesky apocalypses aside, Jonathan knew he’d got exceedingly lucky with his. Even if it comprised all of three people, and even if none of them – thank God – were aware that the people he dallied with were fairly evenly split between the two sexes.
Thankfully, Harry didn’t comment. He leant past Jonathan to look down the beach, inadvertently brushing his bare forearm against his. Intentional or not, the understated sensuality of the gesture raised the hairs on both men’s arms.
Oh, come on, Jonathan scolded himself, inwardly rolling his eyes at the way his heartbeat picked up speed. You’re not a bloody teenager anymore, for God’s sake.
Harry cleared his throat and jerked his chin eastwards.
“Speaking of,” he said with a faint smile. “I think here comes my cue to leave.”
Sure enough, Alex, after saying goodbye to Gladys and her mum, was carefully making his way back amongst the deckchairs and towels and the people populating them. Jonathan thrust one hand in the air to make sure the boy knew where to look and turned back to Harry. “See you on Wednesday, then?”
“Definitely. I hope it’ll be sunny.”
“Personally I’m rather hoping for rain.”
Harry chuckled.
“Well, I’ll take what I can get,” he said with a grin that softened as he laid one hand on Jonathan’s arm for a second. “Cheers.”
“Bye,” said Jonathan, who felt the warmth of the brief contact on his skin a full minute after Harry had stood up and limped away. Well. There was no mistaking the pull in the pit of his stomach. Whether he chalked it up to the man’s direct manner, his genial charm, or to the fact that it had been a while since he himself had shared any kind of intimate contact with someone, Jonathan was absolutely willing to continue what had been started.
He allowed himself three seconds to stare after the muscular back, the round bottom, and the long, sloping shoulders. Then he turned to the opposite direction and switched his brain back to ‘being an uncle’ as Alex reached his deckchair, hobbling a little on the pebbles.
“Was that your friend from earlier, Uncle Jon? What’d you talk about?”
“Boring adult stuff,” Jonathan replied easily. Anything directly or indirectly related to romance was boring to Alex. Jonathan himself was inclined to agree with him when it concerned his sister and brother-in-law being disgustingly soppy and affectionate with each other. “Did you get my biscuit?”
Alex extracted a small shortbread from the pocket of his short trousers and proudly held it out. Jonathan took it with a thanks, making a mental note to make him turn out his pockets to shake the crumbs out before getting back into the car.
Once he had brushed off the bits of fluff, the biscuit turned out to be quite good, with a nice buttery taste.
“Gladys’ mum made them,” said Alex as though in confidence, “and Gladys helped. She said it wasn’t hard to make, too, and that Mum could make ‘em easily. I didn’t tell her Dad’s the one who likes to make the cakes.”
Jonathan nodded. The two Carnahan siblings were fairly evenly matched in cooking prowess, or lack thereof: Jonathan was too easily distracted to follow instructions in the right order from start to finish, and Evy, for all of her goodwill, was too focused on her own interests to treat cooking seriously. She would start on a recipe, think of an alternative translation for an expression in Manetho’s Aegyptica, and stay engrossed in her work all afternoon while pots and ingredients lay forlorn on the kitchen table. After Rick wandered in on such scenes of desolation once or twice, he did what Jonathan could never be bothered to do: take an interest in finishing what had been started. The first results had been pretty hit-and-miss, but with experience and a bit of trial and error Rick’s cooking endeavours paid off. For the past couple of years now Jonathan had known he could safely pilfer the freshly-made ‘cookies’ that held pride of place in the dining room without losing a tooth in the process when he visited the Carnahan-O’Connell residence.
Alex stared at him intently while he finished chewing.
Hm. There might be a message there.
“What?” he asked, squinting at Alex to try to hazard a guess. “Do I have something on my nose? It can’t be sunburn, I’ve never got one in my entire life—”
Alex’s words came out in a rush. “You said you would show me how to make ducks and drakes!”
Well then, so he had. And Alex had even waited until he’d finished his biscuit instead of just grabbing him and hauling him to the edge of the water. Jonathan took a second to appreciate that fact.
“You’re right,” he said after licking the buttery crumbs from his fingers, “and a promise is a promise. C’mere.”
Finding a patch of sea free enough of people that they didn’t risk taking someone’s eye out with a rock took a little while. In the end they settled for the foot of the Palace Pier, since no-one was willing to swim in the shade and a current that could send you crashing on one of the iron feet of the Pier.
Jonathan delighted in teaching his nephew the correct wrist angle and which pebbles were the right shape to bounce off the water, the way he’d learned it around Alex’s age. The boy curbed his impatience and absorbed the information with an intensity that was very reminiscent of his mother. That seriousness was tempered by something a little more laid back that Jonathan recognised as very Rick. As long as nobody was in mortal danger, his brother-in-law was pretty unruffled.
As the day wore on, uncle and nephew skimmed stones, bickered amiably, and pigged out on cotton candy. Alex got sunburnt and Jonathan got his trousers wet up to the knees venturing into the sea after Alex dropped his hat from the pier. All in all, Jonathan thought as he drove home early in the evening, a sleeping nephew in the passenger seat, a truly excellent afternoon.
And if the thought of the coming Wednesday gave him a secret thrill, something small and private that warmed him up from a point below his ribcage, well, that was just a particularly sweet brandied cherry on top of the cake.
This story came from a prompt on Tumblr with only three words: “Jonathan”, “Alex”, and “seaside”. I set out to write a cute snapshot, probably shorter than a thousand words, with cute uncle and nephew shenanigans; my brain had a different idea. Hope you’ll like it. There’s still plenty of cute uncle and nephew shenanigans, at least.
The title is from the 1907 music hall song “I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside”, which even in the time this story is set would have been very old-fashioned :D
Fun fact! In the words of a friend who lives there and is settled pretty comfortably in the “queer” spectrum, Brighton is and has long been “very gay” too. Having same-sex relationships in the 1930s was just as forbidden as in the 1910s, but you still could use codes to signal your sexuality to like-minded people who might be interested. Plus it was a place where a lot of art people lived (authors, actors, artists), which is still the case today. Also, even though it’s sadly hit by things like drugs and homelessness as badly as other places in the UK, it’s one of its most gay-friendly towns :o) (Also sadly, the West Pier doesn’t exist today; it fell into disrepair in the 1970s, and after storms and arsons it’s mostly a skeletal structure. The Palace Pier, however, is still thriving in the 2020s. There’s an arcade, roller coasters and children’s rides.)
Title: Beside the Side of the Silvery Sea
Fandom: The Mummy films
Genre: humour, family, a little bit of m/m romance
Rating: PG
Summary: Salt, sandcastles, and sunburns: a well-established recipe for a good day at the beach. Tastes even better with the addition of sharks, skipping stones, and (with a lot of luck) secret flirting with good-looking strangers.
Brighton, July 1933
There was something about the proximity of the sea, Jonathan decided, that turned even perfectly well-behaved children into tightly-wound human springs. Or jumping beans. Even Evy hadn’t been immune when they were kids. Naturally Alex, who had inherited her giant heart and passion for learning but also had an occasional mischievous streak a mile wide, was so excited he could hardly sit still on his seat.
“I can see the sea, Uncle Jon!”
“Oh can you?”
“Sure, it’s just behind that hill!”
Unlike his nephew Jonathan knew perfectly well that the English Channel did not, in fact, lie just behind the hill Alex was pointing at. Nevertheless he nodded with the acquired wisdom of the seasoned uncle who had learned by now some humouring was sometimes better than arguing. Especially when at the wheel of a car.
At least looking for glimpses of blue in the distance kept Alex from counting the minutes till they arrived. At six years old, the boy was quick and bright, though easily bored – but, fortunately, equally easily distracted. He absorbed knowledge like a sponge and was always eager to share it. Knowing this, all Jonathan had to do to avoid the dreaded “Are we there yet” was to ask a random question to get an enthusiastic conversation going.
The drive down the Old Steine – particularly once the sea did finally come into view – had Alex stare straight ahead with shining eyes.
“When we’re there,” he chirped while Jonathan looked for a place to park his car, “I’m gonna show you what I can do with the sand. Last time Mum and Dad took me to the beach I made the Pyramids of Giza and even the Sphinx! Well, Mum had to help me ‘cause I didn’t remember which one was in the middle – I thought it was the biggest pyramid but it’s actually the middle one, er, Khephren’s1. Anyway, now I know how to do it right!”
“Sounds great, partner,” said Jonathan somewhat distractedly as he manoeuvred the car into a fitting spot. “But you might rethink your plans. No sandcastles for you today, I’m afraid.”
Alex wrinkled his nose.
“Why’s that?”
The answer came all too soon when uncle and nephew set foot on Brighton Beach. Alex’s jaw dropped open.
“But… But…”
His flabbergasted stare quickly became an open-mouthed look of horror.
“It’s all rocks!”
“Shingle, actually,” said Jonathan cheerfully, looking around with some satisfaction at the assorted beach-goers stretched out on towels or reclining on deckchairs.
“But where’s the sand!?”
“Busy being sand on other beaches, I suppose. You didn’t think all beaches were the same, did you? Besides, I thought you’d have your share of sand by now.”
Alex squinted up at him from under the brim of his cap.
“You’re only saying that ‘cause of that scorpion you found in your shaving kit last time we went to Egypt.”
“I was not, but thank you for the reminder. Anyway, no scorpions here. The only things one might have to watch out for are crosscurrents and the occasional angry jellyfish. It’s a perfectly good beach, you know.”
“But I can’t make sandcastles.”
He looked so dejected that Jonathan nudged him and said, “Well, you can always go for a model of Stonehenge. And if we find a place that’s not crowded and the water is flat enough I can show you how to make ducks and drakes2.”
Alex did brighten at that.
The beach was not, as Jonathan had feared, packed. While there were plenty of people, setting down a rented deckchair and making a space for themselves only took a minute. Getting Alex’s clothes off of him until all he had on were his shorts took a little more time, as the boy kept wriggling, torn between wanting to head straight for the water and the discomfort of having hot pebbles under his feet for the first time. His dilemma was short-lived, however, and once he was decided Jonathan had to dart after him before he ran into the sea with his socks on.
While Alex splashed about in the shallows, water up to his knees, Jonathan took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs above the ankles, and turned his face towards the sun, eyes closed.
Sunshine on his eyelids, a slight breeze on his face, smooth warm pebbles under the sole of his feet. And no sand whatsoever.
Oh, this was the life.
For all that he tended to divide his time between a few clearly-defined geographical areas – London, Cairo, the Carnahan house in Surrey – Brighton was always a welcome irregularity in Jonathan’s schedule of (mostly) leisure. In the off-season it was often cold, sometimes melancholic, always a balm for the soul; in the summer it was lively, cheerful, the perfect escape from things like the oppressive heat of the metropolis or the insistent inquiries of disgruntled cardsharps.
For once Jonathan was fleeing neither. He was simply looking forward to an afternoon at the beach with his nephew, whom his parents had entrusted him with for the weekend. Evy had been invited to a series of conferences in Cambridge, of all places, by some of the Bembridge Scholars; the invitation only had one ‘plus one’ and there was no way Rick O’Connell would ever let his wife into such a nest of vipers alone.
Hence, Alex. Who, just past his sixth birthday, fancied himself quite the grown-up and had been chuffed at the prospect of spending a couple of days in London with his uncle. They had seen a talkie at the Gaumont Palace, tried to make crêpes and ended up getting fish and chips instead, and at Alex’s insistence gone to see the Peter Pan statue at Hyde Park, where Jonathan had barely managed to keep him from diving into the Serpentine.
Alex was a decent swimmer for his age. But if they had trailed muddy water up the stairs to Jonathan’s flat, the landlord would probably have kicked him out.
“Mummy, Mummy! Can I play with the little boy?”
The shrill voice made Jonathan’s eyes pop open. A little girl of about Alex’s vintage, wearing improbable swimwear apparently cobbled together from a pair of women’s drawers two decades old, was standing near his charge, short blond curls bobbing up and down at the same frequency she seemed to vibrate at.
“May I play, darling, not ‘can’. Have you asked him if he wanted to play with you?”
The woman who answered could only be the girl’s mother. Blonde, lively, she had a cheerful face and the same twinkling eyes. Her own swimsuit – unflattering as only this species of garment could be – did nothing to hide the sort of delicious curves only women over the age of thirty could boast of. She had probably spent the last decade in what modern society now refused to call a corset. There were plenty of changes in fashion that had made Jonathan like the Twenties a lot, but flattened curves and boxy silhouettes were not one of them.
Evidently some negotiations had already taken place between Alex and his prospective new playmate. He agreed quickly, all the better to pick up their conversation where they had left off. He also did not ask Jonathan for permission. Whether because his trusting nature overruled propriety or because he simply was not in the habit of asking adults for permission, Jonathan genuinely had no idea.
The woman looked wrong-footed at the blatant disregard for rules for a minute, but acknowledged Jonathan with a polite nod and a “That’s children for you” smile before walking away, presumably back to the spot she and her daughter had claimed on the beach.
Jonathan watched Alex and his new friend flap about like a couple of happy seals in about a feet and a half of water with a smile. Then he retreated to his deckchair, where he could keep an eye on Alex – the slope of the shore provided him with an excellent vantage point – and enjoy the beach like any day-tripper worth his salt.
After a while spent soaking up the sun with his hat over his eyes, he was comfortable enough to strip down to his swimming trunks. Resolutely ignoring the little voice that whispered he looked absurd and a little ridiculous – it was only a happy few who didn’t, after all – he checked on Alex before reaching for his hat again.
And in doing so, caught the eyes of a man sitting on a wooden bench a few feet away, looking at him.
No, not looking – looking.
Ah.
Another reason Jonathan liked Brighton so much was of a much more personal nature than enjoying the sea air and a stroll on the piers. Like in London, the crowd of tourists and day-trippers mingling with the locals meant a certain anonymity for the passer-by; unlike London, Brighton was notorious in some select circles as a place where you could get away with a little leeway with what certain laws strictly prohibited elsewhere. It wasn’t freedom, far from it – two fellows could still get arrested if they weren’t careful – but you could, at least, meet a kindred spirit, or take a special friend, and none would be the wiser. It was like a parallel world, really, once you knew what to look for: the moment Jonathan had set foot on the beach he had spotted two young men with nervous eyes, looking anywhere but at where their hands touched as they sat on the ground, and further west a couple of sunbathing middle-aged women lying very close together, one of whom had her head on the other one’s shoulder. To the many happy (oblivious) families sharing the shingle with them they looked like old friends, or maybe close relations. But Jonathan – who at almost thirty-eight years of age had been aware for over two dozen years that his tastes had a wider range than most, and was well-versed in some subtle signals – knew better.
He’d had his own couple of flings in Brighton. They were easy and uncomplicated in a way such encounters couldn’t be anywhere else. Not really the place you hoped to meet your one true love, if you even believed in such a thing, but if you were lucky, you could have a discreetly flirty conversation on the beach, followed by a shared drink or a meal in good company at one of the nearby restaurants, and – if you were really, really lucky – spend some time in a nice little hotel room with someone as lonely as you and looking to forget that fact for a day or two. Plus lounge on the beach. As intense and colourful London could be, the sound of waves and the taste of salt and sunshine on a lover’s skin were a very special treat.
Of course, this time Jonathan hadn’t come down to Brighton in search of company of any sort. He already had a lot of it in Alex, even though the boy had temporarily deserted him for a friend his age. But still he chanced a glance back. No harm in just looking, he supposed.
Good Lord.
The fellow wasn’t very tall – average height, or just about. From the look of it he was Jonathan’s age or slightly older; from the whisper of silver at the temples to generous muscles softened by a hint of embonpoint, just enough to be comfortable, everything spoke of that vibrant part of life that had left youth behind but hadn’t yet tipped into middle age, either. And he was handsome. Full lips, bright eyes, sharp cheekbones, and – didn’t that just take the biscuit – tousled hair just on the longer side of fashionable, shining with salt and sea water.
Jonathan realised, belatedly, that he was staring.
Oh, bad idea.
The man must have got the message Jonathan had not intended to actually send, for he stood up and walked towards him, a clear limp in his step. One glance lower confirmed to Jonathan that he’d been so busy staring at the fellow’s upper body he had completely overlooked the nasty scar running down his thigh. Now that he had noticed it, it was impossible to miss, especially when all the chap had on were swimming trunks.
The man followed his gaze down and gave a wry smile.
“Ghastly, I know. Little souvenir from Passchendaele.”
His voice was low-pitched and warm, with a slight Midlands accent. It suited him perfectly.
Jonathan let the first comment fly. The scar did not actually look ‘ghastly’, although from the man’s gait it must still be painful after a decade and a half. But acknowledging the fact that he hadn’t even seen it because his mind had stayed stuck on everything else was just as inappropriate as though he had been staring at it in the first place.
“Shrapnel?”
“Machine gun and a wound that would not heal. Where did you get yours?”
He nodded in Jonathan’s general direction. The glance and the word “yours” were vague enough that he could allude to Jonathan’s own ‘souvenir’ from the Second Battle of the Marne3 – a jagged mark on the outer side of his right thigh – or to the ones he had brought back from Hamunaptra a few years ago, the rough tear in his palm and on his shoulder. For the sake of simplicity Jonathan chose his own interpretation of the question.
“Personally I like answering this question with ‘in an unfortunate cricket accident’,” he said airily. “It spares people the trouble of being embarrassed for asking.”
It also conveniently deflected potential talk of the Great War. Jonathan’s relationship with his twenty-two months long service in France was a peculiar one, in that he liked nothing more than forgetting it had happened at all and avoided reminders at all costs.
The man’s mouth twitched. From the slight crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes he wasn’t stingy with his smiles. He must not be a stranger to the game: his stance was loose, casual, even as some subtle clues signalled he might not be adverse to getting closer.
Hope made Jonathan’s heart leap in his chest. He squashed it mercilessly. Until he had a clear reading of the situation any hoping could be dangerous. Besides, he had Alex to think about this afternoon.
“And I thought I had a good conversation starter,” said the man, a smile in his eyes and his voice. “Hell of a cricket match, eh?”
“The worst I’ve ever seen. The umpires were just shoddy and I thought the innings would never end.”
“It was all a bit of a sticky wicket from the start, wasn’t it?” They exchanged a look, one veteran to another, but to Jonathan’s relief the fellow did not try to press the issue. He only held out his hand. “I’m Harry.”
“Jonathan.”
Harry’s handshake was strong, dry and warm, and lingered a second longer than the socially acceptable kind. Jonathan’s doubts about whether the man was indeed interested in him in that way or not vanished on the spot, leaving enthusiastic – though discreet – reciprocation in their wake.
But…
“Do you come here often?” Harry asked, all false innocence. The insinuation in his voice was so transparent it felt like a shared joke rather than an innuendo. Jonathan rested his elbows on his knees and grinned up at him, pulled into the game in spite of himself. God, the fellow was attractive.
“Not as often as I’d like. This is a great little town, it deserves to be enjoyed properly. Seeing the sights and all that, visiting the aquarium, not just the beach.”
“Well,” said Harry, warm and casual with just a touch of diffidence, “if you ever w—”
He was interrupted by a small whirlwind, sopping wet, that descended on Jonathan and sprayed him with droplets of salt water.
“I saw a shark!” Alex wailed, sounding half-terrified and half-excited.
Jonathan’s brain, caught square in the no man’s land between ‘being an uncle’ and ‘flirting with a stranger’ (and a male stranger, at that), screeched to a stop.
“Wait, what? What do you mean, a shark!?”
There was a sharp intake of breath beside him. Jonathan’s head swivelled to Harry, who had gone tense and a little pale.
“I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding here,” he said stiffly as he took a step back. “My mistake. Have a nice day.”
Jonathan’s heart sank. He had to bite his tongue to swallow the “No, wait!” that almost burst out of him. Whatever Harry had inferred couldn’t be much different than the truth: his priority was Alex, and Alex alone. No matter how interested he was in continuing this conversation wherever it may lead – and interested he was – he just could not afford to run after a potential date.
Being an uncle was the one responsibility Jonathan Carnahan refused to skirt. He may be a layabout and own up to the fact, but everyone had standards, and by God so did he.
He allowed himself one glance at the retreating form of Harry, doing his best to keep the regret from his face.
“Who was that, Uncle Jon?” asked Alex.
“A friend.” For some reason Jonathan made it a point of honour to never lie to Alex. I lie to everybody, he’d said to Evy once, what makes you so special? That was before Alex’s birth, and since then he’d had six years to ponder the fact that he somehow refused to tell his nephew an outright lie. Stretching the truth was fair game, as long as it was still a truth. Saying Harry was “a friend”, by Jonathan’s reckoning, was not a lie. Rather wishful thinking. “What did you do with yours? Don’t tell me you abandoned her to your shark.”
Alex shook his head and gripped Jonathan’s arm, dripping water all over him.
“Her mum called her back earlier. C’mon, come and see! Maybe it’s still there!”
The boy’s enthusiasm, while not quite as infectious as it could be, was still as endearing as always. Jonathan put his hat on his chair and let Alex tow him to the water with a small smile.
“You mean the shark.”
“Yes!”
“The shark you were so afraid of you ran out to get me?”
“Well yeah, but I figured you’d scare it off if it tried to attack me.”
The mind of a child works in mysterious ways, Jonathan mused. He was most likely the least scary member of their little family, Alex included, but somehow to his precocious six years old nephew he was enough of an Adult to scare away sharks. His heart hitched itself back up a little in his chest as he walked into the water with something of a swagger in his step.
Sure enough, when Jonathan stood mid-calf in the shallows, Alex beside him with his little hand around his, their portion of the sea was completely devoid of sharks.
“Are you sure it’s a shark you saw?”
“It was, Uncle Jon, I swear!”
“What’d it look like?”
Alex’s whole face scrunched up in thought.
“It was small, with spots all over and a round head. Its tail moved like that, look. I know it’s a shark, I saw it in a book about sharks Dad read me. I just don’t remember what it’s called.”
Alex still couldn’t read complex sentences or write more than his own name and words like “Mum”, “Dad”, “Uncle Jon” and “Egypt” (the latter was a feat in and of itself), but he could draw the statues at Abu Simbel by memory and name all three of the Pyramids of Giza. If he said “I saw it in a book”, Jonathan was inclined to believe him.
Then something clicked.
“I say, Alex,” Jonathan said with a smile, “I think you saw a catshark.”
“A what?”
“A type of dogfish. Don’t worry, though, it couldn’t have attacked you it if tried. Too small for that.”
Emotions flashed across Alex’s face in rapid succession: relief, disappointment, puzzlement.
“Wait. How is a catshark a dogfish?”
“I have no idea. But that’s how it is.”
“And you’re sure it wouldn’t have eaten me?”
“Oh, I’m sure. I take dangerous wildlife very seriously.”
It was half a self-deprecating joke, and Jonathan almost expected Alex to snicker. Instead the boy tilted his head to the side and grabbed his left hand for a look.
“Is that ‘cause you got bitten?”
Sometimes Jonathan wondered if all kids were this blunt or if Alex was just special. His honesty was somewhat refreshing, though.
“Yes, it’s because I got bitten.”
“Oh. Okay.”
And just like that, the matter was dropped.
If only things could be so simple with everyone else…
“Uncle Jon?”
“Hm?”
“Want to see how good I can swim?”
To be fair, Alex wasn’t forthright all the time. Now, for instance, was a perfect example of him being sneaky. What he really meant to ask Jonathan for wasn’t only attention, but also possible support in case things didn’t go quite as well as he hoped. Alex was getting rather good at bravado.
Jonathan nodded gravely.
“Show me, then.”
They ended up venturing a little deeper into the sea, until Alex had water up to the armpits and could paddle about happily, splashing as much as he could while still remaining afloat. Naturally, this led to Jonathan doing some splashing of his own in retaliation, because if you couldn’t be goofy and childish with an actual six-year-old, then when?
The fun lasted until Jonathan noticed Alex’s lips were turning blue from the cold. His own shoulder was beginning to twinge as well, as were some of the tendons in his left hand. And no wonder: even at the height of summer, the English Channel would never be the Mediterranean.
Thus Jonathan grabbed his squirming nephew, who at that point felt like an enormous fish spouting half-hearted colourful protests in the place of water, and walked up the gentle slope back to dry land. Thank God the boy was still on the small side. One or two years more and the only one left with enough strength to pick him up would be Rick.
Alex still appeared mutinous bundled into his towel. A little later, though, when he had donned his shirt and short trousers again, warm and dry with the sun on his head and warm pebbles under his feet, he had completely finished his thaw, both external and internal.
And promptly declared he would – for lack of sand to make sandcastles – undertake the construction of the Saqqara Step Pyramid out of pebbles.
“It’s not as pretty as the Sphinx,” he said with a theatrical sigh, “but it’ll do, I suppose.”
Jonathan bit on his lip to keep from laughing out loud. That kid really could ham it up with the best of the West End actors.
They chatted about this and that, uncle and nephew, while Alex built his pyramid and Jonathan let the sun finish drying him up and warming him to the tips of his toes. And then out of the blue Alex asked idly, without even looking up at him, “Uncle Jon? Why don’t you have children?”
Jonathan opened his mouth. Closed it. Possible answers popped up in his mind, only for him to knock each of them down.
The traditional answer for a single man was “I haven’t found the right woman yet”, but did he really want to do that, knowing it could then segue into a very different direction? Was Alex even aware that it took two people – two adults – to make a child? What if he simply hadn’t thought about it before, and thus hadn’t asked Evy and Rick the awkward questions yet?
Jonathan was in no way, shape or form ready to go down that rabbit hole. He doubted he would ever be.
In the end, the answer was simple and self-evident.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t want any.”
“Why?” asked Alex between two pebbles.
“I don’t know. It’s like catsharks and dogfishes. Sometimes that’s just how things are.”
“Okay.”
And, like earlier, Jonathan’s answer was accepted at face value. No further questioning, no Someday you’ll meet someone who’ll make you change your mind, only tranquil acquiescence before moving on to more important things. Like how to protect your pyramid from bandits and did the Ancient Egyptians have pirates.
For all that Alex could be a handful sometimes, some things about him were refreshingly simple. Hence why Jonathan – who had with the concept of truth the kind of relationship you might have with an elderly next-door neighbour, whom you waved hello to but rarely engaged in conversation – Jonathan Did Not Lie to him.
Not outright, anyway.
The conversation moved from pirates to ships, from ships to the sea, and from there to uncomfortable truths.
“I swear, the first time your mum set you down on a beach you howled.”
“Not true!”
“Of course it’s true. Nothing to be ashamed of, either. You were yea high, not even a year old, the ocean was a big loud scary thing.”
“Well,” said Alex, his voice ringing with conviction, “I’m not scared now. Being scared is for babies.” He picked up a handful of pebbles and asked, hesitant, “Nothing to be ashamed of? Really?”
“Really.”
“Huh.” A beat. “Ronnie, from school. He’s scared of birds. Kenneth says that’s dumb.”
“Oh?”
“But last year we found a snake in the playground and Ronnie wasn’t scared at all. He said ‘That’s a grass snake, don’t hurt it, it’s not a bad snake’ and he made it go away.”
“Good show. What did Kenneth say, then?”
Alex’s expression went glum.
“He didn’t say anything. Just yelled and grabbed a stick to beat the snake with. But it wasn’t even doing anything! Ronnie’s afraid of birds but he doesn’t want to kill them.” Then, just as Jonathan was racking his brains for a good, adult remark, something that would lift up Alex’s spirits, the boy looked up at him and asked, “Can you kill the ocean?”
It took all of Jonathan’s willpower not to burst out laughing. He squinted at Alex with his mouth partly open, hoping his face wasn’t twitching. Sometimes it paid to have a good poker face.
“…No, you can’t kill the ocean.”
“Can you kill sand?”
The urge to laugh abruptly died, replaced by a flash of memory – ground, sky, everything gone and replaced by sand and motion then a shock that rattled every single bone in his body and almost made him throw up his lungs—
“I don’t think so,” articulated Jonathan after dragging himself with an effort out of the memory of the worst flight in his life. Alex appeared thoughtful.
“So… If water and sand could fight, who d’you think would win?”
Perhaps the most uncomfortable thing about talking with a child was how often the words I don’t know crossed your mind. No wonder so many fellow adults limited their interactions with children to a lot of nodding and smiling without truly listening and patronising pats on the head. It was never pleasant to be made to appear ignorant.
Jonathan ignored the part of him that wanted to throw out his arms and exclaim How would I know that!? and searched for an adequate answer.
He was saved from having to find one by the little girl from earlier, now wearing a summer dress instead of swimwear. She navigated her way around the clusters of people on deckchairs or towels and stood in front of the two of them diffidently, rocking her shoulders back and forth.
“Hi, Gladys!” said Alex gaily, all thoughts of elemental warring forgotten.
“Mummy says,” the little girl said in a lilting voice with a bit of a lisp, hesitating like she had trouble remembering lines she’d been made to memorise, “Mummy says I’m to ask your uncle if you can… may… If you want to have afternoon tea with us. And biscuits. We are over there,” she added with conviction, pointing at a spot a few yards away where her mother sat looking at her daughter encouragingly. Obviously little Gladys was a lot more shy than Alex had ever been. She did appear slightly younger, too.
“Sure,” said Alex, and the girl beamed. Her smile had random gaps where baby teeth were missing. Definitely younger than Alex, then. “Uncle Jon? Can I go, please?”
Alex was capable of asking for permission. He just didn’t bother most of the time.
“You can and you may,” said Jonathan.
“Watch my pyramid for me?”
“I’ll guard it with my life.”
Alex’s grin told him his deliberate exaggeration had been taken in the spirit it was intended. He sprang up to follow the girl, and Jonathan called after him, “Bring me back a biscuit?”
“You betcha!” Alex yelled back, startling a few beach-goers – either by the volume of his voice or the American colloquialism.
Ah, well. It was inevitable that the kid would get his mannerisms from both his parents, after all. A little exoticism in his speech was only to be expected. And seeing a couple of old folks figuratively clutch their pearls as Alex walked past them was, admittedly, hilarious.
Jonathan settled back into his deckchair as comfortably as he could and pulled his hat low over his face again. Since Alex was being looked after right now, perhaps he could afford to close his eyes and drowse for a moment…
An uneven footfall reached his ears just before a shadow fell across him.
When Jonathan opened his eyes and lifted his hat, Harry was standing near, a pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, caution spelled clearly in his posture and the lines of his face. He had changed his bathing trunks for trousers and a soft linen shirt, light enough for the breeze to play a little with his open collar. It didn’t make him look any less appealing.
“I heard the boy call you his uncle earlier,” he said in a low voice, “and I thought… First impressions can be misleading, but maybe I misunderstood the misunderstanding after all.”
“That depends,” said Jonathan as casually as he could. “What was your first impression?”
Harry put out his pipe and looked away for a second with a sheepish smile.
“‘There’s a fellow I’d like to drink with’, mostly. I’d never heard anyone call the War a cricket match before. And I hoped we’d share… common interests.”
“Oh, I think it’s safe to say we do.” Jonathan saw him lean more of his weight on his good leg and gestured to his beach towel, which he had spread on the ground next to his chair. Harry put his extinguished pipe in his pocket and sat down with a grateful look. “And… Your second impression?”
“Er. ‘Bollocks, he’s actually a family man and I’m done for if I don’t scarper’.”
The phrasing and the self-deprecation in his voice made Jonathan shake his head with a grin, which faded when Harry added a little more quietly, “I noticed you didn’t try to disabuse me of that notion.”
Jonathan’s breath caught in his throat for a second, sharp and brief.
“Believe me, any other day I would have, like a shot. Today, though…”
His gaze strayed to Alex and his two hosts in the distance, chatting away happily as they snacked on biscuits and a thermos of tea. Maybe that was what childhood was all about, in a way: sunshine, adventures with sharks, and lifelong friendships that lasted all of one afternoon before fading into oblivion. Goodness knew Jonathan had had his share of it as a little boy. Including – on one memorable occasion – the shark part.
“Well,” he concluded with a sigh, “it’s just rotten timing, isn’t it.”
“Is that all this comes down to?” Harry’s voice was low, though without hesitation. “Timing?”
“Doesn’t everything?” Jonathan said, falling back to irony like he usually did when things hit uncomfortably close.
Despite his jokes, he had – to his own surprise – been truthful enough. While he didn’t regret a single second of time spent with his nephew, he was at least self-aware enough to know the bitter taste of a missed opportunity. Being practically propositioned like this in earnest was rare enough, let alone by someone he was actually attracted to, maybe even liked. And now? He and Harry would part ways, a chance encounter cut short, and the might have beens would become never weres. Exchanging last names or addresses was out of the question; this went against every rule in the book. One-night stands with a fellow (or one-day stands, or two days if things got really good) were only safe if they stayed casual, almost anonymous. Letters one thought were private could always fall into the wrong hands. Even Jonathan, with his elastic connection to rules, didn’t want to risk everything just for the sake of a few hours of fun.
Harry would simply remain one small regret on an ever-growing list.
“Well,” said Harry, cutting across Jonathan’s wallowing in self-pity, “if this is only a question of timing, I’m free all week. We could work something out.”
Jonathan, abruptly pulled back to the here and now, turned in his deckchair to stare at him, leaning a hand on the ground for balance.
“Didn’t you have plans for today?” he asked, unable to keep a trace of suspicion from his voice. Chemistry or not, who upended their schedule for a perfect stranger?
Harry shrugged. “Not even one. The papers said it’d be a sunny day so I hopped on a train to Brighton. It’s about an hour away and a favourite beach of mine.”
“Same here,” said Jonathan with a crooked grin, allowing hope to flicker into existence again. Perhaps things could be simple, after all. “You never know what you’ll find. For instance, my nephew found a shark and surprise biscuits, and I – well.”
The deckchair was so low they were practically level with each other. Jonathan still had one hand on the sand, next to Harry’s; it would only take half an inch for their fingers to meet.
And meet they did. (Discreetly.)
Somehow, the smaller the touch, the louder it resonated through Jonathan. Especially in public, and especially with a man. It was a familiar blend, a mishmash of boyish glee at getting away with something dangerous and forbidden, tired exasperation at even this harmless gesture being treated as dangerous and forbidden, and a thrill down his spine at the silent promise of more to come. Given the right circumstances, even the tiniest, simplest contact had the power – or at least the potential – to unmake him. If he let it.
“What did you find, then?” Harry asked in a voice that made Jonathan’s mouth very dry all of a sudden.
He smelled like sea salt, sunshine, and pipe smoke. From up close his eyes looked even brighter, framed by dark eyelashes.
To hell with never weres. Jonathan had always been partial to doing things, at the risk of regretting them later, over not doing things and regretting that later. Even if all this ever amounted to was a pleasant chat and a couple of stolen hours, chances like that were too rare and this one too good to be allowed to become one more might have been.
Jonathan’s thumb brushed the palm of Harry’s hand for a second.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s definitely worth looking into.”
Harry replied with a smile that told Jonathan he’d made a good decision. More of that smile in more private circumstances would be simply splendid. As for the rest…
He let go of Harry’s hand with regret and settled back into his deckchair, relaxing his body language into something that telegraphed friendly nonchalance. At a cursory glance, at least. It wouldn’t fool any of his regular poker partners, but – and this was part of the charm of Brighton – people here were nowhere as attentive.
“If I said the West Pier is best enjoyed at eleven o’clock on Wednesdays,” he asked with a smile as falsely innocent as Harry’s question of Do you come here often had been earlier, “do you think I might meet you there next week?”
Harry laughed out loud.
“Eleven, eh? All right, I’ll be there.”
“We might even go see the aquarium while we’re at it.”
“You know what? I’d actually like that.”
The smile they shared had a lot of words in it, gone unsaid. They would have have been wry, amused, wary still. Ultimately, saying them out loud didn’t feel very important.
In the silence that followed, Harry’s eyes fell on Alex’s mostly-completed pyramid and he raised his eyebrows.
“…Is that a Mesoamerican pyramid?”
Jonathan blinked.
“Egyptian, actually. Djoser’s Step Pyramid, in Saqqara. My nephew has an eye for art and architecture.”
“Bloody good eye. He’s what, about seven?”
“Six. And you should see his drawings.”
Even as the words left his mouth Jonathan wished he could have held his tongue for once. Meeting family was not the reason men – and women – met here. Many even came down here to get away from family.
Honestly, certain business with mummies, scarabs, and pesky apocalypses aside, Jonathan knew he’d got exceedingly lucky with his. Even if it comprised all of three people, and even if none of them – thank God – were aware that the people he dallied with were fairly evenly split between the two sexes.
Thankfully, Harry didn’t comment. He leant past Jonathan to look down the beach, inadvertently brushing his bare forearm against his. Intentional or not, the understated sensuality of the gesture raised the hairs on both men’s arms.
Oh, come on, Jonathan scolded himself, inwardly rolling his eyes at the way his heartbeat picked up speed. You’re not a bloody teenager anymore, for God’s sake.
Harry cleared his throat and jerked his chin eastwards.
“Speaking of,” he said with a faint smile. “I think here comes my cue to leave.”
Sure enough, Alex, after saying goodbye to Gladys and her mum, was carefully making his way back amongst the deckchairs and towels and the people populating them. Jonathan thrust one hand in the air to make sure the boy knew where to look and turned back to Harry. “See you on Wednesday, then?”
“Definitely. I hope it’ll be sunny.”
“Personally I’m rather hoping for rain.”
Harry chuckled.
“Well, I’ll take what I can get,” he said with a grin that softened as he laid one hand on Jonathan’s arm for a second. “Cheers.”
“Bye,” said Jonathan, who felt the warmth of the brief contact on his skin a full minute after Harry had stood up and limped away. Well. There was no mistaking the pull in the pit of his stomach. Whether he chalked it up to the man’s direct manner, his genial charm, or to the fact that it had been a while since he himself had shared any kind of intimate contact with someone, Jonathan was absolutely willing to continue what had been started.
He allowed himself three seconds to stare after the muscular back, the round bottom, and the long, sloping shoulders. Then he turned to the opposite direction and switched his brain back to ‘being an uncle’ as Alex reached his deckchair, hobbling a little on the pebbles.
“Was that your friend from earlier, Uncle Jon? What’d you talk about?”
“Boring adult stuff,” Jonathan replied easily. Anything directly or indirectly related to romance was boring to Alex. Jonathan himself was inclined to agree with him when it concerned his sister and brother-in-law being disgustingly soppy and affectionate with each other. “Did you get my biscuit?”
Alex extracted a small shortbread from the pocket of his short trousers and proudly held it out. Jonathan took it with a thanks, making a mental note to make him turn out his pockets to shake the crumbs out before getting back into the car.
Once he had brushed off the bits of fluff, the biscuit turned out to be quite good, with a nice buttery taste.
“Gladys’ mum made them,” said Alex as though in confidence, “and Gladys helped. She said it wasn’t hard to make, too, and that Mum could make ‘em easily. I didn’t tell her Dad’s the one who likes to make the cakes.”
Jonathan nodded. The two Carnahan siblings were fairly evenly matched in cooking prowess, or lack thereof: Jonathan was too easily distracted to follow instructions in the right order from start to finish, and Evy, for all of her goodwill, was too focused on her own interests to treat cooking seriously. She would start on a recipe, think of an alternative translation for an expression in Manetho’s Aegyptica, and stay engrossed in her work all afternoon while pots and ingredients lay forlorn on the kitchen table. After Rick wandered in on such scenes of desolation once or twice, he did what Jonathan could never be bothered to do: take an interest in finishing what had been started. The first results had been pretty hit-and-miss, but with experience and a bit of trial and error Rick’s cooking endeavours paid off. For the past couple of years now Jonathan had known he could safely pilfer the freshly-made ‘cookies’ that held pride of place in the dining room without losing a tooth in the process when he visited the Carnahan-O’Connell residence.
Alex stared at him intently while he finished chewing.
Hm. There might be a message there.
“What?” he asked, squinting at Alex to try to hazard a guess. “Do I have something on my nose? It can’t be sunburn, I’ve never got one in my entire life—”
Alex’s words came out in a rush. “You said you would show me how to make ducks and drakes!”
Well then, so he had. And Alex had even waited until he’d finished his biscuit instead of just grabbing him and hauling him to the edge of the water. Jonathan took a second to appreciate that fact.
“You’re right,” he said after licking the buttery crumbs from his fingers, “and a promise is a promise. C’mere.”
Finding a patch of sea free enough of people that they didn’t risk taking someone’s eye out with a rock took a little while. In the end they settled for the foot of the Palace Pier, since no-one was willing to swim in the shade and a current that could send you crashing on one of the iron feet of the Pier.
Jonathan delighted in teaching his nephew the correct wrist angle and which pebbles were the right shape to bounce off the water, the way he’d learned it around Alex’s age. The boy curbed his impatience and absorbed the information with an intensity that was very reminiscent of his mother. That seriousness was tempered by something a little more laid back that Jonathan recognised as very Rick. As long as nobody was in mortal danger, his brother-in-law was pretty unruffled.
As the day wore on, uncle and nephew skimmed stones, bickered amiably, and pigged out on cotton candy. Alex got sunburnt and Jonathan got his trousers wet up to the knees venturing into the sea after Alex dropped his hat from the pier. All in all, Jonathan thought as he drove home early in the evening, a sleeping nephew in the passenger seat, a truly excellent afternoon.
And if the thought of the coming Wednesday gave him a secret thrill, something small and private that warmed him up from a point below his ribcage, well, that was just a particularly sweet brandied cherry on top of the cake.
1Hellenised name of the pharaoh Kafre. For a long time the three Pyramids of Giza were called by the Greek(ish) names of Kheops, Kephren, and Mykerinos, the pharaohs who had them built as their tombs – now they’re more known by their Egyptian names, Khufu (also called the Great Pyramid), Khafre, and Menkaure.
2Aka. skip/skim stones.
>315th July to 6th August 1918.
____________________This story came from a prompt on Tumblr with only three words: “Jonathan”, “Alex”, and “seaside”. I set out to write a cute snapshot, probably shorter than a thousand words, with cute uncle and nephew shenanigans; my brain had a different idea. Hope you’ll like it. There’s still plenty of cute uncle and nephew shenanigans, at least.
The title is from the 1907 music hall song “I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside”, which even in the time this story is set would have been very old-fashioned :D
Fun fact! In the words of a friend who lives there and is settled pretty comfortably in the “queer” spectrum, Brighton is and has long been “very gay” too. Having same-sex relationships in the 1930s was just as forbidden as in the 1910s, but you still could use codes to signal your sexuality to like-minded people who might be interested. Plus it was a place where a lot of art people lived (authors, actors, artists), which is still the case today. Also, even though it’s sadly hit by things like drugs and homelessness as badly as other places in the UK, it’s one of its most gay-friendly towns :o) (Also sadly, the West Pier doesn’t exist today; it fell into disrepair in the 1970s, and after storms and arsons it’s mostly a skeletal structure. The Palace Pier, however, is still thriving in the 2020s. There’s an arcade, roller coasters and children’s rides.)
